Um, no. It would be the end of P2P networks (assuming it had a chance of actually working) because the RIAA has no easy way to distinguish between copyrighted and and non-copyrighted music.
Let's say you had a file available for sharing on your system called "Britney.mp3". Is it a recording of the famous recording artist Britney Spears? Maybe. Or maybe it's a recording of YOU, if your name happends to be Britney. The only way to know for sure is to download and listen to it, which is a pain in the ass for the millions of songs available for file sharing.
So the RIAA simply assumes that ALL traffic on the P2P networks is piracy. IOW, if you're doing a lot of sharing, regardless of WHAT you're sharing, they'll probably go after you.
Pacific Bell Cellular, now known as Cingular, does indeed use SIM cards in their phones. Around here (San Francisco Bay Area), they apparently have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM networks. Most people I know who use Cingular have GSM phones with SIM cards.
While you can't switch providers (you need a new SIM card), switching phones is a snap. Just swap the SIM cards and you're done. Supposedly this is how the new prepaid works as well (you'll be able to buy "charged" SIM cards off the shelf and swap them into your phone).
I disagree. Clearly,/. is "News for Nerds." And I'd argue that many of the articles posted on/. DO matter to the "nerd community". The/. editors have never pretended that they didn't have biases, particularly anti-Microsoft and neo-libertarian biases.
In my mind, this puts/. light years ahead of FOXNews which refuses to admit it's deep conservative bias. Their top commentator, Bill O'Reily has the nerve to call his show the "No Spin Zone".
Don't get me wrong, I actually watch FOXNews. But it disturbs me that many people don't recognize or admit the slanted nature of the news they provide (and MSNBC as well), and that FOXNews encourages this.
Actually, through corporate chicanery Microsoft hasn't paid ANY income tax for years, and has wrangled discounts on all other taxes. So it's really only wantever money that filters down to the employees that will get taxed. For example, I suspect some sales guy is getting a bonus on this one.
In the Real World, you have to be alert for scams and know what your REAL protections are (and it ain't the government). People have been running confidence games for 1000's of years, and the punishments (on the rare occasion the con artists are actually caught and prosecuted) are comparatively light, so we should have figured out this a long time ago.
In regards to eBay:
1. Assume that all sellers on eBay will try to cheat you if they can. In fact, this is good general rule when buying anything. If there is the slightest hint of any irregularity whatsoever don't hand over any money.
2. If at all possible, never purchase anything for more than $500 on eBay.
3. If it's less that $500, pay with a credit card. Paypal accepts credit cards on seller accounts. If they don't accept credit cards, they are a scam artist. There is an exemption for liablity for fraud on credit cards (in the USA) for anything more that $50. So the worst case scenario if you're scammed is you're out $50. Don't be afraid of chargebacks if you aren't 100% happy with your purchase. If you're in not in the USA insist on escrow (see below).
4. If it's more than $500, INSIST on a reputable auction escrow service that YOU select, like Escrow.com. If the seller does not agree to escrow, he's a scam artist.
5. NEVER use ANY payment service suggested by the seller. Only use those services that you are familiar with and comfortable with. If that amounts to a mailed-in money order or credit card, that's fine. If the seller isn't happy with that he's a scam artist.
6. Never do business with any seller whose only address is a P.O. Box. Insist on a full name, street address, and phone number before handing over any money. If he doesn't have a business address ask for his home address. If it's a big-ticket purchase (more than $500) call the phone # to verify the identity of the seller. If he is unwilling to hand over these details, he's a scam artist.
7. If you think that you've been shilled into paying too much for an item, or you are unhappy with the item and final bid for any reason, simply don't pay. Ignore the emails you recieve. You simply CAN'T get kicked off eBay for this.
8. Threatening to sue, and legal remedies in general, are a total waste of time. You'll almost certainly win (because the defendant probably won't show up), but you'll never be able to collect. It's near-impossible to collect a small-claims judgement from an individual who doesn't want to pay, so don't bother trying. Complaining to the FTC, state attourney general, etc. could theoretically result in criminal prosecution (this is extremely unlikely) which would prevent further scams, but won't get you your money back.
I could probably come up with a few more rules, but these should give you the general idea.
Personally, I HAVE been scammed on eBay, twice, and I don't use it very often. But because I followed the rules, I didn't lose any money. Both times I bought an approximately $50 item and I paid through credit card. In the first case, I never recieved the item, I did a chargeback and I claimed the seller was a scam artist. He lost his merchant account. The second case the item was defective, I did a chargeback, and the seller lost his PayPal account. In both cases the seller simply didn't respond to the complaints (they knew they were scammers and weren't going to argue the point). In neither case was I out one red cent.
So, what is a major corportation all about, if it's not about making a profit? Well, for starters all of the people involved make money. This creates a rather strong incentive for them to leave it the way it is. But, don't the investors get upset about the lack of dividends? Why would they? The value of a stock can go up with the pace of inflation and market expansion (e.g. U.S. Airlines serving more and more foreign airports), and that stock value increase doesn't have to represent profit. It profits the investors, surely, but that's an entirely different part of the equation!
You're picking a few isolated and misleading examples and trying to portray them as being representative. Utilities and airlines are TERRIBLE examples of the typical corporation. Because their business interests are considered "vital" they are allowed to get away with things that would never fly with regular corporations. Take the numerous airline bailouts. The officers of many airlines DELIBERATELY create situations that require bailouts because it's cost-effective to do so. Why pay your OWN expenses when the gov't is willing to do so?
What about the countless.coms that were allowed to collapse or succeed on their own merits? Or media companies? Or consumer electronics companies? Despite it's prominance, Zenith was allowed to go down in flames.
And frankly, what part of "make a profit for the investors" didn't you understand in my earlier posts? If the investors stock increases in value, the investors made a profit. It doesn't matter if the company itself made a profit, as you point out, often dividends aren't the best strategy.
What I initally disagreed with was YOUR disagreement with this statement:
The goal of a corporation is to make profit for its shareholders.
You said that this didn't apply to the vast majority of corporations, and while you might be technically correct, that claim is deeply misleading as I've attempted to explain.
I still stand by my statements, but in your previous post you re-characterized my statements as having something to do with "evil". I'd like to know where you got that one from.
The implication in your post was that fast food, in general, was "bad" and by implication, the corporations who sell fast food are "bad". You also implied that consumers had little real choice in the matter and that corporations were effectively "forcing" fast food on people. You validate this implication with this claim:
What you state about the nature of fast food doesn't quite track either. People don't just "prefer" the cost of fast food, the economy has adapted to it. That means that people who make fairly little money can neither afford "good" food when they eat out, nor can they afford to have someone who is home long enough to prepare good, cost-effective meals. Coming home at night after working 14 hours to face the prospect of having to cook your own (and perhaps your childrens') dinner is daunting enough to make anyone want to eat at a burger joint.
What bullshit. Ever worked a farm? Do you understand that mankind existed before 1950? Somehow people managed to cook their own food 50 years ago even after working 14 hours doing backbreaking farm labor. People today are just lazy. They'd rather spend their time watching TV or goofing off rather that preparing their meals. You even used the magic word "want". After working all day, people don't WANT to do the extra work cooking their own meals. That's fine, but don't act like it's impossible. Both parents work nowadays NOT because it's absolutely necessary, I suspect few families would starve for lack of the extra income, but because they VALUE the extra income more that providing domestic needs (cooking, etc.).
People have this bizzare idea that there was some magical "golden age" in the past where everything was rosy and happy and everyone lived in a nuclear family in a beautiful house with a white picket fence and if we can just get back to that e
Ok, so what part of the word "profit" was confusing? Making money is not profit, and while it's certianly a goal of most not-for-profits to make money, profit is not a goal!
Let me rephrase, the goal of most corporations of significant size is to make a profit for their shareholders. This was the initial impetus behind the formation of LLCs and remains the primary goal of most LLCs today.
No, they're a part of it. It's always important to realize that "we" and "they" are all a part of the society, and the guy who decides that Burger King will make more sales if they coat their fries in sugar before dipping them in hot grease has to make the same decisions in his life about the quality of the food he wants and the quality he wants for his family as you or I do. No man is an island.
In your previous post you argued that the "feedback" system was broken in regards to large corporations and you used fast food as an example. I strongly disagree with this notion. Fast food is popular primarly because THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE REALLY WANT. Cheap, convienient, and fairly tasty food. There are plenty of alternatives, as previously noted. That guy you describe may or may not eat at Burger King, but he is merely doign his job so that his business stays competitive. If people want X, and it's profitable to provide X, someone is going to sell it to them. That's why the Drug War is a futile effort.
You are telling me that catastrophy insurance costs nothing because there have thus far been no outlays, yet you are unwilling to accept the free-market commercial cost of such insurance as a subsidy. The essential contradiction of your position is clear.
The entire concept of mandatory insurance is foreign to free markets. It's effectively a sort of tax. If you allow arbitrary taxes to factor into production costs you can declare the production costs of anything to be infinite. Yes, I am conciously disregarding the regulatory environment because that has nothing to do with the cost efficency of generating power, nuclear or otherwise.
You're the one that's contradicting yourself. You happily accept the massive subsidies of wind power yet decry any hint of a subsidy for nuclear power.
You also have no apparent respect or concern for the externalities, such as waste disposal, weapons proliferation, or the human cost of the potential catastrophies which are so great that the market alone is unwilling to bear them.
From an economic standpoint "externalities" are a non-issue because their is no accepted way to calculate them. However, I'm not showing a lack of concern, it simply hasn't come up. My argument was purely economical.
But if you want to talk about externialities...
Waste disposal: Non-issue. The French and Japanese don't have a serious problem due to fuel recycling, and the problem could be virtually eliminated with breeder reactors, etc.
Weapons proliferation: This cat has left a bag a long time ago. Besides, we're talking about the United States here. The US ALREADY has more nuclear weapons than anyone in the world, so I hardly think more reactors would lead to more nuclear weapons HERE. 50 years of experience has already show than security is more than adaquate.
Human cost of catastrophe: Yes, this is a theoretical problem, but it has to be weighed against the alternatives. As I said, I don't believe that wind is a realistic replacement do the only alternative is coal/oil/natural gas which all have a far worse safety record than nuclear.
You're also not discussing the externalities of wind, like the energy needed to construct and transport the wind generators, and the personell to maintain them, etc.
I'll frankly agree with you in that the externalities of nuclear power are probably greater than wind. But so what? That has t be weighed agaisnt the economic benefits, which I belive are far greater for nuclear.
As well they should, since extracting wind energy from the atmosphere is a direct form of greenhouse gas mitigation.
Am I misunderstanding you or are you saying that windmills LITERALLY extract greenhouse gases from the air? Or are you saying there is a NET reduction in greenhouse gasses because wind power offsets the greenhouse gases generated by oil burning plants?
If it's the latter, I don't understand your point because EXACTLY the same thing applies to nuclear power. Yes, fossil fuel is used in mining, but it's also used for construction of windmills, transportation of maintaince personell, etc.
I'm sorry. I already addressed this by explaining hydrogen storage using proton exchange membrane-based electrolysis and fuel cells several times on this story, but apparently not in this comment thread.
Someone probably clued you in on the other threads, so hopeully you are aware at how incredibly expensive this technology currently is, and especially how ineffecient it is to use water instead of natural gas or other mediums. IOW, this technology has yet to be practical.
However I agree that this technology will be significant in the future, as a replacement for fossil fuels. I just see nuclear power being used to crack the water to generate the hydrogen. I suspect the centralized production would be vastly more efficent.
How do I know you aren't shilling for the nuclear business?
What makes you think I'm not? I certainly believe that I (and you, assuming you're an American) will reap a long-term economic and health benefit from widespread adoption of advanced nuclear power systems in the United States. So I'm completely self-intrested in what I'm saying.
The LCD is nothing different than any other LCD.. the piece of glass that has the capacitive film sandwitched with a piece of mylar that has the same (some are resistive) is the "touchscreen" and contrary to what they want you to believe is relatively cheap as well as the hardware to turn that into a standard mouseing input for a trackpoint pad kind of driver.
You may be right in terms of production costs. I don't know.
What I do know is that for most hardware manufacturers there is a MAJOR price premium attached to touchscreens of any sort. For example, in a POS project I was involved in 3 years ago, our POS units were originally spec'ed with 15" LCD touchscreens, which at the time cost a little less than $2000 a pop. This was nasty enough to force a redesign to a CRT touchscreen (which coust about half as much). According to colleagues at Palm, their color touchscreens weren't exactly cheap either (cut un here any time Bob). Maybe things have changed drastically in the last few years.
Assuming you're right, how then do you explain the price premium attached to Tablet PCs? AFAIK, Microsoft doesn't charge a premium on the tablet version of WinXP, and the "compact" (no keyboard, fewer ports and slots, relatively small screens) nature of the TabletPCs should make them CHEAPER than laptops. The ONLY unusual piece of hardware I can think of on these TabletPCs is the screen.
Does this mean Microsoft will just abandon all of their users still running older versions of Windows?
I think that's exactly what it means. I'd be pretty pissed off if I had bought Windows Me, a product that is less that 3 years old. Of course, it was clear from the very beginning that Me (aka Win98 Third Edition) was nothing but a stopgap hack.
I've tried my friend's and ones in stores and the handwriting recognition works remarkably well even without training it.
It works reasonably well. With training you can have virtually "typo" free recognition. However, it's still nowhere near as fast as typing and it never will be. I'm a lignting-fast typist and handwriting recognition has little appeal for me.
Besides, one of the best features is that it can store raw handwriting and doodles/diagrams.
Admittedly this is a useful feature, but is it really worth an extra $1000? Especially when you can get a Wacom tablet or similar that works BETTER for $100?
As other posters have said, the real advantage of TabletPCs is that you can theoretically use them "on the move", like clipboards. The problem here is the weight. The Compaq tablet is far and away the best product here, but even then the detached "tablet" portion weighs slightly over 3 lbs., which is still too much. And it's too pricy, $1699 minimum for a dog-slow Transmeta system.
I think TabletPCs are likely to remain a niche product, only for thise that see a serious need to enter large amounts of data while standing on their feet. For example, in the medical industry, or with considerable ruggedization, in certain industrial and military applications.
As many people have said, one one the big reasons TabletPCs aren't doing well is price. What they aren't saying is that most of that extra price comes from the expensive LCD touchscreen, which is necessary for pointing with a stylus and handwriting recognition.
And it's that latter feature that's killing adoption. People just don't want handwriting recognition, especially the kind of power users likey to be eraly adopters of new technology. Why? Simply because handwriting recognition at this stage is still pretty buggy, and even if it wasn't, HANDWRITING ISN'T AS FAST AS TYPING. As I suspect most power users are fairly good typists, handwriting recognition is of little value to them.
And as a "new generation" of users that have grown up with computers matures, there will be even less incentive for handwring recognition. Anyone notice the trend in PDAs has been towards keyboards and away from recognition? This isn't a coincidence, it's the maturing market base.
No, all other kinds of power plants must operate with commercial insurance. Nuclear is the only type which has a blanket exemption from those requirements of market-rate insurance.
Well, I should have been more clear. The Price-Anderson Act is necessary due to HYSTERIA about nuclear power. It's not that nuclear power is unsafe, it's just that if a conventional insurer was in place they would be swarmed with dozens of nuisance lawsuits claiming imagined damage from nuclear power facilities. Mostly funded by environmental groups with the express intent of shutting the industry down. Insurance companies think that the public paranoia about nuclear power is so high that every jury would find for the plaintiffs, despite the merits of the case. THAT'S why they're so hesitant to insure.
The regulations I referred to are the ones that effectively (or in the case of California, entirely) prevent the construction of new or modified facilities which would improve efficiency and safety. Operators are being forced to make improvements to safety (despite the fact that nuclear power is already incredibly safe) without making significant design changes. They basically aren't allowed to do anything that might increase efficiency. Despite this, nuclear power is probably the #2 or #3 most efficient way to generate power, only beaten by coal and natural gas, which pose vastly greater environmental hazards.
This "subsidy" doesn't even cost the taxpayers any money, according to the DOE:
"Because the DOE indemnification operates as a form of self-insurance for claims resulting from nuclear incidents, DOE incurs no out-of-pocket costs for insurance. Moreover, thus far, it has not paid out significant amounts for claims pursuant to its indemnification authority."
http://www.gc.doe.gov/price-anderson/public-comm en ts/Nuclear%20Energy%20Agency/paa-rep.pdf
I'd note that this is an incredibly weak argument. I assume you've conceded my point that, discounting regulatory and insurance issues, nuclear power *IS* cheaper to produce than wind, and possibly every other form of power (you've never bothered to directly address this).
Nuclear is the most heavily subsidized form of power generation.
Alternative forms of power (like wind) have DIRECT subsidies, in the form of lucrative tax credits (they about to almost a 40% cost savings in California) and cost the taxpayers more money.
I'd also note that you didn't bother to address my the other issues, like the intermittent and unreliable nature of wind power that makes it unacceptable as a PRIMARY means of generating power.
Frankly, I think you're just shilling for the wind power companies.
The goal of a corporation is to make profit for its shareholders.
No, it most certainly is not!
That might well be the goal of some corporations, but it's probably not even the goal of most, much less all.
The idea behind the corporation, or more properly Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), was initially to make money. The fact that it has evolved as a convienient buisness arraigement in general and a profitable tax dodge is incidental. (BTW, It's these private tax dodges that make up the majority of corporations.)
LLCs evolved from earlier joint-stock companies, like the Dutch East India Company. Shipping ventures were risky back then because many ships ran into foul weather, pirates, etc. which led to a loss of cargo, or even the ship itself. Because the costs and risks were so great (though the rewards were great as well) it often difficult for an individual to raise the necessary capital, joint-stock companies were formed with idea of sharing this risk among many.
This worked okay for a little while, but a problem arose because of lawsuits. If someone lost their cargo, typically they would sue the shipping company to recover their losses. But what if the company didn't have enough money to cover their losses? Then they would sue the OWNERS of the company. Obviously, the owners didn't like this because it defeated the whole purpose behind the company to begin with, limiting risk. So the idea of the LLC evolved. An LLC is a uniquie and seperate legal entity from it's owners. This means that if you sue the LLC you'd can't also go after the owners. IOW, the owners risk is limited only to what they choose to invest in the company. If you don't like the rules, you don't have to do business with an LLC.
Obviously the LLC has enormous advantages as an investment and this innovation spurred investment in all kinds of ventures like never before.
First off, the feedback system that is in place with smaller capitalist systems has eroded in ours, so the fact that fast food is actually quite tasteless and bad for you does not overcome the hurdle that a large corporation crosses a threshhold of size where they can begin to rely on centralized distribution and other advantages of scale to out-price higher quality options.
This is nonsense. As your correctly pointed out, this is about economies of scale. Economies of scale that have made fast food very inexpensive and convienient.
Ultimately, this isn't about "evil corporations" but about what people VALUE.
Americans strongly value frugality and convenience. Much more so than top quality or health concerns (at least in regards to food), hence, Americans love fast food. For most Americans, eating well is considered a "luxury". However, it's not like there aren't plenty of OTHER corporations that cater to the quality and health-concious minority. Whole Earth Foods, a popular chain of health food supermarkets around here, seems to be doing quite well. There are even health oriented "fast food" places like Fresh Choice.
Of course, this is some feedback involved. Fast food companies advertise their products, which undoubtably leads some people to desire fast food more than they normally would. But it's a conspiracy theory to say that corporations are somehow controlling the "soul" of America through advertising. In fact, it's something of a minor scandal that advertising is actually really ineffective in general. For decades, advertising companies have basically been scamming their clients.
My point is that corporations and the goods they produce are much more a reflection of our social values than they are the generators of it.
My bad. I was confused by this bit on the ReplayTV web site:
Progressive Output If you have a High Definition ready TV (HDTV), the ReplayTV 5000 is for you. With the 480P Progressive output, you'll get richer, cleaner images. Improved color purity, color detail as well as a reduction in color noise and NTSC artifacts are the benefits of progressive scanning.
The $0.04/kwh is the unsubsidized cost for new installations of modern wind turbines, and includes the amortized cost of maintenance. However, I have no qualms quoting the average subsidized cost in the (about $0.035 in the U.S. and less than $0.03 in California), because if a jurisdiction decides to implement a subsidy, they have every right and justification to do so.
If you're making an argument for the economic superiority of wind it seems deeply disengenuous to me to incorporate government subsidies into your calculations. And we're not talking about waving a magic wand and replacing all existing windmills with the latest and greatest, but what the situation is RIGHT NOW. I could (and did) make exactly the same argument to "prove" that nuclear power costs less than 0.01 per kWh.
According to the CPUC information that comes with my electric bill every few months, nuclear in California costs about $0.14/kwh, not including the decommissioning surcharge. The CATO Institute can not be trusted on energy policy, as they're in bed with the industry lobby and firmly believe that "research" should be a for-profit endeavor, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Look at what they were saying about tobacco in the 1980s.
And environmentalist "nuclear power will cause your kids to grow 3 arms" sources are any better? Besides, the CATO Institure was merely citing other government sources. I ignored their analysis.
I didn't cite the CPUC because their web site (and other sources) gave a wide variety of numbers for the 2 Californian plants, everything from 0.03 to 0.14. Most sources gave a number around 0.03-0.04 nationally and so that's the number I'm sticking with.
Do you realize that the nuclear industry has a blanket insurance policy from the U.S. congress? Without the Price-Anderson Act subsidy, the insurance on nuclear would make it way more expensive than even solar. I've heard figures in the $0.45/kwh range. So be careful if you want to stop talking about subsidies.
Of course, this is due to onerous regulations that require nuclear power plants to operate with billions in insurance. Despite the fact that no other power generation technology requires this and that nuclear power is one of the safest ways to generate power. Let them operate without all that insurance and overblown safety crap.
What reliability problems? There aren't any. That's why wind is the fastest-growing source, and has been for the past six years, not counting a jump in natural gas at the tail end of the economic boom. Do you think all the other types of plants are going to go away? There is plenty of backup power on-demand for periods of widespread calm winds already attached to the grid.
Wind power is a generation technique based entirely on weather, and therfore it's subject to the vagarities of the weather. Based on my eyeball assessment fo the fields in Altamont Pass and elsewhere I would guess that as much as 60% of the capacity is inactive at any given time. I suspect that it would be even worse at less ideal locations. This means that at any given time as much as 60% of the wind capacity is unavailable. If you're talking about rolling blackouts, you don't think a 60% loss on the grid is going to cause blackouts? Sure you could build in redundancy, but there *IS* a point of diminishing returns. There is also the simple fact that wind just won't work (AT ALL) in some locations.
I'm not disagreeing that wind has merit as a secondary source of power, but wind really isn't a replacement for more reliable sources like coal, natural gas, or nuclear. This is the conclusion reached by virtually every analyst I've read (except the people in the wind power trade associations).
If you had 10 nuke plants for California, then if one goes down it's rolling blackout time. The inherent redundancy of wind turbines avoids that problem.
So you build 12 plants. There is little incentive NOT to do this because you can always resell the extra capaci
Well, the only way I can respond is to say that this is a case of instincts vs actual experience. Theory vs observation. "Think about it" vs "I have one sitting in front of me." I don't mean to ridicule or anything, but that is all I can say.
You may indeed be right. I have never used this particular keyboard and I'm basing my opinions on my experience with a similar product.
I can and I will, briefly. I wish I had some hard measurements rather than just emphatic assertion, but I can type just as fast on this without going nuts on the finger slamming enough to make the stress comparable to any other keyboard, even the laptop. The force is much less than someone audibly "thumping" their fingers on a desk, and I have never done this for long periods of time, but I imagine it wouldn't do any measurable damage, except for the eventual violent beating by anyone near me.
If you read my other post, you can see that in my experience using a "zero-force" keyboard WAS doing damage (particularly to my fingernails, but also to my fingertips). Which brings me to a related thought: How well do you think the LP would work if the user had long fingernails (long enough so that only the nail struck the surface)?
And I have to disagree on the statement that this "capacitance" keyboard (I have no good idea how the LP works) offers no cushion or impact absorbsion. It is padded slightly on the surface, on the bottom (soft rubber anti-slide surfaces), and on the metal tent frame (slight "give"). Sure it isn't nearly the energy-return of a spring-loaded key, but it is certainly softer than tapping on a thick metal plate or something equally rigid.
This is an excellent point. The keyboard I was using had a hard plastic surface (it was basically all plastic, though there was apparently some sort of heavier mounting plate inside it for the keypress sensors) which felt virtually identical to typing on a hard table. If the surface of the LP is designed properly (say a very thin layer of plastic over a layer of foam) I think it would help alleviate this problem. This would impact the durability of the keyboard though.
The bottom line is that I agree that your ideas about the physics are correct, but they don't come into consideration for "normal" use. Now if you type like Jim Carrey (I've only seen the previews), perhaps a good spring keyboard is best, if just for the keyboard's sake.
As I said in an earlier post, this was an issue for me. However based on your post I suspect it's less of an issue on the LP and fro people without long fingernails.
I believe in reality, and reality is that i _own_ such a keyboard.
Bully for you. I'm not speaking from ignorance though. As I said, I've used capacitance keyboards before. I the keyboard I used was virtually identical in size and shape to a regular keyboard except that it angled slightly. It was intended for insudtrial applications. I used it in conjunctions with a wrist wrest, mouse, and mouse rest. I noticed that:
1) It was difficult to type quickly due to a lack of tactile feedback from the keyboard. On a regular keyboard you know when you have pressed a key by touch, but on a capacitance keyboard you don't thave this feedback. I noticed that I could type at a relatively low speed easily, but when I increased my typing speed typos became much to frequent to be feasible. I didn't mention this before because I believe this problem can probably be overcome by training (I only used the capacitance keyboard for about 2 weeks), plus it's probably an issue unique to high-speed touch typists like myself. I didn't mention this before because it's not an "ergonomic" issue.
2) "Hovering", which other people mentioned. On the keyboard I was using meant that prolonged contact with a particular key meant repitition like this: ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd This means that when you're not actually typing you have you "hover" your hands over the keyboard, which is hard on the wrists. I think someone mentioned this wasn't a problem on your keyboard though I don't know why.
3) Using the capacitance keyboard was hard on my fingers. I actually have fingernails and I noticed they were getting bent and damaged as well as slight bruises on each fingertip after using the capacitance keyboard. After a little while it became slightly painful to use at high speed. It took me a while to realize this because I would naturally slow down my speed because of the pain. After playing around I eventually included tht it just wasn't feasible to type quickly on this kind of keyboard. This is the phenomena that I discussed in earlier posts.
I believe that this last problem was the most serious, which is why I have been focussing on that.
Reality is also that i no longer have to take hour-long breaks from typing because my _wrists_dont_hurt_anymore.
Were you using proper wrist rests on conventional keyboards? I noticed no difference in terms of wrist strain between the capacitance keyboard I was using and a conventional keyboard.
No they *must* not. If you've ever played the piano, you'd know that it is possible to play fast and pianissimo. It may be hard for *you*, but it's rather easy for me and probably others.
Say it with me once again: B-A-S-I-C P-H-Y-S-I-C-S!
If object a is moving at a higher rate of speed than object b when it strikes object c, object a will transfer more energy to object c.
In other words, it will hit harder. This isn't rocket science.
I don't doubt that you can train yourself to play extremely lightly on a piano. However, the situation isn't exactly analogous because you play music at a FIXED METER. You're not trying to bang the keys as quickly as you possibly can, which is exactly what you're trying to do with a keyboard. And when you're trying to move your fingers as fast as you possibly can, you're going to bang.
With training it's possible that you can play fast and pianissimo, but you'll NEVER be able to play as fast as you can banging away because "playing fast" and "playing softly" and fundamentally at odds with one another as I described. For this reason you'll NEVER be able to type as fast with a capacitance keyboard as you can with a conventional keyboard.
If you choose to disbelieve in physics I can't help you.
It is my understanding that the "High" quality setting on my ReplayTV 3000-series unit is exactly identical to DVD video (MPEG2 at same settings), though using this setting will cut your capacity down to 1/3 of listed (so if you normally get 60 hours now you only get 20). I'm assuming that it's the same on later units.
I've noticed that the compression (from compressing analog signals, including high quality Laserdisc) at "Medium" is about the same as what I see on AT&T Broadband Digital Cable and DISH Network, perhaps slightly better than DISH.
The "Low" setting is basically equivalent to VCD (though MPEG2 instead of MPEG1).
As for how it compares to high-quality analong sources (like Laserdisc, or a really clean analog cable feed), I'd say that it's roughly equivalent on the "High" setting. But you also have compression artifacts on PVRs that you don't have with Laserdisc, so it's a tough call.
The simple reality is thae because the signal is being compressed, the quality will ALWAYS be worse than a "clean" signal, so your recorded programs will never look as good as they do straight.
It's my understanding that the DirecTIVO units (and the DISHPlayer and UltimateTV) simply do not have a MPEG encoder, they directly record the already-encoded sattelite signal to HD. They don't have multiple choices for quality because there is no encoding. Presumably then, their video quality is exactly identical to a regual DirectTV/DISH reciever.
It's also worth noting that only ReplayTV 4000-series and 5000-series units support HDTV in any form.
Again, not to be confrontational, but your concept of what is necessary for typing "zero force" is off. There isn't massive acceleration when your finger hits the pad. This is not the same typing as with a mechanical keyboard, but with no springs. You bearly have to tap the keys on these keyboards.
It's basic physics. Think about it. In order to type quickly, your fingers MUST move faster. This means that if you're typing fast your finger WILL hit the key harder due to the increased speed. This means that the faster you type on a keyboard, the harder your fingers impact the keyboard and the more "damage" you do.
Regular keys effectively act like sponges or airbags absorbing and softening the impact of each stroke. This is not the case of a capacitance keyboard like the Touchstream where each keypress is the equivalent to impacting a wall.
Now you might claim that a light touch can compensate for this, but it seems impossible to me. In order to type fast your fingers MUST impact the keys harder, so it seems to be that on a capacitance keyboard the goals of comfort and fast typing are fundamentally opposed. This has certainly been my experience in the capacitance keyboards I've used.
There is also the issue of "work". In a properly designed keyboard (like the old "clickity" IBM keyboard I'm using right now) has enough force in the springs to physically move the finger up. On mine the springs are powerful enough the the "return" actually lifts the finger up about 1 mm from the key. What this means is that there is little, if any, "work" involved on the "return stroke". In a capacitance keyboard this is not the case, a user must lift his finger himself.
Now you could argue that I'm exaggerating the effect of these "impacts", and they might be less of a problem that I think when compared to the damage caused by the extra "work" of having to press a regular key. Of course, a capacitance user also has the extra work of lifting his fingers. I'm not sure which is worse, but my instinct is that the "impacts" are a bigger problem than the extra work in pressing the keys.
I've seen... reports on the California situation which claim that wind is one of the most expensive ways to generate power.
First off, the statement above is simply wrong. 10-15 years ago it was true, but it is not true now. Wind is *NOT* one of the most expensive ways to generate power. Solar beats it by a mile.
However, I seriously question the $0.03 claim. Based on what I've been able to find out this only applies to the most efficient turbines, none of which are presently in service in the USA (possibly in Denmark, I'm not sure). And even that is a SUBSISIZED price, so the real cost is closer to 0.05-0.06.
CURRENT generation costs are closer to 0.07-0.09, adjusting for the subsidies. About 2 to 3 times the cost of natural gas.
Unfortuantely virtually all the cites I found were from such "unbiased" sources as the National Wind Technology Center, and the American Wind Energy Association. Virtually all of them cited the $0.03 number, which originated entirely from an AWEA study.
I did manage to find one study, by the Cato institute: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa422.pdf
One thing that irritates be is the greatly exaggerated costs of generating nuclear power I've seen in these reports. Nuclear power costs about $0.03 per kWh, about the same as natural gas (slightly more expensive), and a lot of that is due to onerous safety regulations (vastly more of this is required over the less-safe coal and natural gas industries). If we moved to a system similar to that of the Japanese or French (fuel recycling), we might be able to cut that in half. If we moved to breeder reactors we might be able to cut it down to $0.01 or so. However, recator development has been stalled since the 1970's.
Most of the cites I found were from such "unbiased" sources as the Nuclear Energy Institute. It took me a while to dig this up:
http://www.seabrookstation.com/sbs%5CSeabrookSta ti on.nsf/TopicDetails/IndustryNuclear+PowerA+Low-Cos t+Leader
It claims that nuclear power is cheaper than any other source, even under the flawed US system.
You also haven't adaquately addressed the reliablity problems of wind, nor have you mentioned that many hundreds of facilites would have to be built to replace existing power plants. Wheras 10 (possibly fewer) nuclear power plants could produce all of the electricity for California. And since we've already got 2, we'd only need another 8. You'd have a tough time convincing me that building hundreds of windmill fields is cheaper than 10 nuclear power plants.
On the contrary, wind power is currently about $0.035/kwh in the U.S. with modern turbines. They aren't much more than swivel-mouned generators with propellor blades on a pole. They are cheap and easy to maintain, and just as subject to economies of scale as any other easily mass-produced product.
Here's the exact quote from the site you referenced:
"Today, according to the Danish electrical power companies, the energy cost to society (the social cost) per kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind is the same as for new coal-fired power stations fitted with smoke scrubbing equipment, i.e. around 0.04 USD per kWh for an average European site."
What's "social cost"? I strongly suspect that this is some voodoo economics calculation that claims that nuclear power (for example) is vastly more expensive due to the "cost" of mysterious cancers, while neglecting the "cost" of all the birds killed by windmills. It also doesn't jive with any other study I've seen, including reports on the California situation which claim that wind is one of the most expensive ways to generate power.
And again, the "average" European site right now is an IDEAL site. Windmills are now almost exclusively placed in ideal locations, and we build more and more windmills we'll start using less than ideal sites and the efficency will drop dramatically.
You're also trivializing the issue of storage and distribution issues. Wind is a inconsistent source of power so you're going to have to store it in lead-acid (or similar chemicals) batteries until fuel cell technology becomes cheaply available. And all those lead batteries represent a serious environmental problem.
And while not very compelling to environmentalists, there is a convienience issue. Wind power is subject to the vagarities of the weather, making it an inherently inconsistent source of power. Output will vary wildly from season to season, area to area. Oil and nuclear don't have this problem. You can build the plants anywhere and generate a consistent, realiable power source. If you're generating X kWh per day today, you can be very confident that you'll be generating X kWh per day next year.
Nonsense. Birds naturally avoid big spinning white things, even in the dark. Read the book Reaping the Wind for details.
I have personally witnessed hawks being sucked into windmills (on the Altamont Pass) and seen the bodies of birds around the windmills. The windmills on the Altamont Pass are definitely killing birds. How many I don't know.
The Altamont Pass wind field is decades old. You should drive through the Riverside County wind fields sometime. The first thing that you will notice is that they are almost all in service, and they don't make any noise.
I drive through the Altamont Pass often, and at any given time I would say about 10% are dismantled and 20-30% are non operational (not turning). I've only seen more that about 60% in operation once, during a period of particularly high winds.
I don't know how much noise they make, since they're so far from the road (the only ones I've ever seen up close weren't in operation), but I agree with you that noise isn't a major problem.
In case anyone is interested, here's what looks to be the chassis breakdown for this unit.
On the front:
In the top left corner there are 2 buttons for Power and Ejecting the DVD drive.
In the top right is a button that says "GAME RESET" and two LEDs (yellow and red) that I suspect are "Recording" and "New Content" indicators (this follows conventions on other PVRs).
Not sure exactly, but the bottom third of the front (the part with all the logos printed on it) appears to flip down. This is probably where the USB 2.0 ports and MemoryStick slot(s) are concealed. There may also be slots for standard memory cards.
On the back:
Power in iLink/optical SPDIF out VGA out
Composite video in Audio in (Left/Right RCA jacks) S-Video in Composite video out Audio out (Left/Right RCA jacks) S-Video out
R/F in R/F out
2 standard Playstation controller ports (that's what they appear to be, but it seems odd that Sony is putting the ports on the back)
On the back top there appears to be a strip of clear plastic that contains a blue "power" LED and copies of the yellow/red LEDs. These are display indicators for when the PSX is placed vertically.
Interestingly, if you look at the unit it's designed to stand on it's BACK end, where all the ports are connected.
I guesstimate the dimensions (Height, Width, Depth) are approximately 12.5in x 3.5in x 15in.
So far, that's about all I can glean from the photos. Keep in mind that Sony has had experience with PVRs before, building Tivo units.
I think it's an open question whether or not this is the "PS2.5" or a niche product like the Panasonic/Nintendo Qube. It doesn't look cheap, and NeoGeo can tell you how eager people are to buy a $500 gaming console.
Now of course it's not JUST a gaming console, that's why it's so expensive. But experience has show that "media convergence" devices are difficult to market (notice the problems associated with Tivo/ReplayTV), and I think it's unlikely that Sony has overcome this problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, no. It would be the end of P2P networks (assuming it had a chance of actually working) because the RIAA has no easy way to distinguish between copyrighted and and non-copyrighted music.
Let's say you had a file available for sharing on your system called "Britney.mp3". Is it a recording of the famous recording artist Britney Spears? Maybe. Or maybe it's a recording of YOU, if your name happends to be Britney. The only way to know for sure is to download and listen to it, which is a pain in the ass for the millions of songs available for file sharing.
So the RIAA simply assumes that ALL traffic on the P2P networks is piracy. IOW, if you're doing a lot of sharing, regardless of WHAT you're sharing, they'll probably go after you.
Pacific Bell Cellular, now known as Cingular, does indeed use SIM cards in their phones. Around here (San Francisco Bay Area), they apparently have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM networks. Most people I know who use Cingular have GSM phones with SIM cards.
While you can't switch providers (you need a new SIM card), switching phones is a snap. Just swap the SIM cards and you're done. Supposedly this is how the new prepaid works as well (you'll be able to buy "charged" SIM cards off the shelf and swap them into your phone).
I disagree. Clearly, /. is "News for Nerds." And I'd argue that many of the articles posted on /. DO matter to the "nerd community". The /. editors have never pretended that they didn't have biases, particularly anti-Microsoft and neo-libertarian biases.
/. light years ahead of FOXNews which refuses to admit it's deep conservative bias. Their top commentator, Bill O'Reily has the nerve to call his show the "No Spin Zone".
In my mind, this puts
Don't get me wrong, I actually watch FOXNews. But it disturbs me that many people don't recognize or admit the slanted nature of the news they provide (and MSNBC as well), and that FOXNews encourages this.
Actually, through corporate chicanery Microsoft hasn't paid ANY income tax for years, and has wrangled discounts on all other taxes. So it's really only wantever money that filters down to the employees that will get taxed. For example, I suspect some sales guy is getting a bonus on this one.
These people were stupid.
In the Real World, you have to be alert for scams and know what your REAL protections are (and it ain't the government). People have been running confidence games for 1000's of years, and the punishments (on the rare occasion the con artists are actually caught and prosecuted) are comparatively light, so we should have figured out this a long time ago.
In regards to eBay:
1. Assume that all sellers on eBay will try to cheat you if they can. In fact, this is good general rule when buying anything. If there is the slightest hint of any irregularity whatsoever don't hand over any money.
2. If at all possible, never purchase anything for more than $500 on eBay.
3. If it's less that $500, pay with a credit card. Paypal accepts credit cards on seller accounts. If they don't accept credit cards, they are a scam artist. There is an exemption for liablity for fraud on credit cards (in the USA) for anything more that $50. So the worst case scenario if you're scammed is you're out $50. Don't be afraid of chargebacks if you aren't 100% happy with your purchase. If you're in not in the USA insist on escrow (see below).
4. If it's more than $500, INSIST on a reputable auction escrow service that YOU select, like Escrow.com. If the seller does not agree to escrow, he's a scam artist.
5. NEVER use ANY payment service suggested by the seller. Only use those services that you are familiar with and comfortable with. If that amounts to a mailed-in money order or credit card, that's fine. If the seller isn't happy with that he's a scam artist.
6. Never do business with any seller whose only address is a P.O. Box. Insist on a full name, street address, and phone number before handing over any money. If he doesn't have a business address ask for his home address. If it's a big-ticket purchase (more than $500) call the phone # to verify the identity of the seller. If he is unwilling to hand over these details, he's a scam artist.
7. If you think that you've been shilled into paying too much for an item, or you are unhappy with the item and final bid for any reason, simply don't pay. Ignore the emails you recieve. You simply CAN'T get kicked off eBay for this.
8. Threatening to sue, and legal remedies in general, are a total waste of time. You'll almost certainly win (because the defendant probably won't show up), but you'll never be able to collect. It's near-impossible to collect a small-claims judgement from an individual who doesn't want to pay, so don't bother trying. Complaining to the FTC, state attourney general, etc. could theoretically result in criminal prosecution (this is extremely unlikely) which would prevent further scams, but won't get you your money back.
I could probably come up with a few more rules, but these should give you the general idea.
Personally, I HAVE been scammed on eBay, twice, and I don't use it very often. But because I followed the rules, I didn't lose any money. Both times I bought an approximately $50 item and I paid through credit card. In the first case, I never recieved the item, I did a chargeback and I claimed the seller was a scam artist. He lost his merchant account. The second case the item was defective, I did a chargeback, and the seller lost his PayPal account. In both cases the seller simply didn't respond to the complaints (they knew they were scammers and weren't going to argue the point). In neither case was I out one red cent.
So, what is a major corportation all about, if it's not about making a profit? Well, for starters all of the people involved make money. This creates a rather strong incentive for them to leave it the way it is. But, don't the investors get upset about the lack of dividends? Why would they? The value of a stock can go up with the pace of inflation and market expansion (e.g. U.S. Airlines serving more and more foreign airports), and that stock value increase doesn't have to represent profit. It profits the investors, surely, but that's an entirely different part of the equation!
.coms that were allowed to collapse or succeed on their own merits? Or media companies? Or consumer electronics companies? Despite it's prominance, Zenith was allowed to go down in flames.
You're picking a few isolated and misleading examples and trying to portray them as being representative. Utilities and airlines are TERRIBLE examples of the typical corporation. Because their business interests are considered "vital" they are allowed to get away with things that would never fly with regular corporations. Take the numerous airline bailouts. The officers of many airlines DELIBERATELY create situations that require bailouts because it's cost-effective to do so. Why pay your OWN expenses when the gov't is willing to do so?
What about the countless
And frankly, what part of "make a profit for the investors" didn't you understand in my earlier posts? If the investors stock increases in value, the investors made a profit. It doesn't matter if the company itself made a profit, as you point out, often dividends aren't the best strategy.
What I initally disagreed with was YOUR disagreement with this statement:
The goal of a corporation is to make profit for its shareholders.
You said that this didn't apply to the vast majority of corporations, and while you might be technically correct, that claim is deeply misleading as I've attempted to explain.
I still stand by my statements, but in your previous post you re-characterized my statements as having something to do with "evil". I'd like to know where you got that one from.
The implication in your post was that fast food, in general, was "bad" and by implication, the corporations who sell fast food are "bad". You also implied that consumers had little real choice in the matter and that corporations were effectively "forcing" fast food on people. You validate this implication with this claim:
What you state about the nature of fast food doesn't quite track either. People don't just "prefer" the cost of fast food, the economy has adapted to it. That means that people who make fairly little money can neither afford "good" food when they eat out, nor can they afford to have someone who is home long enough to prepare good, cost-effective meals. Coming home at night after working 14 hours to face the prospect of having to cook your own (and perhaps your childrens') dinner is daunting enough to make anyone want to eat at a burger joint.
What bullshit. Ever worked a farm? Do you understand that mankind existed before 1950? Somehow people managed to cook their own food 50 years ago even after working 14 hours doing backbreaking farm labor. People today are just lazy. They'd rather spend their time watching TV or goofing off rather that preparing their meals. You even used the magic word "want". After working all day, people don't WANT to do the extra work cooking their own meals. That's fine, but don't act like it's impossible. Both parents work nowadays NOT because it's absolutely necessary, I suspect few families would starve for lack of the extra income, but because they VALUE the extra income more that providing domestic needs (cooking, etc.).
People have this bizzare idea that there was some magical "golden age" in the past where everything was rosy and happy and everyone lived in a nuclear family in a beautiful house with a white picket fence and if we can just get back to that e
Ok, so what part of the word "profit" was confusing? Making money is not profit, and while it's certianly a goal of most not-for-profits to make money, profit is not a goal!
Let me rephrase, the goal of most corporations of significant size is to make a profit for their shareholders. This was the initial impetus behind the formation of LLCs and remains the primary goal of most LLCs today.
No, they're a part of it. It's always important to realize that "we" and "they" are all a part of the society, and the guy who decides that Burger King will make more sales if they coat their fries in sugar before dipping them in hot grease has to make the same decisions in his life about the quality of the food he wants and the quality he wants for his family as you or I do. No man is an island.
In your previous post you argued that the "feedback" system was broken in regards to large corporations and you used fast food as an example. I strongly disagree with this notion. Fast food is popular primarly because THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE REALLY WANT. Cheap, convienient, and fairly tasty food. There are plenty of alternatives, as previously noted. That guy you describe may or may not eat at Burger King, but he is merely doign his job so that his business stays competitive. If people want X, and it's profitable to provide X, someone is going to sell it to them. That's why the Drug War is a futile effort.
You are telling me that catastrophy insurance costs nothing because there have thus far been no outlays, yet you are unwilling to accept the free-market commercial cost of such insurance as a subsidy. The essential contradiction of your position is clear.
The entire concept of mandatory insurance is foreign to free markets. It's effectively a sort of tax. If you allow arbitrary taxes to factor into production costs you can declare the production costs of anything to be infinite. Yes, I am conciously disregarding the regulatory environment because that has nothing to do with the cost efficency of generating power, nuclear or otherwise.
You're the one that's contradicting yourself. You happily accept the massive subsidies of wind power yet decry any hint of a subsidy for nuclear power.
You also have no apparent respect or concern for the externalities, such as waste disposal, weapons proliferation, or the human cost of the potential catastrophies which are so great that the market alone is unwilling to bear them.
From an economic standpoint "externalities" are a non-issue because their is no accepted way to calculate them. However, I'm not showing a lack of concern, it simply hasn't come up. My argument was purely economical.
But if you want to talk about externialities...
Waste disposal: Non-issue. The French and Japanese don't have a serious problem due to fuel recycling, and the problem could be virtually eliminated with breeder reactors, etc.
Weapons proliferation: This cat has left a bag a long time ago. Besides, we're talking about the United States here. The US ALREADY has more nuclear weapons than anyone in the world, so I hardly think more reactors would lead to more nuclear weapons HERE. 50 years of experience has already show than security is more than adaquate.
Human cost of catastrophe: Yes, this is a theoretical problem, but it has to be weighed against the alternatives. As I said, I don't believe that wind is a realistic replacement do the only alternative is coal/oil/natural gas which all have a far worse safety record than nuclear.
You're also not discussing the externalities of wind, like the energy needed to construct and transport the wind generators, and the personell to maintain them, etc.
I'll frankly agree with you in that the externalities of nuclear power are probably greater than wind. But so what? That has t be weighed agaisnt the economic benefits, which I belive are far greater for nuclear.
As well they should, since extracting wind energy from the atmosphere is a direct form of greenhouse gas mitigation.
Am I misunderstanding you or are you saying that windmills LITERALLY extract greenhouse gases from the air? Or are you saying there is a NET reduction in greenhouse gasses because wind power offsets the greenhouse gases generated by oil burning plants?
If it's the latter, I don't understand your point because EXACTLY the same thing applies to nuclear power. Yes, fossil fuel is used in mining, but it's also used for construction of windmills, transportation of maintaince personell, etc.
I'm sorry. I already addressed this by explaining hydrogen storage using proton exchange membrane-based electrolysis and fuel cells several times on this story, but apparently not in this comment thread.
Someone probably clued you in on the other threads, so hopeully you are aware at how incredibly expensive this technology currently is, and especially how ineffecient it is to use water instead of natural gas or other mediums. IOW, this technology has yet to be practical.
However I agree that this technology will be significant in the future, as a replacement for fossil fuels. I just see nuclear power being used to crack the water to generate the hydrogen. I suspect the centralized production would be vastly more efficent.
How do I know you aren't shilling for the nuclear business?
What makes you think I'm not? I certainly believe that I (and you, assuming you're an American) will reap a long-term economic and health benefit from widespread adoption of advanced nuclear power systems in the United States. So I'm completely self-intrested in what I'm saying.
The LCD is nothing different than any other LCD.. the piece of glass that has the capacitive film sandwitched with a piece of mylar that has the same (some are resistive) is the "touchscreen" and contrary to what they want you to believe is relatively cheap as well as the hardware to turn that into a standard mouseing input for a trackpoint pad kind of driver.
You may be right in terms of production costs. I don't know.
What I do know is that for most hardware manufacturers there is a MAJOR price premium attached to touchscreens of any sort. For example, in a POS project I was involved in 3 years ago, our POS units were originally spec'ed with 15" LCD touchscreens, which at the time cost a little less than $2000 a pop. This was nasty enough to force a redesign to a CRT touchscreen (which coust about half as much). According to colleagues at Palm, their color touchscreens weren't exactly cheap either (cut un here any time Bob). Maybe things have changed drastically in the last few years.
Assuming you're right, how then do you explain the price premium attached to Tablet PCs? AFAIK, Microsoft doesn't charge a premium on the tablet version of WinXP, and the "compact" (no keyboard, fewer ports and slots, relatively small screens) nature of the TabletPCs should make them CHEAPER than laptops. The ONLY unusual piece of hardware I can think of on these TabletPCs is the screen.
Does this mean Microsoft will just abandon all of their users still running older versions of Windows?
I think that's exactly what it means. I'd be pretty pissed off if I had bought Windows Me, a product that is less that 3 years old. Of course, it was clear from the very beginning that Me (aka Win98 Third Edition) was nothing but a stopgap hack.
Have you tried a Tablet PC?
Yup.
I've tried my friend's and ones in stores and the handwriting recognition works remarkably well even without training it.
It works reasonably well. With training you can have virtually "typo" free recognition. However, it's still nowhere near as fast as typing and it never will be. I'm a lignting-fast typist and handwriting recognition has little appeal for me.
Besides, one of the best features is that it can store raw handwriting and doodles/diagrams.
Admittedly this is a useful feature, but is it really worth an extra $1000? Especially when you can get a Wacom tablet or similar that works BETTER for $100?
As other posters have said, the real advantage of TabletPCs is that you can theoretically use them "on the move", like clipboards. The problem here is the weight. The Compaq tablet is far and away the best product here, but even then the detached "tablet" portion weighs slightly over 3 lbs., which is still too much. And it's too pricy, $1699 minimum for a dog-slow Transmeta system.
I think TabletPCs are likely to remain a niche product, only for thise that see a serious need to enter large amounts of data while standing on their feet. For example, in the medical industry, or with considerable ruggedization, in certain industrial and military applications.
As many people have said, one one the big reasons TabletPCs aren't doing well is price. What they aren't saying is that most of that extra price comes from the expensive LCD touchscreen, which is necessary for pointing with a stylus and handwriting recognition.
And it's that latter feature that's killing adoption. People just don't want handwriting recognition, especially the kind of power users likey to be eraly adopters of new technology. Why? Simply because handwriting recognition at this stage is still pretty buggy, and even if it wasn't, HANDWRITING ISN'T AS FAST AS TYPING. As I suspect most power users are fairly good typists, handwriting recognition is of little value to them.
And as a "new generation" of users that have grown up with computers matures, there will be even less incentive for handwring recognition. Anyone notice the trend in PDAs has been towards keyboards and away from recognition? This isn't a coincidence, it's the maturing market base.
No, all other kinds of power plants must operate with commercial insurance. Nuclear is the only type which has a blanket exemption from those requirements of market-rate insurance.
m en ts/Nuclear%20Energy%20Agency/paa-rep.pdf
Well, I should have been more clear. The Price-Anderson Act is necessary due to HYSTERIA about nuclear power. It's not that nuclear power is unsafe, it's just that if a conventional insurer was in place they would be swarmed with dozens of nuisance lawsuits claiming imagined damage from nuclear power facilities. Mostly funded by environmental groups with the express intent of shutting the industry down. Insurance companies think that the public paranoia about nuclear power is so high that every jury would find for the plaintiffs, despite the merits of the case. THAT'S why they're so hesitant to insure.
The regulations I referred to are the ones that effectively (or in the case of California, entirely) prevent the construction of new or modified facilities which would improve efficiency and safety. Operators are being forced to make improvements to safety (despite the fact that nuclear power is already incredibly safe) without making significant design changes. They basically aren't allowed to do anything that might increase efficiency. Despite this, nuclear power is probably the #2 or #3 most efficient way to generate power, only beaten by coal and natural gas, which pose vastly greater environmental hazards.
This "subsidy" doesn't even cost the taxpayers any money, according to the DOE:
"Because the DOE indemnification operates as a form of self-insurance for claims resulting from nuclear incidents, DOE incurs no out-of-pocket costs for insurance. Moreover, thus far, it has not paid out significant amounts for claims pursuant to its indemnification authority."
http://www.gc.doe.gov/price-anderson/public-com
I'd note that this is an incredibly weak argument. I assume you've conceded my point that, discounting regulatory and insurance issues, nuclear power *IS* cheaper to produce than wind, and possibly every other form of power (you've never bothered to directly address this).
Nuclear is the most heavily subsidized form of power generation.
Alternative forms of power (like wind) have DIRECT subsidies, in the form of lucrative tax credits (they about to almost a 40% cost savings in California) and cost the taxpayers more money.
I'd also note that you didn't bother to address my the other issues, like the intermittent and unreliable nature of wind power that makes it unacceptable as a PRIMARY means of generating power.
Frankly, I think you're just shilling for the wind power companies.
The goal of a corporation is to make profit for its shareholders.
No, it most certainly is not!
That might well be the goal of some corporations, but it's probably not even the goal of most, much less all.
The idea behind the corporation, or more properly Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), was initially to make money. The fact that it has evolved as a convienient buisness arraigement in general and a profitable tax dodge is incidental. (BTW, It's these private tax dodges that make up the majority of corporations.)
LLCs evolved from earlier joint-stock companies, like the Dutch East India Company. Shipping ventures were risky back then because many ships ran into foul weather, pirates, etc. which led to a loss of cargo, or even the ship itself. Because the costs and risks were so great (though the rewards were great as well) it often difficult for an individual to raise the necessary capital, joint-stock companies were formed with idea of sharing this risk among many.
This worked okay for a little while, but a problem arose because of lawsuits. If someone lost their cargo, typically they would sue the shipping company to recover their losses. But what if the company didn't have enough money to cover their losses? Then they would sue the OWNERS of the company. Obviously, the owners didn't like this because it defeated the whole purpose behind the company to begin with, limiting risk. So the idea of the LLC evolved. An LLC is a uniquie and seperate legal entity from it's owners. This means that if you sue the LLC you'd can't also go after the owners. IOW, the owners risk is limited only to what they choose to invest in the company. If you don't like the rules, you don't have to do business with an LLC.
Obviously the LLC has enormous advantages as an investment and this innovation spurred investment in all kinds of ventures like never before.
First off, the feedback system that is in place with smaller capitalist systems has eroded in ours, so the fact that fast food is actually quite tasteless and bad for you does not overcome the hurdle that a large corporation crosses a threshhold of size where they can begin to rely on centralized distribution and other advantages of scale to out-price higher quality options.
This is nonsense. As your correctly pointed out, this is about economies of scale. Economies of scale that have made fast food very inexpensive and convienient.
Ultimately, this isn't about "evil corporations" but about what people VALUE.
Americans strongly value frugality and convenience. Much more so than top quality or health concerns (at least in regards to food), hence, Americans love fast food. For most Americans, eating well is considered a "luxury". However, it's not like there aren't plenty of OTHER corporations that cater to the quality and health-concious minority. Whole Earth Foods, a popular chain of health food supermarkets around here, seems to be doing quite well. There are even health oriented "fast food" places like Fresh Choice.
Of course, this is some feedback involved. Fast food companies advertise their products, which undoubtably leads some people to desire fast food more than they normally would. But it's a conspiracy theory to say that corporations are somehow controlling the "soul" of America through advertising. In fact, it's something of a minor scandal that advertising is actually really ineffective in general. For decades, advertising companies have basically been scamming their clients.
My point is that corporations and the goods they produce are much more a reflection of our social values than they are the generators of it.
My bad. I was confused by this bit on the ReplayTV web site:
a yt v_5000_features.asp
Progressive Output If you have a High Definition ready TV (HDTV), the ReplayTV 5000 is for you. With the 480P Progressive output, you'll get richer, cleaner images. Improved color purity, color detail as well as a reduction in color noise and NTSC artifacts are the benefits of progressive scanning.
http://www.replaytv.com/video/replaytv5000/repl
Still, it *IS* a display improvement for those with HDTV-ready video, which is what the original poster wanted to know.
The $0.04/kwh is the unsubsidized cost for new installations of modern wind turbines, and includes the amortized cost of maintenance. However, I have no qualms quoting the average subsidized cost in the (about $0.035 in the U.S. and less than $0.03 in California), because if a jurisdiction decides to implement a subsidy, they have every right and justification to do so.
If you're making an argument for the economic superiority of wind it seems deeply disengenuous to me to incorporate government subsidies into your calculations. And we're not talking about waving a magic wand and replacing all existing windmills with the latest and greatest, but what the situation is RIGHT NOW. I could (and did) make exactly the same argument to "prove" that nuclear power costs less than 0.01 per kWh.
According to the CPUC information that comes with my electric bill every few months, nuclear in California costs about $0.14/kwh, not including the decommissioning surcharge. The CATO Institute can not be trusted on energy policy, as they're in bed with the industry lobby and firmly believe that "research" should be a for-profit endeavor, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Look at what they were saying about tobacco in the 1980s.
And environmentalist "nuclear power will cause your kids to grow 3 arms" sources are any better? Besides, the CATO Institure was merely citing other government sources. I ignored their analysis.
I didn't cite the CPUC because their web site (and other sources) gave a wide variety of numbers for the 2 Californian plants, everything from 0.03 to 0.14. Most sources gave a number around 0.03-0.04 nationally and so that's the number I'm sticking with.
Do you realize that the nuclear industry has a blanket insurance policy from the U.S. congress? Without the Price-Anderson Act subsidy, the insurance on nuclear would make it way more expensive than even solar. I've heard figures in the $0.45/kwh range. So be careful if you want to stop talking about subsidies.
Of course, this is due to onerous regulations that require nuclear power plants to operate with billions in insurance. Despite the fact that no other power generation technology requires this and that nuclear power is one of the safest ways to generate power. Let them operate without all that insurance and overblown safety crap.
What reliability problems? There aren't any. That's why wind is the fastest-growing source, and has been for the past six years, not counting a jump in natural gas at the tail end of the economic boom. Do you think all the other types of plants are going to go away? There is plenty of backup power on-demand for periods of widespread calm winds already attached to the grid.
Wind power is a generation technique based entirely on weather, and therfore it's subject to the vagarities of the weather. Based on my eyeball assessment fo the fields in Altamont Pass and elsewhere I would guess that as much as 60% of the capacity is inactive at any given time. I suspect that it would be even worse at less ideal locations. This means that at any given time as much as 60% of the wind capacity is unavailable. If you're talking about rolling blackouts, you don't think a 60% loss on the grid is going to cause blackouts? Sure you could build in redundancy, but there *IS* a point of diminishing returns. There is also the simple fact that wind just won't work (AT ALL) in some locations.
I'm not disagreeing that wind has merit as a secondary source of power, but wind really isn't a replacement for more reliable sources like coal, natural gas, or nuclear. This is the conclusion reached by virtually every analyst I've read (except the people in the wind power trade associations).
If you had 10 nuke plants for California, then if one goes down it's rolling blackout time. The inherent redundancy of wind turbines avoids that problem.
So you build 12 plants. There is little incentive NOT to do this because you can always resell the extra capaci
Well, the only way I can respond is to say that this is a case of instincts vs actual experience. Theory vs observation. "Think about it" vs "I have one sitting in front of me." I don't mean to ridicule or anything, but that is all I can say.
You may indeed be right. I have never used this particular keyboard and I'm basing my opinions on my experience with a similar product.
I can and I will, briefly. I wish I had some hard measurements rather than just emphatic assertion, but I can type just as fast on this without going nuts on the finger slamming enough to make the stress comparable to any other keyboard, even the laptop. The force is much less than someone audibly "thumping" their fingers on a desk, and I have never done this for long periods of time, but I imagine it wouldn't do any measurable damage, except for the eventual violent beating by anyone near me.
If you read my other post, you can see that in my experience using a "zero-force" keyboard WAS doing damage (particularly to my fingernails, but also to my fingertips). Which brings me to a related thought: How well do you think the LP would work if the user had long fingernails (long enough so that only the nail struck the surface)?
And I have to disagree on the statement that this "capacitance" keyboard (I have no good idea how the LP works) offers no cushion or impact absorbsion. It is padded slightly on the surface, on the bottom (soft rubber anti-slide surfaces), and on the metal tent frame (slight "give"). Sure it isn't nearly the energy-return of a spring-loaded key, but it is certainly softer than tapping on a thick metal plate or something equally rigid.
This is an excellent point. The keyboard I was using had a hard plastic surface (it was basically all plastic, though there was apparently some sort of heavier mounting plate inside it for the keypress sensors) which felt virtually identical to typing on a hard table. If the surface of the LP is designed properly (say a very thin layer of plastic over a layer of foam) I think it would help alleviate this problem. This would impact the durability of the keyboard though.
The bottom line is that I agree that your ideas about the physics are correct, but they don't come into consideration for "normal" use. Now if you type like Jim Carrey (I've only seen the previews), perhaps a good spring keyboard is best, if just for the keyboard's sake.
As I said in an earlier post, this was an issue for me. However based on your post I suspect it's less of an issue on the LP and fro people without long fingernails.
I believe in reality, and reality is that i _own_ such a keyboard.
Bully for you. I'm not speaking from ignorance though. As I said, I've used capacitance keyboards before. I the keyboard I used was virtually identical in size and shape to a regular keyboard except that it angled slightly. It was intended for insudtrial applications. I used it in conjunctions with a wrist wrest, mouse, and mouse rest. I noticed that:
1) It was difficult to type quickly due to a lack of tactile feedback from the keyboard. On a regular keyboard you know when you have pressed a key by touch, but on a capacitance keyboard you don't thave this feedback. I noticed that I could type at a relatively low speed easily, but when I increased my typing speed typos became much to frequent to be feasible. I didn't mention this before because I believe this problem can probably be overcome by training (I only used the capacitance keyboard for about 2 weeks), plus it's probably an issue unique to high-speed touch typists like myself. I didn't mention this before because it's not an "ergonomic" issue.
2) "Hovering", which other people mentioned. On the keyboard I was using meant that prolonged contact with a particular key meant repitition like this: ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd This means that when you're not actually typing you have you "hover" your hands over the keyboard, which is hard on the wrists. I think someone mentioned this wasn't a problem on your keyboard though I don't know why.
3) Using the capacitance keyboard was hard on my fingers. I actually have fingernails and I noticed they were getting bent and damaged as well as slight bruises on each fingertip after using the capacitance keyboard. After a little while it became slightly painful to use at high speed. It took me a while to realize this because I would naturally slow down my speed because of the pain. After playing around I eventually included tht it just wasn't feasible to type quickly on this kind of keyboard. This is the phenomena that I discussed in earlier posts.
I believe that this last problem was the most serious, which is why I have been focussing on that.
Reality is also that i no longer have to take hour-long breaks from typing because my _wrists_dont_hurt_anymore.
Were you using proper wrist rests on conventional keyboards? I noticed no difference in terms of wrist strain between the capacitance keyboard I was using and a conventional keyboard.
No they *must* not. If you've ever played the piano, you'd know that it is possible to play fast and pianissimo. It may be hard for *you*, but it's rather easy for me and probably others.
Say it with me once again: B-A-S-I-C P-H-Y-S-I-C-S!
If object a is moving at a higher rate of speed than object b when it strikes object c, object a will transfer more energy to object c.
In other words, it will hit harder. This isn't rocket science.
I don't doubt that you can train yourself to play extremely lightly on a piano. However, the situation isn't exactly analogous because you play music at a FIXED METER. You're not trying to bang the keys as quickly as you possibly can, which is exactly what you're trying to do with a keyboard. And when you're trying to move your fingers as fast as you possibly can, you're going to bang.
With training it's possible that you can play fast and pianissimo, but you'll NEVER be able to play as fast as you can banging away because "playing fast" and "playing softly" and fundamentally at odds with one another as I described. For this reason you'll NEVER be able to type as fast with a capacitance keyboard as you can with a conventional keyboard.
If you choose to disbelieve in physics I can't help you.
It is my understanding that the "High" quality setting on my ReplayTV 3000-series unit is exactly identical to DVD video (MPEG2 at same settings), though using this setting will cut your capacity down to 1/3 of listed (so if you normally get 60 hours now you only get 20). I'm assuming that it's the same on later units.
I've noticed that the compression (from compressing analog signals, including high quality Laserdisc) at "Medium" is about the same as what I see on AT&T Broadband Digital Cable and DISH Network, perhaps slightly better than DISH.
The "Low" setting is basically equivalent to VCD (though MPEG2 instead of MPEG1).
As for how it compares to high-quality analong sources (like Laserdisc, or a really clean analog cable feed), I'd say that it's roughly equivalent on the "High" setting. But you also have compression artifacts on PVRs that you don't have with Laserdisc, so it's a tough call.
The simple reality is thae because the signal is being compressed, the quality will ALWAYS be worse than a "clean" signal, so your recorded programs will never look as good as they do straight.
It's my understanding that the DirecTIVO units (and the DISHPlayer and UltimateTV) simply do not have a MPEG encoder, they directly record the already-encoded sattelite signal to HD. They don't have multiple choices for quality because there is no encoding. Presumably then, their video quality is exactly identical to a regual DirectTV/DISH reciever.
It's also worth noting that only ReplayTV 4000-series and 5000-series units support HDTV in any form.
Again, not to be confrontational, but your concept of what is necessary for typing "zero force" is off. There isn't massive acceleration when your finger hits the pad. This is not the same typing as with a mechanical keyboard, but with no springs. You bearly have to tap the keys on these keyboards.
It's basic physics. Think about it. In order to type quickly, your fingers MUST move faster. This means that if you're typing fast your finger WILL hit the key harder due to the increased speed. This means that the faster you type on a keyboard, the harder your fingers impact the keyboard and the more "damage" you do.
Regular keys effectively act like sponges or airbags absorbing and softening the impact of each stroke. This is not the case of a capacitance keyboard like the Touchstream where each keypress is the equivalent to impacting a wall.
Now you might claim that a light touch can compensate for this, but it seems impossible to me. In order to type fast your fingers MUST impact the keys harder, so it seems to be that on a capacitance keyboard the goals of comfort and fast typing are fundamentally opposed. This has certainly been my experience in the capacitance keyboards I've used.
There is also the issue of "work". In a properly designed keyboard (like the old "clickity" IBM keyboard I'm using right now) has enough force in the springs to physically move the finger up. On mine the springs are powerful enough the the "return" actually lifts the finger up about 1 mm from the key. What this means is that there is little, if any, "work" involved on the "return stroke". In a capacitance keyboard this is not the case, a user must lift his finger himself.
Now you could argue that I'm exaggerating the effect of these "impacts", and they might be less of a problem that I think when compared to the damage caused by the extra "work" of having to press a regular key. Of course, a capacitance user also has the extra work of lifting his fingers. I'm not sure which is worse, but my instinct is that the "impacts" are a bigger problem than the extra work in pressing the keys.
I've seen ... reports on the California situation which claim that wind is one of the most expensive ways to generate power.
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a ti on.nsf/TopicDetails/IndustryNuclear+PowerA+Low-Cos t+Leader
First off, the statement above is simply wrong. 10-15 years ago it was true, but it is not true now. Wind is *NOT* one of the most expensive ways to generate power. Solar beats it by a mile.
However, I seriously question the $0.03 claim. Based on what I've been able to find out this only applies to the most efficient turbines, none of which are presently in service in the USA (possibly in Denmark, I'm not sure). And even that is a SUBSISIZED price, so the real cost is closer to 0.05-0.06.
CURRENT generation costs are closer to 0.07-0.09, adjusting for the subsidies. About 2 to 3 times the cost of natural gas.
Unfortuantely virtually all the cites I found were from such "unbiased" sources as the National Wind Technology Center, and the American Wind Energy Association. Virtually all of them cited the $0.03 number, which originated entirely from an AWEA study.
I did manage to find one study, by the Cato institute:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa422.pd
One thing that irritates be is the greatly exaggerated costs of generating nuclear power I've seen in these reports. Nuclear power costs about $0.03 per kWh, about the same as natural gas (slightly more expensive), and a lot of that is due to onerous safety regulations (vastly more of this is required over the less-safe coal and natural gas industries). If we moved to a system similar to that of the Japanese or French (fuel recycling), we might be able to cut that in half. If we moved to breeder reactors we might be able to cut it down to $0.01 or so. However, recator development has been stalled since the 1970's.
Most of the cites I found were from such "unbiased" sources as the Nuclear Energy Institute. It took me a while to dig this up:
http://www.seabrookstation.com/sbs%5CSeabrookSt
It claims that nuclear power is cheaper than any other source, even under the flawed US system.
You also haven't adaquately addressed the reliablity problems of wind, nor have you mentioned that many hundreds of facilites would have to be built to replace existing power plants. Wheras 10 (possibly fewer) nuclear power plants could produce all of the electricity for California. And since we've already got 2, we'd only need another 8. You'd have a tough time convincing me that building hundreds of windmill fields is cheaper than 10 nuclear power plants.
On the contrary, wind power is currently about $0.035/kwh in the U.S. with modern turbines. They aren't much more than swivel-mouned generators with propellor blades on a pole. They are cheap and easy to maintain, and just as subject to economies of scale as any other easily mass-produced product.
Here's the exact quote from the site you referenced:
"Today, according to the Danish electrical power companies, the energy cost to society (the social cost) per kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind is the same as for new coal-fired power stations fitted with smoke scrubbing equipment, i.e. around 0.04 USD per kWh for an average European site."
What's "social cost"? I strongly suspect that this is some voodoo economics calculation that claims that nuclear power (for example) is vastly more expensive due to the "cost" of mysterious cancers, while neglecting the "cost" of all the birds killed by windmills. It also doesn't jive with any other study I've seen, including reports on the California situation which claim that wind is one of the most expensive ways to generate power.
And again, the "average" European site right now is an IDEAL site. Windmills are now almost exclusively placed in ideal locations, and we build more and more windmills we'll start using less than ideal sites and the efficency will drop dramatically.
You're also trivializing the issue of storage and distribution issues. Wind is a inconsistent source of power so you're going to have to store it in lead-acid (or similar chemicals) batteries until fuel cell technology becomes cheaply available. And all those lead batteries represent a serious environmental problem.
And while not very compelling to environmentalists, there is a convienience issue. Wind power is subject to the vagarities of the weather, making it an inherently inconsistent source of power. Output will vary wildly from season to season, area to area. Oil and nuclear don't have this problem. You can build the plants anywhere and generate a consistent, realiable power source. If you're generating X kWh per day today, you can be very confident that you'll be generating X kWh per day next year.
Nonsense. Birds naturally avoid big spinning white things, even in the dark. Read the book Reaping the Wind for details.
I have personally witnessed hawks being sucked into windmills (on the Altamont Pass) and seen the bodies of birds around the windmills. The windmills on the Altamont Pass are definitely killing birds. How many I don't know.
The Altamont Pass wind field is decades old. You should drive through the Riverside County wind fields sometime. The first thing that you will notice is that they are almost all in service, and they don't make any noise.
I drive through the Altamont Pass often, and at any given time I would say about 10% are dismantled and 20-30% are non operational (not turning). I've only seen more that about 60% in operation once, during a period of particularly high winds.
I don't know how much noise they make, since they're so far from the road (the only ones I've ever seen up close weren't in operation), but I agree with you that noise isn't a major problem.
In case anyone is interested, here's what looks to be the chassis breakdown for this unit.
On the front:
In the top left corner there are 2 buttons for Power and Ejecting the DVD drive.
In the top right is a button that says "GAME RESET" and two LEDs (yellow and red) that I suspect are "Recording" and "New Content" indicators (this follows conventions on other PVRs).
Not sure exactly, but the bottom third of the front (the part with all the logos printed on it) appears to flip down. This is probably where the USB 2.0 ports and MemoryStick slot(s) are concealed. There may also be slots for standard memory cards.
On the back:
Power in
iLink/optical SPDIF out
VGA out
Composite video in
Audio in (Left/Right RCA jacks)
S-Video in
Composite video out
Audio out (Left/Right RCA jacks)
S-Video out
R/F in
R/F out
2 standard Playstation controller ports (that's what they appear to be, but it seems odd that Sony is putting the ports on the back)
On the back top there appears to be a strip of clear plastic that contains a blue "power" LED and copies of the yellow/red LEDs. These are display indicators for when the PSX is placed vertically.
Interestingly, if you look at the unit it's designed to stand on it's BACK end, where all the ports are connected.
I guesstimate the dimensions (Height, Width, Depth) are approximately 12.5in x 3.5in x 15in.
So far, that's about all I can glean from the photos. Keep in mind that Sony has had experience with PVRs before, building Tivo units.
I think it's an open question whether or not this is the "PS2.5" or a niche product like the Panasonic/Nintendo Qube. It doesn't look cheap, and NeoGeo can tell you how eager people are to buy a $500 gaming console.
Now of course it's not JUST a gaming console, that's why it's so expensive. But experience has show that "media convergence" devices are difficult to market (notice the problems associated with Tivo/ReplayTV), and I think it's unlikely that Sony has overcome this problem.