The parent poster actually brings up an extremely valid point. When it was first being marketed, nobody imagined that Viagra would be even remotely as big of a success as it has been.
The fact is that nobody had any data suggesting that erectile dysfunction was nearly as prevalent as it is because nobody wanted to talk about it. Once it comes out, it's one of the most successful commercial pharmeceuticals in history, and has been linked to a decrease in depression amongst elderly couples.
If a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, she's labeled as a fighter, and a survivor. If a man has prostate or testicular cancer, people cringe and back away if it's even mentioned at all (and often it's not). I really wish that Lance Armstrong could have used more of his time in the limelight to highlight this fact.
That said, I also think that Americans as a whole need to be far more open when it comes to talking about things related to sex. Repression is never healthy.
(IANAL) Although the link you posted isn't exactly what I'd call propaganda,the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 does indeed make it illegal to broadcast or show US-funded propaganda to domestic audiences.
This is mostly because of those absurdly racist WWI posters you probably saw in your high-school history class, and why you never saw much US-led propaganda after that (and believe me, it's not because we grew to be morally ABOVE those tactics).
In the 40s, Disney produced a number of semi-propaganda shorts aimed at the WWII effort (and also a few bits that appear to be aimed at a South-American audience). It's on DVD, and is highly recommended.
Anybody who's ever worked in sales or IT is going to be understandably agitated by their choice of acronym for the project, especially considering the subject matter at hand.
However, you must consider that a T1 is intrinsicly expensive. You're essentially paying for 24 analog phone lines to be run from your location to another (usually your ISP, but not necessarily). The infrastructure costs for doing this are certainly not trivial, and it should come as absolutely no surprise that a T1 costs 10-20 times as much as an equivalent DSL line, because the phone company could hypothetically be serving 23 other POTS/DSL customers using those extra pairs in your T1.
Most of the "reliability" factors from the T1 connection come from the fact that the phone company gives a bit more attention to the customer that can afford $1000/month, not to mention that expensive modems/interface devices are a drop in the bucket compared to the yearly cost of a T1. Done properly, DSL is extremely reliable.
Of course, once FTTP (Fiber) becomes prevalent, this entire conversation will be moot. In terms of speed, reliability, and cost (once the initial install's paid for), fiber is far superior to any copper-based connection on the planet.
(Also, if you're REALLY concerned about reliability, you could always buy and multiplex a DSL Line, Cable connection, and an ISDN to be absoultely sure nothing's wrong for less than half the cost of a T1. Throw in an on-demand satelitte uplink if you're really paranoid. Even then, with all the money you're still saving, you'll be able to afford a generator within in a few years for some serious redundancy to power your satelitte when some act of God destroys the rest of the city's infrastructure)
While the implementation may not have been great, Macromedia was one of the first to identify that the web would gradually evolve into an application platform with the majority of the UI processing done at the browser level.
Say what you will about flash, but a lot of what it's done has revolutionized the web. (Not to mention that it was the first streaming media platform to be widely adopted because it "just works")
All that being said, as a Mac user, I have a firey disdain for the (grossly unoptimized and inefficent) flash plugins.
What the original poster is trying to do is not innovative in the least. In fact, it's pretty well-worn territory (which he may have been unaware of by no fault of his own).
If he had said "I've looked at all of the commerical options, and nothing fits quite right", I'd be in agreement with you that he should go out and try to create his own solution. However, this is not the case, and a lot of time and experience has gone into developing products that fit his needs very well.
And even at that, there will likely be a good deal of 'hacking' involved in getting these valves to do what he wants them to, given that they're industrial components. Any EE on the planet knows that it's preferable to use a commercially-available IC instead of constructing an equivalent circuit out of components as long as the IC fits the job. The same goes for industrial components.
The fact that Firefox is open-source in and of itself actually has very little to do with why Microsoft is (rightfully) freaking out.
Firefox is free (as in beer. normal people have been proven not to care about the other kind), and is available for many platforms.
Now granted, these facts are a direct consequence of being open-source under a libreal license. However, microsoft would still be in trouble if Netscape got its act together and developed a free and powerful cross-platform browser, even if it were closed-source.
Simple economics dictate that well-educated consumers will make any choice that results in the best performance per buck. This is what's happening right now with Firefox. It should also be noted that Economics is completely amoral.... just like typical consumers.
Agreed. IBM machines do tend to be ridiculously well-engineered.
I will say, though, that the quality of Apple's lineup has greatly improved since the Ti-G4 days. The first few models in the Aluminum series were a bit iffy, but the 12" Powerbook G4 I've had for the past year and half is absolutely rock-solid.
I agree that for "normal" 14"-15" notebooks, that IBM may still have a slight edge, but when talking about the compact models, Apple wins hands-down.
One thing though: I miss the pointing stick. Although two-fingered scrolling makes the trackpad a lot more bearable, nothing quite beats the pointing stick (real mice included)
Oh, I wouldn't be too down on NJ. Despite the fact that our state government is in a never-ending state of disarray, we're surprisingly progressive, especially considering what we have to deal with..
I mean, we have arguably the best (and largest) suburban public transportation system in the country despite not exactly having any major "urban" areas of our own.
We're starting to deal with the sprawl issues coming from Philly and NYC, and Newark's definitely on its way to a revival. Camden hopefully will be soon to follow.
Despite consistent bickering about the Parkway and Turnpike, compared to other major metropolitian areas (LA, the DC Beltway, the entire city of Boston), our traffic problems are actually not that bad, (and offer plenty of alternate routes should the road be borked).
Civil unions were legalized by the state supreme court last year with virtually no opposition.
We've also got some of the best food and produce in the country. (This one may seem a bit silly, but if you don't believe me, move to another part of the country, order a pizza, or walk into any grocery store.). Living outside of Jersey, I also now miss the abundance of good (independently-owned) diners virtually anywhere in the state. It's a very good compromise between fast food and "expensive" dining.
Even though they were convicted of being a monopoly, they pretty much dodged that bullet.
Security wasn't as huge of a deal in 1998 for end users on dial-up as it is today, and insofar, Linux has still failed to take off completely. (On the other hand OS X has been very successful)
(And the iPod/Nomad comments were made by our very own CmdrTaco)
Right now, I personally put the odds of the iPhone being a success at 40/60. Unless they can get the price down, and open it up to other carriers, it's just not going to fly. GSM coverage in many parts of the US tends to be very poor in comparison to CDMA.
IBM decided on a minimalist design, and went with it for 15 years, and so far it's served them very very well. If you look at trends in industrial design, it's pretty obvious that minimalism and sleek likes have been a "safe" choice for the past few decades. If your design is simple, there are very few elements of it that can appear dated with time.
Likewise, the build-quality of IBM's enslosures tends to be among the best in the business. The type of plastic they use combined with the rubberized coating holds up very well to wear and tear. Over time, this has only gotten better as they've improved upon the plastic formulation and reinforced the laptop chasis with a Titanium frame.
Pick up a Dell laptop with one hand. It's heavy and you can feel it creaking under its own weight. Do the same with an IBM or Apple machine, and you'll feel the difference instantly.
Dells haven't always been crap. Every now and then a legitimately good design slips through. A while ago, I had a Latitude LS, which was an early PIII machine. It was an ultraportable, and weighed even less than my 12" Powerbook (due to its lack of optical drive, which also made it super-thin). The frame and external enclosure were both made of a durable scratch-resistant metal, and it still looks just as good as my Apple. Why Dell chose to abandon this design and continue to produce laptops based upon the Latitude C-chasis (from the early PII days, and still used in some form today) is beyond me.
It's basically the same reason why you can tell the difference between a Benz and a Trabant.
You're assuming that India already has an excessively built-up "backbone" infrastructure like the US did in the late 90s when broadband started to take hold.
I'm not 100% sure that this is the case. Even the backbone in the US is beginning to feel the strain from streaming video, P2P and other high-bandwidth activities.
A death list is pretty different from writing a piece of fiction, especially given that's a specific threat made against a living person.
In your friend's case, I don't think the authorities went too far. On the other hand, the reactionary response to the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech is only going to make things worse.
Seriously. I have a 5p and a 6mp, and print quite a bit on both of them. The cartridges last forever, the quality is great, and it's fast enough for anything I'll ever need (8ppm).
No inkjet lasts 5 years, let alone 12. HP's current class of consumer-grade lasers is also pretty terrible. Their more expensive stuff (the 4000 series in particular), however, remains excellent.
Although I agree with you in principle, I can't help but bringing up the old maxim about resting upon one's laurels.
Americans can be described in a lot of ways, but "complacent" generally isn't one of them.
Also, as a footnote, anyone who's lived in New York City for the past 20 years is very well aware of the trend you mention. The US is generally a very safe place to be compared to decades ago.
To be fair, I don't think that the cost of manufacturing discs is all that much to begin with, and only makes up a microscopic portion of the total cost of a movie. Even if it doubles, it still won't be much.
I concur. Freakonomics stripped a bit too much of the science away in an attempt to make the book accessible.
Naked Economics tries to do the same thing as Freakonomics, but achieves a much higher degree of success. Freakonomics was dumbed down to an almost insulting level, and many of the examples provided felt somewhat outlandish. Naked Economics does a much better job of distilling economic theory down to plain english, and picks much more relevant examples. I also found it to be a pretty entertaining read:
"The sultan of Brunei earned billions of dollars in oil revenues in the 1970s. Suppose he had stuffed that cash under his mattress and left it there. He would have had several problems. First, it is very difficult to sleep with billions of dollars stuffed under the mattress. .."
(Yes.... I did pull that quote from one of the Amazon reviews, but it's a rather accurate representation of the text)
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The parent poster actually brings up an extremely valid point. When it was first being marketed, nobody imagined that Viagra would be even remotely as big of a success as it has been.
The fact is that nobody had any data suggesting that erectile dysfunction was nearly as prevalent as it is because nobody wanted to talk about it. Once it comes out, it's one of the most successful commercial pharmeceuticals in history, and has been linked to a decrease in depression amongst elderly couples.
If a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, she's labeled as a fighter, and a survivor. If a man has prostate or testicular cancer, people cringe and back away if it's even mentioned at all (and often it's not). I really wish that Lance Armstrong could have used more of his time in the limelight to highlight this fact.
That said, I also think that Americans as a whole need to be far more open when it comes to talking about things related to sex. Repression is never healthy.
(IANAL) Although the link you posted isn't exactly what I'd call propaganda,the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 does indeed make it illegal to broadcast or show US-funded propaganda to domestic audiences.
This is mostly because of those absurdly racist WWI posters you probably saw in your high-school history class, and why you never saw much US-led propaganda after that (and believe me, it's not because we grew to be morally ABOVE those tactics).
In the 40s, Disney produced a number of semi-propaganda shorts aimed at the WWII effort (and also a few bits that appear to be aimed at a South-American audience). It's on DVD, and is highly recommended.
Anybody who's ever worked in sales or IT is going to be understandably agitated by their choice of acronym for the project, especially considering the subject matter at hand.
You're absolutely right.
However, you must consider that a T1 is intrinsicly expensive. You're essentially paying for 24 analog phone lines to be run from your location to another (usually your ISP, but not necessarily). The infrastructure costs for doing this are certainly not trivial, and it should come as absolutely no surprise that a T1 costs 10-20 times as much as an equivalent DSL line, because the phone company could hypothetically be serving 23 other POTS/DSL customers using those extra pairs in your T1.
Most of the "reliability" factors from the T1 connection come from the fact that the phone company gives a bit more attention to the customer that can afford $1000/month, not to mention that expensive modems/interface devices are a drop in the bucket compared to the yearly cost of a T1. Done properly, DSL is extremely reliable.
Of course, once FTTP (Fiber) becomes prevalent, this entire conversation will be moot. In terms of speed, reliability, and cost (once the initial install's paid for), fiber is far superior to any copper-based connection on the planet.
(Also, if you're REALLY concerned about reliability, you could always buy and multiplex a DSL Line, Cable connection, and an ISDN to be absoultely sure nothing's wrong for less than half the cost of a T1. Throw in an on-demand satelitte uplink if you're really paranoid. Even then, with all the money you're still saving, you'll be able to afford a generator within in a few years for some serious redundancy to power your satelitte when some act of God destroys the rest of the city's infrastructure)
Let the YouTube mashups begin!
While the implementation may not have been great, Macromedia was one of the first to identify that the web would gradually evolve into an application platform with the majority of the UI processing done at the browser level.
Say what you will about flash, but a lot of what it's done has revolutionized the web. (Not to mention that it was the first streaming media platform to be widely adopted because it "just works")
All that being said, as a Mac user, I have a firey disdain for the (grossly unoptimized and inefficent) flash plugins.
Last year, The Onion did a great writeup on this guy.
I feel like you're missing the point here.
What the original poster is trying to do is not innovative in the least. In fact, it's pretty well-worn territory (which he may have been unaware of by no fault of his own).
If he had said "I've looked at all of the commerical options, and nothing fits quite right", I'd be in agreement with you that he should go out and try to create his own solution. However, this is not the case, and a lot of time and experience has gone into developing products that fit his needs very well.
And even at that, there will likely be a good deal of 'hacking' involved in getting these valves to do what he wants them to, given that they're industrial components. Any EE on the planet knows that it's preferable to use a commercially-available IC instead of constructing an equivalent circuit out of components as long as the IC fits the job. The same goes for industrial components.
Care to step off of your podium?
The fact that Firefox is open-source in and of itself actually has very little to do with why Microsoft is (rightfully) freaking out.
Firefox is free (as in beer. normal people have been proven not to care about the other kind), and is available for many platforms.
Now granted, these facts are a direct consequence of being open-source under a libreal license. However, microsoft would still be in trouble if Netscape got its act together and developed a free and powerful cross-platform browser, even if it were closed-source.
Simple economics dictate that well-educated consumers will make any choice that results in the best performance per buck. This is what's happening right now with Firefox. It should also be noted that Economics is completely amoral.... just like typical consumers.
I feel a new meme coming on....
Agreed. IBM machines do tend to be ridiculously well-engineered.
I will say, though, that the quality of Apple's lineup has greatly improved since the Ti-G4 days. The first few models in the Aluminum series were a bit iffy, but the 12" Powerbook G4 I've had for the past year and half is absolutely rock-solid.
I agree that for "normal" 14"-15" notebooks, that IBM may still have a slight edge, but when talking about the compact models, Apple wins hands-down.
One thing though: I miss the pointing stick. Although two-fingered scrolling makes the trackpad a lot more bearable, nothing quite beats the pointing stick (real mice included)
Oh, I wouldn't be too down on NJ. Despite the fact that our state government is in a never-ending state of disarray, we're surprisingly progressive, especially considering what we have to deal with..
I mean, we have arguably the best (and largest) suburban public transportation system in the country despite not exactly having any major "urban" areas of our own.
We're starting to deal with the sprawl issues coming from Philly and NYC, and Newark's definitely on its way to a revival. Camden hopefully will be soon to follow.
Despite consistent bickering about the Parkway and Turnpike, compared to other major metropolitian areas (LA, the DC Beltway, the entire city of Boston), our traffic problems are actually not that bad, (and offer plenty of alternate routes should the road be borked).
Civil unions were legalized by the state supreme court last year with virtually no opposition.
We've also got some of the best food and produce in the country. (This one may seem a bit silly, but if you don't believe me, move to another part of the country, order a pizza, or walk into any grocery store.). Living outside of Jersey, I also now miss the abundance of good (independently-owned) diners virtually anywhere in the state. It's a very good compromise between fast food and "expensive" dining.
The 640k quote is a total myth.
Even though they were convicted of being a monopoly, they pretty much dodged that bullet.
Security wasn't as huge of a deal in 1998 for end users on dial-up as it is today, and insofar, Linux has still failed to take off completely. (On the other hand OS X has been very successful)
(And the iPod/Nomad comments were made by our very own CmdrTaco)
Right now, I personally put the odds of the iPhone being a success at 40/60. Unless they can get the price down, and open it up to other carriers, it's just not going to fly. GSM coverage in many parts of the US tends to be very poor in comparison to CDMA.
IBM decided on a minimalist design, and went with it for 15 years, and so far it's served them very very well. If you look at trends in industrial design, it's pretty obvious that minimalism and sleek likes have been a "safe" choice for the past few decades. If your design is simple, there are very few elements of it that can appear dated with time.
Likewise, the build-quality of IBM's enslosures tends to be among the best in the business. The type of plastic they use combined with the rubberized coating holds up very well to wear and tear. Over time, this has only gotten better as they've improved upon the plastic formulation and reinforced the laptop chasis with a Titanium frame.
Pick up a Dell laptop with one hand. It's heavy and you can feel it creaking under its own weight. Do the same with an IBM or Apple machine, and you'll feel the difference instantly.
Dells haven't always been crap. Every now and then a legitimately good design slips through. A while ago, I had a Latitude LS, which was an early PIII machine. It was an ultraportable, and weighed even less than my 12" Powerbook (due to its lack of optical drive, which also made it super-thin). The frame and external enclosure were both made of a durable scratch-resistant metal, and it still looks just as good as my Apple. Why Dell chose to abandon this design and continue to produce laptops based upon the Latitude C-chasis (from the early PII days, and still used in some form today) is beyond me.
It's basically the same reason why you can tell the difference between a Benz and a Trabant.
The occurrence of AIDS in India is about the same as it is in the US.
So in other words, although it's a problem, it's not a huge one.
You're assuming that India already has an excessively built-up "backbone" infrastructure like the US did in the late 90s when broadband started to take hold.
I'm not 100% sure that this is the case. Even the backbone in the US is beginning to feel the strain from streaming video, P2P and other high-bandwidth activities.
A death list is pretty different from writing a piece of fiction, especially given that's a specific threat made against a living person.
In your friend's case, I don't think the authorities went too far. On the other hand, the reactionary response to the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech is only going to make things worse.
Possible exits are North, South, or Dennis.
Imagine what the forest fires would be like?
Seriously. I have a 5p and a 6mp, and print quite a bit on both of them. The cartridges last forever, the quality is great, and it's fast enough for anything I'll ever need (8ppm).
No inkjet lasts 5 years, let alone 12. HP's current class of consumer-grade lasers is also pretty terrible. Their more expensive stuff (the 4000 series in particular), however, remains excellent.
And we all know how much that costs.
Although I agree with you in principle, I can't help but bringing up the old maxim about resting upon one's laurels.
Americans can be described in a lot of ways, but "complacent" generally isn't one of them.
Also, as a footnote, anyone who's lived in New York City for the past 20 years is very well aware of the trend you mention. The US is generally a very safe place to be compared to decades ago.
To be fair, I don't think that the cost of manufacturing discs is all that much to begin with, and only makes up a microscopic portion of the total cost of a movie. Even if it doubles, it still won't be much.
Remember, we re-elected the goons responsible for the Patriot Act and Iraq.
Something like filtering a public network is small cookies compared to that.
Naked Economics tries to do the same thing as Freakonomics, but achieves a much higher degree of success. Freakonomics was dumbed down to an almost insulting level, and many of the examples provided felt somewhat outlandish. Naked Economics does a much better job of distilling economic theory down to plain english, and picks much more relevant examples. I also found it to be a pretty entertaining read:
(Yes.... I did pull that quote from one of the Amazon reviews, but it's a rather accurate representation of the text)