"This is especially idiotic considering GPS satellites that are currently in orbit are beginning to fail, and no country wants the responsibility of modernizing them, or repairing them." Okay... 1. The DOD depends on GPS and matains the network. So what are you talking about countries wanting to take responsibility for the GPS network? The US DOD does. 2. You do not repair or modernize GPS satellites... You replace them. 3. GPS is going to keep working until it is replaced with something else or the US stops being a nation. "Further, what if a GPS receiver goes offline on a ship?" You use the backup? You don't really think that a ship would only have one do you? The reason to keep both was that many operators spent a lot of money on Loran and GPS was expensive. Now GPS is cheaper and more reliable than Loran. Your arguments are along the lines of "We should keep paying for hitching posts on our streets so we can keep horses as a back up for cars."
So since when is a Mazda3 a gas guzzler? "What I drive and car pool with my wife to work in." I was commenting on the snotty attitude that many of the green folks have and the waste of energy in gadgets.
Or let's actually be very fair. Using WiFi is totally legal and within the other home owners rights. Even if he has this alergy it isn't up to his neighbor to do anything about it. May his health insurance provider will offer to build him a Faraday cage. All he would need to do is cover his house with chicken wire, paint and stucco over it and connect it to ground. That would protect him from not only WiFi but also radar from planes flying over head, TV and Radio broadcasts, and even Satellite transmissions. Of course he would have to give up electricity all together to really have an EM free home but that is his problem.
Yes but so would XBMC. The thing is that I really like some podcasts. The ones from Cnet are actually very entertaining as well as EnGadget and Geekbrief.tv and yes XBMC will do those for you as well. They are both free so I would suggest trying them both.
Just that one should look at yourself before looking down at others. As I said I know I have more work to do saving power. My next project is going to be a resource shed. I am going to build a garden shed that will house cisterns for rainwater collection for my garden and a solar panel to charge my cordless tools. I am not criticizing people that choose to own a prius but those that think that act makes them better than others.
Hacking is cool. Trashing peoples stuff not so cool. Hacking used to mean making systems do things they where never meant to do. Now it means being a hoodlum.
Well life is full of choices. Boxee also gives you a 10 foot interface for any digital media you happen to have on your network, Pandora, CNet TV, NPR, and GeekBrief.tv It may not be anything you want to hook up but as I said if you want a MediaPC I think Boxee is worth a look. If you lean to the FOSS side then try XBMC. But if you have no desire to have a media PC then you have no interest in Boxee. Oh and it also has a twitter client.
I would suggest also trying XBMC. I am sorry to say that my media PC if it is not a BoxeeBox will probably run Windows. I want to put a Bluray player in it and because of the nasty DRM BluRay disks don't work on Linux. I too am a big fan of Podcasts but YouTube isn't bad sometimes. I will have to give XBMC a try.
Not at all. But a lot of GREEN folks are at the same time really into tech and really like to bash people that drive SUVs. I do not own an SUV or even a pickup truck. I really want a pickup truck but frankly only the Ford Ranger is close to what I think of as a small truck and I don't need a big truck. Just point out that waste is everywhere and having a house full of power sucking tech but a small car isn't all that green. BTW I too have to many gadgets sucking power. I started to buy power strips to power down some of my devices when I am not using then to save power.
Boxee gives you a 10 foot interface. It provides a nice interface to websites like Hulu, TV.com, and things like cnet TV. It also supports audio and video podcasts and on Windows NetFlix. If you want to build a media PC that works more like a set top box than a PC then Boxee is a great program to try. They are also pushing a new BoxeeBox which looks really nice. The lack of mass storage and a bit torrent client is a slight downer but for a set top box it looks just about perfect. Well except that case is too cool IMHO. I would like something a bit plainer.
I am talking mainly about wasted power. The Standby power that your HDTV uses is a good example. Sure a DVR needs to be "on" all the time but if you could power it all down and say use a tiny microcontoller running of say a super cap to deal with the timer and the IR receiver you could save some power. Yes it would take a few miutes to power up after got home from work but you could build in a smart system to know that you tend to turn on the TV at say 6:30 and have the micro move from cold standby to warm standby at say 6:15. I am not a big fan of "GREEN" as the religion of the day but I really do hate waste and lazy engineering.
Well I was talking about a cell site. I would guess that there are a lot more cell sites than steel mills. So in round numbers you are talking about 4.5KW for the tower plus FAA lighting.
"And who, exactly, has these resources?" IBM, Google, Intel, a large ISP, or a major university. That is why I said talent and resources, you are completely correct that it can die but not if enough users or powerful enough users want to keep it alive. You could also just keep it as is and just keep adding security patches which would take a lot few resources than active development. And I really should have clarified that resources part. I was thinking of somebody like say RedHat, Novell, or IBM when I made that statment.
How extreme is it for a household to have more than one HDTV? And odds are all of them are more than 32"s How extreme is it to have at least one and probably two game consoles? How extreme is it to have a router and or a Home NAS? I see those at the local BestBuy and WalMart everyday. DVRs? DVD players? CableBoxes? Cellphone chargers, iPod chargers? How many people turn them off when not in use with a power strip? Sorry it isn't that extreme of a gadget situation. Take a look at your own surroundings and think about how many devices you have with Phantom loads. Hey I have a small car and A lot of gadgets. Only one TV. This wasn't meant to damn tech but folks we need to do something about standby power use. It makes little sense to spend a lot of money fixing air leaks in your home while having your HDTV sucking down watt after watt of power for no real reason.
The Google phone really doesn't help. The Moto Droid is out and is 2.0, my Samsung Moment is out and 1.5, I have no idea what the G1 is at officially I think it is at 1.6.... Screen size? Too late my Samsung is a stock Google build and it has a different screen size than the Droid or the GooglePhone.
How much? Really people get bent over SUVs but how many of those Prius owners have two or more big HDTVs, multiple game consoles, routers, PCs, DVRs, Home NAS servers, and goodness knows what else sucking down watts 24/7 often doing nothing at all?
True but how much power do all the cell towers use? I am not anti tech but the explosion of tech we have has got to be running up our power bills. I bet the my home as a child probably used about the same amount of power as my home does today. I fear our gadgets have wiped out our gains in efficiency and insulation.
Just how much power is being used for Cell transmissions? What about Wifi? Think about it. Our appliances are getting more efficient all the time but how much power are our gadgets sucking up. WiFi, Game Consoles, DVD players, Home networks, Home NAS servers, cable boxes, and TVs. Way back when when you went to bed you turned off our TV and it was actually off.
For some games I would agree with you 100%. And Android does allow you to use native code for some performance critical parts but as the original author stated then you have to debug in two languages. I don't hate C++ and I have used it for high performance applications. The thing is that I feel that Java gets too much hate. The "problem" with Java it it is too easy to make a program that works. Because of that you get too many people putting out Java programs that work but don't work well. In C++ they just wouldn't work at all.
I still feel that the real problem with Android is in many ways the openness of it. I wish that Google would get EVERYBODY on the same version. I am tired of waiting for Samsung to update my phone to 2.0 or 2.1. It is just silly that Motorola released two phones in the same time frame and one has 1.5 and one has 2.0! or that Verizon released two Android phones on the same day and one had 1.5 and one has 2.0. Or that T-Mobile has phones with 1.5, 1.6 and now 2.1! This fragmentation on such a new platform is just insane.
All kidding aside anybody with the skills and resources can now take over 1.3 and keep updating it. You can not really EOL a FOSS program if anybody wants to keep it alive. That being said there are other light weight web servers that can do what people are using 1.3 for. Now Apache 2.0 may be a bit harder to replace since the migration isn't automatic from what I hear.
Not really. He hates Java. A lot of people seem to feel that way. I actually like Java more than say c++ because I find the Java object model has a less of a tacked on feel. The big problem is that he doesn't like the "fragmentation" which is a valid concern for a developer. You have a number of different screen sizes to deal with, you have a number of different cpus that run at differn't speed to deal with you way to many different versions to deal with, and you have what ever custom sillyness that the vendors may put in to deal with. On thing that is very nice for developers about the iPhone is that it is a very consistant controlled enviroment. It is much more like developing for say a game console than for a PC. That makes hidden gotchas less of an issue. Android is a lot more like a PC. So you are half right. Android makes it way to easy to build simple apps but makes t more difficult to produce top notch professional apps than the iPhone does. How true that is I don't know since I have yet to dive into the Android SDK but even now I wonder which SDK do I write too? 1.5 which seems to be the most common. 1.6, 2.0, or do I leap to 2.1 and hope everybody updates by the time my app is done? It is EXTREMELY annoying that there are so many different versions of an OS all of which are shipping on phones right this second!
I worry less about the mail provider than actual email address. They may have been on AOL for years and don't want the hassle of getting a new email address. What I would toss out is somebody that has the email address of MrLoveMachine@anyplace.com or snugglywuggly@anyplace.com or even TechGod@anyplace.com
There is one other difference. On all the things you are talking about the sale of the product is happening in state. You can tax what ever you want in state. In the case of the power the purchase is being made out of state. You can not tax somebody that buys a none Energy-Star TV and then brings it into state. If the state tried to make the store pay a tax on the wholesale purchase then yes it would be unconstitutional. If the state wanted to tax their own citizens for that power at retail it would be totally legal. It is the trying to tax the out of state companies for the carbon they produce that is not. Of course what the court will do is a mystery. Frankly some rulings of what is an is not Constitutional make me wonder if they are reading the same document that I am.
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When GPS first came out the receivers where not cheap. Now you are correct they are as cheap as chips.
"This is especially idiotic considering GPS satellites that are currently in orbit are beginning to fail, and no country wants the responsibility of modernizing them, or repairing them."
Okay...
1. The DOD depends on GPS and matains the network. So what are you talking about countries wanting to take responsibility for the GPS network? The US DOD does.
2. You do not repair or modernize GPS satellites... You replace them.
3. GPS is going to keep working until it is replaced with something else or the US stops being a nation.
"Further, what if a GPS receiver goes offline on a ship?"
You use the backup? You don't really think that a ship would only have one do you?
The reason to keep both was that many operators spent a lot of money on Loran and GPS was expensive. Now GPS is cheaper and more reliable than Loran.
Your arguments are along the lines of "We should keep paying for hitching posts on our streets so we can keep horses as a back up for cars."
So since when is a Mazda3 a gas guzzler? "What I drive and car pool with my wife to work in." I was commenting on the snotty attitude that many of the green folks have and the waste of energy in gadgets.
Or let's actually be very fair.
Using WiFi is totally legal and within the other home owners rights. Even if he has this alergy it isn't up to his neighbor to do anything about it.
May his health insurance provider will offer to build him a Faraday cage. All he would need to do is cover his house with chicken wire, paint and stucco over it and connect it to ground.
That would protect him from not only WiFi but also radar from planes flying over head, TV and Radio broadcasts, and even Satellite transmissions.
Of course he would have to give up electricity all together to really have an EM free home but that is his problem.
Yes but so would XBMC. The thing is that I really like some podcasts. The ones from Cnet are actually very entertaining as well as EnGadget and Geekbrief.tv and yes XBMC will do those for you as well. They are both free so I would suggest trying them both.
Just that one should look at yourself before looking down at others. As I said I know I have more work to do saving power. My next project is going to be a resource shed. I am going to build a garden shed that will house cisterns for rainwater collection for my garden and a solar panel to charge my cordless tools. I am not criticizing people that choose to own a prius but those that think that act makes them better than others.
Hacking is cool. Trashing peoples stuff not so cool.
Hacking used to mean making systems do things they where never meant to do. Now it means being a hoodlum.
Well life is full of choices. Boxee also gives you a 10 foot interface for any digital media you happen to have on your network, Pandora, CNet TV, NPR, and GeekBrief.tv
It may not be anything you want to hook up but as I said if you want a MediaPC I think Boxee is worth a look. If you lean to the FOSS side then try XBMC.
But if you have no desire to have a media PC then you have no interest in Boxee.
Oh and it also has a twitter client.
I would suggest also trying XBMC.
I am sorry to say that my media PC if it is not a BoxeeBox will probably run Windows. I want to put a Bluray player in it and because of the nasty DRM BluRay disks don't work on Linux.
I too am a big fan of Podcasts but YouTube isn't bad sometimes. I will have to give XBMC a try.
Not at all. But a lot of GREEN folks are at the same time really into tech and really like to bash people that drive SUVs. I do not own an SUV or even a pickup truck. I really want a pickup truck but frankly only the Ford Ranger is close to what I think of as a small truck and I don't need a big truck. Just point out that waste is everywhere and having a house full of power sucking tech but a small car isn't all that green.
BTW I too have to many gadgets sucking power. I started to buy power strips to power down some of my devices when I am not using then to save power.
Boxee gives you a 10 foot interface. It provides a nice interface to websites like Hulu, TV.com, and things like cnet TV.
It also supports audio and video podcasts and on Windows NetFlix.
If you want to build a media PC that works more like a set top box than a PC then Boxee is a great program to try.
They are also pushing a new BoxeeBox which looks really nice. The lack of mass storage and a bit torrent client is a slight downer but for a set top box it looks just about perfect. Well except that case is too cool IMHO. I would like something a bit plainer.
I am talking mainly about wasted power. The Standby power that your HDTV uses is a good example. Sure a DVR needs to be "on" all the time but if you could power it all down and say use a tiny microcontoller running of say a super cap to deal with the timer and the IR receiver you could save some power. Yes it would take a few miutes to power up after got home from work but you could build in a smart system to know that you tend to turn on the TV at say 6:30 and have the micro move from cold standby to warm standby at say 6:15.
I am not a big fan of "GREEN" as the religion of the day but I really do hate waste and lazy engineering.
Well I was talking about a cell site. I would guess that there are a lot more cell sites than steel mills. So in round numbers you are talking about 4.5KW for the tower plus FAA lighting.
"And who, exactly, has these resources?"
IBM, Google, Intel, a large ISP, or a major university.
That is why I said talent and resources, you are completely correct that it can die but not if enough users or powerful enough users want to keep it alive. You could also just keep it as is and just keep adding security patches which would take a lot few resources than active development.
And I really should have clarified that resources part. I was thinking of somebody like say RedHat, Novell, or IBM when I made that statment.
How extreme is it for a household to have more than one HDTV? And odds are all of them are more than 32"s
How extreme is it to have at least one and probably two game consoles?
How extreme is it to have a router and or a Home NAS? I see those at the local BestBuy and WalMart everyday.
DVRs?
DVD players?
CableBoxes?
Cellphone chargers, iPod chargers?
How many people turn them off when not in use with a power strip?
Sorry it isn't that extreme of a gadget situation. Take a look at your own surroundings and think about how many devices you have with Phantom loads.
Hey I have a small car and A lot of gadgets. Only one TV. This wasn't meant to damn tech but folks we need to do something about standby power use. It makes little sense to spend a lot of money fixing air leaks in your home while having your HDTV sucking down watt after watt of power for no real reason.
The Google phone really doesn't help. The Moto Droid is out and is 2.0, my Samsung Moment is out and 1.5, I have no idea what the G1 is at officially I think it is at 1.6....
Screen size? Too late my Samsung is a stock Google build and it has a different screen size than the Droid or the GooglePhone.
How much? Really people get bent over SUVs but how many of those Prius owners have two or more big HDTVs, multiple game consoles, routers, PCs, DVRs, Home NAS servers, and goodness knows what else sucking down watts 24/7 often doing nothing at all?
True but how much power do all the cell towers use? I am not anti tech but the explosion of tech we have has got to be running up our power bills.
I bet the my home as a child probably used about the same amount of power as my home does today.
I fear our gadgets have wiped out our gains in efficiency and insulation.
Just how much power is being used for Cell transmissions? What about Wifi?
Think about it. Our appliances are getting more efficient all the time but how much power are our gadgets sucking up.
WiFi, Game Consoles, DVD players, Home networks, Home NAS servers, cable boxes, and TVs.
Way back when when you went to bed you turned off our TV and it was actually off.
For some games I would agree with you 100%. And Android does allow you to use native code for some performance critical parts but as the original author stated then you have to debug in two languages.
I don't hate C++ and I have used it for high performance applications. The thing is that I feel that Java gets too much hate. The "problem" with Java it it is too easy to make a program that works. Because of that you get too many people putting out Java programs that work but don't work well. In C++ they just wouldn't work at all.
I still feel that the real problem with Android is in many ways the openness of it. I wish that Google would get EVERYBODY on the same version. I am tired of waiting for Samsung to update my phone to 2.0 or 2.1. It is just silly that Motorola released two phones in the same time frame and one has 1.5 and one has 2.0! or that Verizon released two Android phones on the same day and one had 1.5 and one has 2.0. Or that T-Mobile has phones with 1.5, 1.6 and now 2.1!
This fragmentation on such a new platform is just insane.
All kidding aside anybody with the skills and resources can now take over 1.3 and keep updating it. You can not really EOL a FOSS program if anybody wants to keep it alive. That being said there are other light weight web servers that can do what people are using 1.3 for. Now Apache 2.0 may be a bit harder to replace since the migration isn't automatic from what I hear.
Not really.
He hates Java. A lot of people seem to feel that way. I actually like Java more than say c++ because I find the Java object model has a less of a tacked on feel.
The big problem is that he doesn't like the "fragmentation" which is a valid concern for a developer. You have a number of different screen sizes to deal with, you have a number of different cpus that run at differn't speed to deal with you way to many different versions to deal with, and you have what ever custom sillyness that the vendors may put in to deal with.
On thing that is very nice for developers about the iPhone is that it is a very consistant controlled enviroment. It is much more like developing for say a game console than for a PC. That makes hidden gotchas less of an issue.
Android is a lot more like a PC.
So you are half right.
Android makes it way to easy to build simple apps but makes t more difficult to produce top notch professional apps than the iPhone does.
How true that is I don't know since I have yet to dive into the Android SDK but even now I wonder which SDK do I write too? 1.5 which seems to be the most common. 1.6, 2.0, or do I leap to 2.1 and hope everybody updates by the time my app is done?
It is EXTREMELY annoying that there are so many different versions of an OS all of which are shipping on phones right this second!
They also did a new TW series back then. Some of them where great but they kept watering it down.
I worry less about the mail provider than actual email address.
They may have been on AOL for years and don't want the hassle of getting a new email address.
What I would toss out is somebody that has the email address of MrLoveMachine@anyplace.com or snugglywuggly@anyplace.com or even TechGod@anyplace.com
There is one other difference. On all the things you are talking about the sale of the product is happening in state. You can tax what ever you want in state. In the case of the power the purchase is being made out of state.
You can not tax somebody that buys a none Energy-Star TV and then brings it into state. If the state tried to make the store pay a tax on the wholesale purchase then yes it would be unconstitutional. If the state wanted to tax their own citizens for that power at retail it would be totally legal. It is the trying to tax the out of state companies for the carbon they produce that is not. Of course what the court will do is a mystery. Frankly some rulings of what is an is not Constitutional make me wonder if they are reading the same document that I am.