This is like all those bogus RIAA/MPAA/etc.-funded studies that assume a pirated copy is a lost sale. Much of the time spent on Google's PAC-MAN would otherwise have been spent on other internet time-wasting, not on productivity.
Exactly why the limits SHOULD be less then they are now. Back then, the length of the copyright period was actually promoting the publishing of new material.
Given the great gushers of new material being published per annum, current copyright doesn't seem to be doing any harm on that front. So, what exactly is your point?
Okay I have learned to live with things like putting "Portugal, Europe" instead of just Portugal but was there a reason that "Memorial Day weekend" seemed more appropriate than an actual date? This kind of thing does nothing to dispel the rumours that the USA doesn't recognise places outside of its borders you know.
The date was in the summary - right in the second line. The comment about Memorial Day weekend (incorrectly not capitalized) was at the end and added to the summary by the editor. So anyone seeing 'evidence' of anything about the USA is reading into the article and the summary something which simply isn't there - and thus confirming their own biases. (Which also goes for the people modding it up without bothering to compare crimperman's complaint against what was actually written - Slashdot reflexive moderation at work.)
When the vast majority of developers will never encounter it, fragmentation is not a big issue.
Had I claimed it was a big issue, you'd have a point. Just like in your original post, you dodge and handwave and do everything but address the issue.
In other words, I have experience with Android including very simple android development and do not believe the scaremongering caused by this so-called fragmentation.
And now, you change your story from "fragmentation isn't an issue (except where it is)" to "I don't believe fragmentation is an issue". So which is it?
So take you scaremongering and out of context quotations elsewhere good sir until you actually learn about the "problems" you are spreading FUD about.
Had I quoted you out of context, you'd have a point - but I quoted you exactly. Had I scaremongered or spread FUD instead of pointing out the logical conclusions that your statements pointed to, you'd have a point.
But again, we see the handwaving and smokescreens in place of addressing the questions.
You default to the lowest, so that your app is compatible with all devices.
Which works just fine - so long as you don't need something provided by a higher version. Or, in other words, there is fragmentation and it does cause problems, but you can avoid if those problems only if you're willing (or able) to tie yourself to the lowest common denominator.
Fragmentation is mainly FUD. Android applications operate via the Dalvik virtual machine meaning the vast majority of applications will happily run on almost all hardware. Only when you start writing applications that require access to a version specific API does this become a problem, most of Android's API's are version agnostic.
"Mostly FUD", "the vast majority", "most API's"... In other words, there is truth to the claims of problems caused by fragmentation.
The simpler your application the fewer issues you will have with it, the so called "issue" of fragmentation is only true for the most complex of applications, if you are writing a simple XML parser then you wont have a problem.
Which, like your statements quoted above, neatly dodges the issue - there are problems caused by fragmentation, and you are trying to double speak them away.
Which fails to answer the question - why would you expect a faster plane to have been built?
Having better engines and materials aren't, in and of themselves, reason to expect such an aircraft to be built. (Doubly so since most contemporary engines were more efficient than the SR-71's. There's a clue there somewhere.)
Asronomers always have the problem that big observatories focus on big telescopes, and it's difficult to do things that require small telescopes, but long-term monitoring.
Since it's astronomers that build and operate the observatories, and we've discovered, among other things, exoplanets from long term monitoring programs at said observatories... your statement makes little sense.
Given the low cost of high end amateur grade scope, if useful science could truly be done on it, where are the ongoing proposals from the astronomers that such things be be built/obtained?
Why a troll moderation? Folks like the OP keep expressing 'bewilderment' because we haven't built a plane faster then the SR-71 since the 60's - without actually being clear on why they're bewildered and why they should be. It's time to drag this moldy chestnut out into the light.
Assuming there *is* a next lane, *and* it has space, *and* you have time to react. A very unlikely chain of events indeed. It's the matter of time that's a particular problem, as I find it very unlikely you'll have the 10-30 seconds forewarning you'll require.
suppose your car has been told to shut off at a red light. What happens if you need to suddenly perform crash avoidance?
That's a question akin to the old excuse for not wearing seat belts: "what happens if I'm knocked unconscious in a crash and can't undo my seat belt to get out of a car that's going to explode?". Well, if you're unconscious you're not going to be undo your seat belt are you? The same for crash avoidance with the engine off when stopped at a stop light - you're stopped. You aren't going to avoid a crash. It's unlikely there will be time for you to react by taking your foot off the brake, onto the gas, and (assuming there's space to actually do something) move/accelerate clear of the potential accident.
One of the standard things taught in driver school is leaving enough room between you and the car in front of you in case you need to avoid a rear collision.
And how exactly does this work? You pull forward a few feet and the car coming at you still hits you, only it hits you a little bit later than otherwise. Assuming you have the sure and certain foreknowledge that the oncoming car *is* going to hit you, early enough for you to do something about it - something I find fairly unlikely.
Assuming you're in the US, this sounds like a holdover from the days when most cars had manual transmissions and on the slightest of hills tended to roll a bit backwards when going from stopped to going forward. It certainly (except in exceptionally hilly situations) seems to make no sense today.
I know you're joking, but the way you do that is by googling the first 5 or 6 digits of your SSN, then manually comparing the last 4. The first 5 or 6 aren't unique and can be relatively easily guessed based upon the location and date of birth.
That depends on how old you are - those of us born before the IRS started requiring SSNs for all dependents claimed on the tax forms often have SSNs acquired years after and miles away from where we were born. I didn't get an SSN until I was in the 8th grade, when we applied for one as part of a school project. (Nearly forty years on, I can't even remember what the project was.) My Navy recruiter included SSN application forms in the packet he gave me at our first interview, because back then unless you had an after school job teenagers didn't have an SSN.
My younger sister didn't get hers until she was applying for her first after school job (at age sixteen), five years later and in a different state from where I obtained mine.
There's no fundamental reason that the "assisted GPS" system used in cell phones has to have location info available on the server side, either. There's enough CPU power in cell phones now to run the entire GPS algorithm locally.
True, but 'so what?'. The key problem with GPS location often isn't CPU power, but antenna design. There isn't enough room inside a phone for any but the most rudimentary antenna, which means problems in fixing your position - especially in urban canyons and densely built up areas where you have serious satellite visibility and signal multipath problems. Dedicated GPS receivers also have additional clock circuits and dedicated processing channels to help with these problems (which a phone also doesn't have the room for) but even they can only do so much. (And I shouldn't have to point out that all these things add to the cost of the phone, while really not adding to the overall functionality.)
[$INCLUDE='standard rant reminding Slashdotters that there is more to the real world of engineering than CPU cycles']
You probably could overcome all this with raw CPU power - but at a cost to all the other things the phones are doing while providing navigation services.
These kinds of decisions aren't made in a vacuum you know. The servers that provide aGPS services, and their software and maintenance aren't free (while they can be passed on to the customer). If they could drop those services (and the associated costs) and shove all that functionality to the phone - you can bet your bottom dollar they would. But they can't, not while delivering all the other things a phone is expected to do simultaneously with pretending to be a GPSr and an autonavigator. The customer demands the phone pretend to be something it isn't, and the vendors gladly comply.
For typical missions the Shuttle doesn't need much cross-range capability: You just wait for the orbit closest to going right over the landing site and go down then. This happens twice per day.
How often it happens is a product of orbital inclination and orbital altitude, for a typical Shuttle mission it happens on average twice a day.
You could get away with little stubby wings like the X-15.
That's what the designers of the Shuttle thought too, way back at the start of the design process. Then they actually started doing mission analysis - and discovered how very wrong they were. It turned out that average of only twice a day could leave the crew stranded, unable to reach a safe landing site, for periods of up to eighteen hours. Not good in the event of a problem on orbit, and the only way to fix it was to add cross range capability (read: bigger wings). They also discovered that lack of cross range capability limited the choice of abort scenarios and limited the orbital inclinations the Shuttle could reach. All of this meant the wings started growing - big and fast.
Once they did the computation right it turns out that the shuttle would only have a couple hundred pounds of payload to polar orbit. No launching spy satellites for you! Oops!
Wrong. Shuttle capacity to polar orbit is notionally 28000 pounds. (Probably greater now with the reduced weight External Tank developed for ISS missions.)
So the military didn't end up using the shuttle (except for a couple equatorial shots testing some gear).
Wrong again. At least one military Shuttle mission went into a 61 degree orbit. Several launched classified satellites.
It's honestly my only use for wave, but it's a good one. Someone asks a question, someone else answers, someone else corrects the answer, someone else provides links to citations.
A wiki page does the same thing, loads faster, has less overhead, as doesn't take up 2/3 of the screen with drek irrelevant to the FAQ - and can be seen by anyone without needing to log in. If that's the "best use" for Wave, that's damming it with faint praise indeed.
One only needs to sell about a hundred albums at $10 each to break even nowadays
To break even with... what? The cost of your computer? To pay yourself a decent living wage for the hours spent writing, composing, and producing? I mean, you've got a nice soundbite there, but there isn't any context or meaning.
The problem is which people do you give what they want? The playerbase of any game is hardly a monolithic bloc all of whom deserve more-or-less the same thing. Almost certainly, some of 'what the players want' is going to be mutually exclusive.
Back Alley Brawler, a developer for City of Heroes/Villains puts it thus; "If this game spit out twenty dollar bills, people would complain they weren't in serial number order. If they were in serial number order, people would complain they weren't random enough."
The Internet makes a lot of things possible when it comes to unprecedented communication between suppliers and consumers. Of course, this only works if you believe your users know what they want.
Kids want nothing but candy and cookies, and they certainly know that. (This is the origin of Monty Haul dungeons, the problem isn't new.) So what? People know what they want, but what they want isn't necessarily consistent with the long term health of the game.
If you really cannot get out of your cold war frame of mind, you'll never understand events that happen in the 21st century.
It's not a cold war state of mind, it's an actual understanding of basic geopolitics and a failure to confuse real life with a really bad technothriller.
The fact is, anyone who wants to attack the US would much rather do it anonymously.
Except, anonymity produces no deterrent effect. Or, IOW, your 'fact' is (no matter how much you handwave) is nothing but an ill informed fantasy.
and to make things worse, because ads do not fit well with plane crashes, terrorism, school shootings, corrupt politicians, the media seems to be gradually going to a "feel good" news dystopia.
I'm guessing that you don't actually follow any news or media, because plane crashes etc... are quite well covered.
Wave is like a big box of Lego. You can build some really cool stuff with it, if you know what you want to build up front. It can build things more easily and conveniently than many other tools.
So long as what you want to build can usefully be built with Legos. If you need steel, or glass, or rubber, or bits and bytes... you're screwed.
But if you just start mashing pieces together without a shared vision of what you are doing, it's a complete clusterfuck.
Most people want a tool that works - not a Glorious Shared Vision. And again, that's where Google Wave falls short. It doesn't really work all that well, it has a very abstruse and esoteric interface, and it doesn't scale.
I am sick and tired of these guys playing with my own money as well as, pensioners, my grandmas, and my employers money. A single mistake effects me and everyone reading this while the traders get bonuses.
On the other hand, when they cause the prices to go up - it effects you and everyone reading this too. But I bet you never complain about that do you?
Slashdot Mirror
And you know that to be a fact... how exactly?
Given the great gushers of new material being published per annum, current copyright doesn't seem to be doing any harm on that front. So, what exactly is your point?
The date was in the summary - right in the second line. The comment about Memorial Day weekend (incorrectly not capitalized) was at the end and added to the summary by the editor. So anyone seeing 'evidence' of anything about the USA is reading into the article and the summary something which simply isn't there - and thus confirming their own biases. (Which also goes for the people modding it up without bothering to compare crimperman's complaint against what was actually written - Slashdot reflexive moderation at work.)
Had I claimed it was a big issue, you'd have a point. Just like in your original post, you dodge and handwave and do everything but address the issue.
And now, you change your story from "fragmentation isn't an issue (except where it is)" to "I don't believe fragmentation is an issue". So which is it?
Had I quoted you out of context, you'd have a point - but I quoted you exactly. Had I scaremongered or spread FUD instead of pointing out the logical conclusions that your statements pointed to, you'd have a point.
But again, we see the handwaving and smokescreens in place of addressing the questions.
Which has nothing to do with the original question - for reference this was "why would you have expected a faster plane to have been built?".
Which works just fine - so long as you don't need something provided by a higher version. Or, in other words, there is fragmentation and it does cause problems, but you can avoid if those problems only if you're willing (or able) to tie yourself to the lowest common denominator.
"Mostly FUD", "the vast majority", "most API's"... In other words, there is truth to the claims of problems caused by fragmentation.
Which, like your statements quoted above, neatly dodges the issue - there are problems caused by fragmentation, and you are trying to double speak them away.
Which fails to answer the question - why would you expect a faster plane to have been built?
Having better engines and materials aren't, in and of themselves, reason to expect such an aircraft to be built. (Doubly so since most contemporary engines were more efficient than the SR-71's. There's a clue there somewhere.)
Since it's astronomers that build and operate the observatories, and we've discovered, among other things, exoplanets from long term monitoring programs at said observatories... your statement makes little sense.
Given the low cost of high end amateur grade scope, if useful science could truly be done on it, where are the ongoing proposals from the astronomers that such things be be built/obtained?
Why a troll moderation? Folks like the OP keep expressing 'bewilderment' because we haven't built a plane faster then the SR-71 since the 60's - without actually being clear on why they're bewildered and why they should be. It's time to drag this moldy chestnut out into the light.
Assuming there *is* a next lane, *and* it has space, *and* you have time to react. A very unlikely chain of events indeed. It's the matter of time that's a particular problem, as I find it very unlikely you'll have the 10-30 seconds forewarning you'll require.
That's a question akin to the old excuse for not wearing seat belts: "what happens if I'm knocked unconscious in a crash and can't undo my seat belt to get out of a car that's going to explode?". Well, if you're unconscious you're not going to be undo your seat belt are you? The same for crash avoidance with the engine off when stopped at a stop light - you're stopped. You aren't going to avoid a crash. It's unlikely there will be time for you to react by taking your foot off the brake, onto the gas, and (assuming there's space to actually do something) move/accelerate clear of the potential accident.
And how exactly does this work? You pull forward a few feet and the car coming at you still hits you, only it hits you a little bit later than otherwise. Assuming you have the sure and certain foreknowledge that the oncoming car *is* going to hit you, early enough for you to do something about it - something I find fairly unlikely.
Assuming you're in the US, this sounds like a holdover from the days when most cars had manual transmissions and on the slightest of hills tended to roll a bit backwards when going from stopped to going forward. It certainly (except in exceptionally hilly situations) seems to make no sense today.
Not particularly, no. Why should I?
That depends on how old you are - those of us born before the IRS started requiring SSNs for all dependents claimed on the tax forms often have SSNs acquired years after and miles away from where we were born. I didn't get an SSN until I was in the 8th grade, when we applied for one as part of a school project. (Nearly forty years on, I can't even remember what the project was.) My Navy recruiter included SSN application forms in the packet he gave me at our first interview, because back then unless you had an after school job teenagers didn't have an SSN.
My younger sister didn't get hers until she was applying for her first after school job (at age sixteen), five years later and in a different state from where I obtained mine.
True, but 'so what?'. The key problem with GPS location often isn't CPU power, but antenna design. There isn't enough room inside a phone for any but the most rudimentary antenna, which means problems in fixing your position - especially in urban canyons and densely built up areas where you have serious satellite visibility and signal multipath problems. Dedicated GPS receivers also have additional clock circuits and dedicated processing channels to help with these problems (which a phone also doesn't have the room for) but even they can only do so much. (And I shouldn't have to point out that all these things add to the cost of the phone, while really not adding to the overall functionality.)
[$INCLUDE='standard rant reminding Slashdotters that there is more to the real world of engineering than CPU cycles']
You probably could overcome all this with raw CPU power - but at a cost to all the other things the phones are doing while providing navigation services.
These kinds of decisions aren't made in a vacuum you know. The servers that provide aGPS services, and their software and maintenance aren't free (while they can be passed on to the customer). If they could drop those services (and the associated costs) and shove all that functionality to the phone - you can bet your bottom dollar they would. But they can't, not while delivering all the other things a phone is expected to do simultaneously with pretending to be a GPSr and an autonavigator. The customer demands the phone pretend to be something it isn't, and the vendors gladly comply.
How often it happens is a product of orbital inclination and orbital altitude, for a typical Shuttle mission it happens on average twice a day.
That's what the designers of the Shuttle thought too, way back at the start of the design process. Then they actually started doing mission analysis - and discovered how very wrong they were. It turned out that average of only twice a day could leave the crew stranded, unable to reach a safe landing site, for periods of up to eighteen hours. Not good in the event of a problem on orbit, and the only way to fix it was to add cross range capability (read: bigger wings). They also discovered that lack of cross range capability limited the choice of abort scenarios and limited the orbital inclinations the Shuttle could reach. All of this meant the wings started growing - big and fast.
Wrong. Shuttle capacity to polar orbit is notionally 28000 pounds. (Probably greater now with the reduced weight External Tank developed for ISS missions.)
Wrong again. At least one military Shuttle mission went into a 61 degree orbit. Several launched classified satellites.
Must be nice to have that kind of money to burn. For many of the rest of us, neither computers nor other appliances are disposable.
A wiki page does the same thing, loads faster, has less overhead, as doesn't take up 2/3 of the screen with drek irrelevant to the FAQ - and can be seen by anyone without needing to log in. If that's the "best use" for Wave, that's damming it with faint praise indeed.
To break even with... what? The cost of your computer? To pay yourself a decent living wage for the hours spent writing, composing, and producing? I mean, you've got a nice soundbite there, but there isn't any context or meaning.
For the kind of person who rates his own value in terms of whether his material possessions are equal to or better than someone else's. Sure.
The problem is which people do you give what they want? The playerbase of any game is hardly a monolithic bloc all of whom deserve more-or-less the same thing. Almost certainly, some of 'what the players want' is going to be mutually exclusive.
Back Alley Brawler, a developer for City of Heroes/Villains puts it thus; "If this game spit out twenty dollar bills, people would complain they weren't in serial number order. If they were in serial number order, people would complain they weren't random enough."
Kids want nothing but candy and cookies, and they certainly know that. (This is the origin of Monty Haul dungeons, the problem isn't new.) So what? People know what they want, but what they want isn't necessarily consistent with the long term health of the game.
It's not a cold war state of mind, it's an actual understanding of basic geopolitics and a failure to confuse real life with a really bad technothriller.
Except, anonymity produces no deterrent effect. Or, IOW, your 'fact' is (no matter how much you handwave) is nothing but an ill informed fantasy.
I'm guessing that you don't actually follow any news or media, because plane crashes etc... are quite well covered.
So long as what you want to build can usefully be built with Legos. If you need steel, or glass, or rubber, or bits and bytes... you're screwed.
Most people want a tool that works - not a Glorious Shared Vision. And again, that's where Google Wave falls short. It doesn't really work all that well, it has a very abstruse and esoteric interface, and it doesn't scale.
On the other hand, when they cause the prices to go up - it effects you and everyone reading this too. But I bet you never complain about that do you?