Not true at all - a device can be limited in what it can do, and still be a fairly sophisticated design.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that either. All the so-called Software "Engineers" could learn a lesson from these guys in building purpose-built things that are simple and work!
I seriously doubt anything about PLATO is 'simple'.
The problem with the maglev isn't the up front cost - it's the fact that it's extremely unlikely to pay for itself. Annual maintenance costs alone will be nearly crippling, let alone other operating expenses and repaying the construction loans/bonds.
I find it interesting that they decided (probably pretty intelligently) that the eaeiest way to do this project was robotrically
Well, this isn't exactly a robot - not in the normal sense. (Compared to Spirit and Opportunity.) When you get down to it, PLATO is really just a fancy webcam. Scientifically very useful, but very limited in what it can do.
Um, no. One ingredient used as a pigment is also used for those purposes - nothing is said in the linked article about all the other ingredients used in paints.
So where's the story here? These paint flecks kill somebody? You want the FDA to get anal retentive on your medications, fine. Just realize those expensive drugs are going to get a little more expensive and sick people who are poor might not be able to afford them anymore.
Yeah, it's just not possible that Gmail, the darling of the techie set, isn't equally loved by everyone. We'll just handwave away standard metrics because, gosh isn't Gmail just special? You just can't use standard metrics.
Grow the hell up. Gmail has been around for four years - and invites (to the theoretically private/invitation only beta) weren't precisely hard to come by after the first month or two.
From what I read of the article, this is about enforcing societal norms on employees.
Which says to me that you didn't read any of it. The incompatibility problems discussed in the article are well known (at least among people who follow the space program) - and have nothing to do with with 'conforming' or 'fashions' or 'societal norms'.
The US already has a largish pool of individuals already self selected, tested, screened, and proven for many of the traits that NASA seem to want here. A large number of them even have college degrees. (The only drawback being - the pool 100% male.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Yeah, you need fighter pilots to do the piloting part on the Shuttle and Orion and any future landing, but to actually operate the gear and the experiments on the Station, on a Moon or Mars base, or cruising to and from Mars: Your best bet is to recruit from the US Submarine Service.
I know what you were thinking of - it's not an original idea. But the problem is, there isn't that much waste heat in the process and most of it is low grade heat.
I'm talked about what happened to Hotmail. Hotmail *ahem* MSN mail is big because there are a lot more people on the web now than when they were bought. Their market growth is due only to the fact that there are users that don't know better and they get it FREE with their MSN account.
Ah yes, the same old saw, 'Hotmail is only big because users are stupid'. It's just not possible that people might prefer it.
It's very amusing actually - every time this topic comes up, folks on Slashdot scramble wildly to explain how various research groups can't possibly be right. Gmail can't possibly be in third place among webmails users. It's just not possible!
Regardless of what the OP meant - facts are facts.
Yeah, you can argue with stocks. GOOG's stock price is largely because it is currently a 'darling' and [the stock price] is in no way way justified by cash flow. Consider this: With only four times as much income - GOOG is valued at twenty times as much as YHOO.
Yahoo's never been good with making money - Google and Microsoft are.
Android is not really a seperate venture. It mainly facilitates extending their core business into mobile space so that your whole Google existance can fit in your pocket meaning more searches and uses of Google services --> more Google business.
Google doesn't want you to use more Google services. They want you to see more Google served advertising.
These are fiber optic cable - scrap value essentially zero. Less once you account for the nontrivial amount of machinery needed to haul the cable up and spool it.
Microsoft has too much hubris to keep Yahoo's technology, they're going to change it all to Windows and.NET and just like what happened with Hotmail it will suck in then end.
Yeah, Microsoft killed Hotmail so thoroughly that it remains nearly the biggest player in Webmail and has a market share considerably larger than Gmail.
Where are those users going to go? I'd wager the vast majority of them will go straight to Google. Google doesn't need to buy Yahoo, they're going to get the users anyway
I'd wager you are wrong. There's a lot more to Yahoo than webmail - there's groups, the financial portal, the ecommerce portal... In fact, when you look at a complete list (a lot of those single line items are actually feature rich services in their own right, don't be fooled), I see a lot of things Google simply doesn't provide. Yahoo is a portal - and a deeply and powerfully integrated one. Google isn't. Google is (largely) a collection of whatever shiny feature happened to catch their eye. Some of them are even out of beta.
Take a look at the Yahoo page I used as my browser start page... Google doesn't provide anything like it, or even close.
Google has 4 times the search hits of yahoo and is growing. Why spend 45bn on a sinking enemy?
Probably the huge number of users that Yahoo! has that Google doesn't. Yahoo! isn't a search company, and hasn't been for years - they are a portal, pretty much the only one to thrive. (And they are far from sinking.) Google isn't a search company, they are an ad agency.
Or it could have something to do with the fact that Gmail isn't really all that. Or it could be that folks don't want to trust their data and mail to a service that is in 'Beta'. Or any one of a dozen different reasons that don't (as your selective examples do) cast Gmail in a positive light and cast aspersions on those who haven't 'seen the light'.
Whatever the reason(s) - the simple fact is Gmail is basically a niche player in the webmail market. The great grandparent post has a lot of ranting, and like you attempts to demonize Hotmail, but inconviently the facts fail to support him. Or you.
Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?
The problem is the need for a huge amount of biomass and huge amount of energy to keep the process going. (For instance, here in the US Pacific Northwest, you'll need considerable heating capacity for a good chunk of the year.)
You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars...
Sure - but that won't actually noticeably decrease pollution and CO2 release once you factor in the need to keep some other form of generation in hot standby for when the wind isn't blowing.
Look at Hotmail and Gmail. Hotmail was a very early web email service. MS bought them. Then they just let it sit there. MS people saw Oddpost coming down the road, and they should have gotten all pumped up with what was possible. That's apparently what happened at Google -- someone saw that fancy Oddpost ajax email client, and said, let's do this better than Oddpost is doing it.
Yeah. And the result is that Hotmail has considerably more users than Gmail.
And there are stories floating around that yahoo people are saying -- there's no way in hell that we'll work for MS.
Yeah, right. It's easy to be brave and strong in the rumor mill - when the reality of mortgage payments sets in, they'll quiet down awful quickly.
There's only a single cable on that map connecting Ireland to the Internet. The English Channel has lots of shipping. That seems like something the Irish government would want to get fixed right away. Maybe another cable to Britain.
The English Channel lies between England and France, not between England and Ireland.
Or better yet, a cable to France, for not just geographical diversity but also geopolitical diversity. A cable to the Netherlands would give even better interconnectedness.
Both would be hideously expensive - and provide little benefit for the cost.
Any extra cables would also increase Ireland's overall Internet bandwidth. As that country climbs out of the Industrial Age (and really the Farming Age), it'll need more than one cable.
Ireland is a very small country - and a single cable carries a hell of a lot of bandwidth.
Geography. The same reason New York became a great city in the first place - it lies nicely on a great circle route from Europe. The other cities you listed aren't so conveniently located. (Not to mention that Washington and Philadelphia lie way the hell up shallow bays and rivers.)
Another key is that so much of the shoreside telecommunications ties into New York, and not so much into the other places. Much the same reason that back when they invented area codes, NYC got the area that was fastest to dial under the logic of the switching system - 212.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true at all - a device can be limited in what it can do, and still be a fairly sophisticated design.
I seriously doubt anything about PLATO is 'simple'.
The problem with the maglev isn't the up front cost - it's the fact that it's extremely unlikely to pay for itself. Annual maintenance costs alone will be nearly crippling, let alone other operating expenses and repaying the construction loans/bonds.
Well, this isn't exactly a robot - not in the normal sense. (Compared to Spirit and Opportunity.) When you get down to it, PLATO is really just a fancy webcam. Scientifically very useful, but very limited in what it can do.
Um, no. One ingredient used as a pigment is also used for those purposes - nothing is said in the linked article about all the other ingredients used in paints.
Good. That's the FDA's whole job.
It's not so much a story about tough tech, as a fluff piece about individual pieces of gear that have happened to survive various accidents/incidents.
Nothing to see here - this gets reported on Slashdot about once a month. Move along.
Yeah, it's just not possible that Gmail, the darling of the techie set, isn't equally loved by everyone. We'll just handwave away standard metrics because, gosh isn't Gmail just special? You just can't use standard metrics.
Grow the hell up. Gmail has been around for four years - and invites (to the theoretically private/invitation only beta) weren't precisely hard to come by after the first month or two.
Which says to me that you didn't read any of it. The incompatibility problems discussed in the article are well known (at least among people who follow the space program) - and have nothing to do with with 'conforming' or 'fashions' or 'societal norms'.
The US already has a largish pool of individuals already self selected, tested, screened, and proven for many of the traits that NASA seem to want here. A large number of them even have college degrees. (The only drawback being - the pool 100% male.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Yeah, you need fighter pilots to do the piloting part on the Shuttle and Orion and any future landing, but to actually operate the gear and the experiments on the Station, on a Moon or Mars base, or cruising to and from Mars: Your best bet is to recruit from the US Submarine Service.
I know what you were thinking of - it's not an original idea. But the problem is, there isn't that much waste heat in the process and most of it is low grade heat.
Ah yes, the same old saw, 'Hotmail is only big because users are stupid'. It's just not possible that people might prefer it.
Horseshit.
It's very amusing actually - every time this topic comes up, folks on Slashdot scramble wildly to explain how various research groups can't possibly be right. Gmail can't possibly be in third place among webmails users. It's just not possible!
Regardless of what the OP meant - facts are facts.
Yeah, you can argue with stocks. GOOG's stock price is largely because it is currently a 'darling' and [the stock price] is in no way way justified by cash flow. Consider this: With only four times as much income - GOOG is valued at twenty times as much as YHOO.
Yahoo cleared around 4 billion dollars last year.
Google doesn't want you to use more Google services. They want you to see more Google served advertising.
These are fiber optic cable - scrap value essentially zero. Less once you account for the nontrivial amount of machinery needed to haul the cable up and spool it.
Yeah, Microsoft killed Hotmail so thoroughly that it remains nearly the biggest player in Webmail and has a market share considerably larger than Gmail.
I'd wager you are wrong. There's a lot more to Yahoo than webmail - there's groups, the financial portal, the ecommerce portal... In fact, when you look at a complete list (a lot of those single line items are actually feature rich services in their own right, don't be fooled), I see a lot of things Google simply doesn't provide. Yahoo is a portal - and a deeply and powerfully integrated one. Google isn't. Google is (largely) a collection of whatever shiny feature happened to catch their eye. Some of them are even out of beta.
Take a look at the Yahoo page I used as my browser start page... Google doesn't provide anything like it, or even close.
Probably the huge number of users that Yahoo! has that Google doesn't. Yahoo! isn't a search company, and hasn't been for years - they are a portal, pretty much the only one to thrive. (And they are far from sinking.) Google isn't a search company, they are an ad agency.
You do the math.
Low grade heat - I.E. it's pretty hard to recover usefully.
Or it could have something to do with the fact that Gmail isn't really all that. Or it could be that folks don't want to trust their data and mail to a service that is in 'Beta'. Or any one of a dozen different reasons that don't (as your selective examples do) cast Gmail in a positive light and cast aspersions on those who haven't 'seen the light'.
Whatever the reason(s) - the simple fact is Gmail is basically a niche player in the webmail market. The great grandparent post has a lot of ranting, and like you attempts to demonize Hotmail, but inconviently the facts fail to support him. Or you.
The problem is the need for a huge amount of biomass and huge amount of energy to keep the process going. (For instance, here in the US Pacific Northwest, you'll need considerable heating capacity for a good chunk of the year.)
Sure - but that won't actually noticeably decrease pollution and CO2 release once you factor in the need to keep some other form of generation in hot standby for when the wind isn't blowing.
Yeah. And the result is that Hotmail has considerably more users than Gmail.
Yeah, right. It's easy to be brave and strong in the rumor mill - when the reality of mortgage payments sets in, they'll quiet down awful quickly.
The English Channel lies between England and France, not between England and Ireland.
Both would be hideously expensive - and provide little benefit for the cost.
Ireland is a very small country - and a single cable carries a hell of a lot of bandwidth.
Geography. The same reason New York became a great city in the first place - it lies nicely on a great circle route from Europe. The other cities you listed aren't so conveniently located. (Not to mention that Washington and Philadelphia lie way the hell up shallow bays and rivers.)
Another key is that so much of the shoreside telecommunications ties into New York, and not so much into the other places. Much the same reason that back when they invented area codes, NYC got the area that was fastest to dial under the logic of the switching system - 212.
Probably short term speculators and day traders looking for a quick in and out profit. (Or, possibly Yahoo has one or more white knights.)
Actually, at current prices, buying YHOO and taking the cash (or the conversion) yields a small profit