Why wouldn't they be? Quick charge means they constantly (or nearly constantly) have maximum capacity available - which is the ideal state for a backup system (because it makes system performance predictable and maximizes uptime in the event of power outage).
It's 2008 and people are still going to the store?
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I have not shopped in a grocery store in almost my entire adult life.
It's not a generational thing at all.
I actually prefer to select my own vegetables and meats. Especially with the latter, one may have multiple identically labled cuts of meat - but each package is itself of often unique and not suited to all purposes that labled cut is nominally used for. (I.E. when I'm choosing a chuck roast to cut into stew meat, I want an entirely different configuration than a chuck roast destined for pot roast.) For folks who don't care what they eat, this may not apply.
Even more importantly, grocery delivery is not offered in my town. A brief perusal of the websites of various major grocers indicate that they either don't offer delivery, or only do so in limited [major metropolitan] areas. This suggest that the availability of grocery delivery is far from universal, possibly far from common.
Do people have so much disposable time and so little else they could do with many extra hours a month that they still go shopping in an actual store?
Many extra hours a month? Methinks you exaggerate, or haven't shopped in so long (or were a poor shopper) that the time it takes has grown, in your mind, to exceed the time it actually takes. I spend about ten hours a month shopping - but mostly because I am long practiced and 80% of it is done on autopilot.
Do they look forward so much to driving around, dealing with parking, shopping carts, lines, people, their bratty kids, aisles, noise and lugging things around?
So why wheel a cart around like some sort of trained monkey in a store full of fluorescent lights and elevator music and snotty whining kids grabbing things off the shelves and throwing tantrums in the middle of the aisle?
Again, exaggeration - but beyond that required to make a point, and into the territory of strawmen.
You don't still go out and butcher or milk your own cow. You don't go out and pick your own oranges.
To extend that logic to it's conclusion - why do you even bother to cook? If you are all about saving effort and maximal convience, why don't you just order food to be delivered fully cooked and ready to eat?
Vendor lock in. The biggest advantage of Free Software is freedom from vendor lock in. Ever found a bug in a program and been told 'yes, we fixed that. Pay $100 for the new version if you want the fix?'
Yes, and I've also been told by the maintainers of a F/OSS app 'yes, we fixed that. The fix will be in the next release.' Four years later, and there not only has not been a next release... The project website is now an adfarm and emails to every single one of the developers adresses bounce, and have been bouncing for years. As a normal user, I only downloaded the executeable files - and nobody that I can find has a copy of the source of this little piece of niche software. (It never was on Sourceforge.)
How precisely am I better off? Lock-in can happen just as easily with F/OSS, and unless you a programmer yourself or can arrange for a fork... you are going to stay locked in. If I hadn't abandoned the project for other reasons, I'd have had to spend days recreating my work on what was regarded (at the time, and for good reason) as a distant second place application.
There are more important problems than space beauty and fantasy, such as energy, environment, education, and poverty. Government spending on those problems are equal economic engines with more practical benefit.
Let's put it this way: The total cost of the US space program to date wouldn't pay the 2007 budget of any one of those 'important problems'. It wouldn't even come close.
To suggest that space funding would materially effect the solutions to the problems is utter lunacy. (Especially in light of the vast sums of money poured in them, the latter two especially, with little practical benefit.)
To date, that's what the OLPC program has been. Negroponte in the past has all but ruled out selling the OLPC in America - because he intended the OLPC for 'poor nations'. (Rather than needy children.)
But, as usual his real reasons shine through: 'The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community'. It's all about politics, and the children only interest Negroponte to the extent they allow him to pursue his political goals.
I would say that this is a question about valuation. Do you value more on saving a few dimes and not build enough capacity, or do you spend more and make sure that in any situation there is enough power.
I would say, as you abundantly prove, that you have no idea what you are talking about.
If I walk alone down the sidewalk in a really bad part of town, thumbing through my wallet counting my 20's and get mugged. Yes, you got it right. Blame The Victim.
ROTFLMAO.
If the demonstrator was thumbing through 20's anywhere - it was in the lobby of a bank. Nowhere near the bad side of town.
Not taking at least minor, reasonable precautions and making yourself a very easy target is not entirely, but at least to some degree, your own fault. There's even laws for that if you look around. Google "attractive nuisance".
ROTFLMAO.
Same way, f you don't lock your car door and leave the keys in the ignition, parked in the lot at the mall while you shop, and it gets stolen, you can't blame the car thief 100%. Some of the responsibility rests on you for your carelessness.
So why not? Why not build more capacity to California and other parts of US?
Because that capacity is only needed for a very short period annually, which means the amortized cost of the plants in extremely high - far too high to afford. Kinda like buying a brand new pickup truck, and then only using it to purchase your Christmas tree and a couple of weeks later to haul it away.
Like most systems, the power grid is designed handle the maximum average load - not the maximum possible spikes. Even if we were 100% nuclear, the same problem would remain.
WYIAAS. (Why Yes, I Am A Submariner, or at least I used to be.)
Just change how you look for them. Instead of looking for signature noise, look for a "hole" in the background noise of the ocean.
Except - that doesn't really work all that well in real life except when the submarine is very close to those who would like to detect it. Much, much closer than those trying to dectect the submarine actually want that submarine to be. The background noise in the ocean isn't stable enough to routinely depend on detection by occulation - it varies on a short time scale. It's more of a generalized (and varying) background roar than point sources that can be individually detected.
It can be made to work under certain circumstances, you just can't rely on it.
If you leave something THAT open to pranking at a public or semi-public event, it's going to happen. You deserve what you get for that level of carelessness.
Ah yes, the old "blame-the-victim" argument. If someone heaves a rock through my window, you'd probably say it was my fault for not covering them with plywood.
Most digital cameras are VERY senstitive to IR light, and to anyone with a digital camera looking at the LCD preview screen, or to anyone with a web cam pointed into the audience, that remote would go off like a strobe. It should have taken them less than 20 seconds to find this joker.
That's pretty being even more paranoid than the TSA. One generally expects professional to act like professionals - the same way I don't lock up all my valuables before letting a guest into my home.
It's funny how when your Leave It To Beaver vision of the 1950's is challenged, you haul out a bunch of numbers - most of which have nothing to do with your original claims. I never claimed that we have less to worry about today, only that your rosy picture of the 1950's has nothing to do with reality.
Yeah, I laughed at the too. The only difference between the parties at the end of the day is the spelling of the name - both are equally beholden to industry.
Because for me, work is more than just collecting a paycheck. It is an opportunity to create value for others and receive a reward for creating that value.
Hello - if someone didn't value what you produced, they wouldn't pay you. And I should have to point out that getting paid is getting rewarded.
So don't apply to any startups - problem solved.
Isn't that advice sort of like telling an business guy who has trouble recognizing good programmers to not start a software company?
No, it's nothing at all like that.
Okay, so maybe that is good advice, but it doesn't exactly help one grow -- you know?
It wasn't precisely advice - it was a subtle way of rejecting a strawman. If you don't like the risk, don't take it. If you do take the risk, don't complain when the dice come up snake eyes.
Many people in the technical world are annoyed by arrogrance and ignorance too. Honestly, I'm a bit igornant about how I was arrogant in the grandfather post.
That was aimed less at you, than at techies in general. They, as a class, seem to insist they know everything better than anyone. They know business, without any experience. They know marketing, without any experience, etc... etc...
The part that is aimed at you adresses your implication that a 'good businessman' will guarantee success.. Which couldn't be further from the truth. There's many a good businessman working at Burger King because they had the wrong idea, or they had the right idea - but the business failed from factors beyond their control. There's many a random MBA living on easy street because he had the right idea at the right time, or because he hitched onto a rising star at the right time. (And in both statements, you can exchange one for the other and still have a true statement.)
I'm surprised nobody has asked the obvious question. Switches normally switch between two tracks. How does switching a train to a different track cause it to derail? Collide, sure, but derail?
Let's posit a scenario - the train is going in a straight line at speed, then suddenly... isn't. (I.E. it goes through the switch.) What do you think is going to happen?
Answer: It's going to derail. That's why there are speed limits going through switches.
It never occurred to me that folks might not know something so elementary as "if you suddenly and unexpectedly turn something that was going in a straight line, Bad Thing Happen".
don't want to waste five years of my life implementing some POS idea by Joe Random MBA that is never going to make a dime.
If you get a paycheck, what does it matter?
. I am extremely hesitant to go work for any startup unless I personally know the people starting it and know that they have a track record of making good business decisions.
So don't apply to any startups - problem solved.
From my experience, many business people feel the same way about technical people.
Many people in the business world are annoyed with programmers because of the arrogance and ignorance you display above.
The article in question is slashdotted, but from the responses it sounds like yet another programmers wet dream - where they aren't held to any standards and aren't required to actually prove themselves. The mere fact that they are programmers places them above the constraints applied to mere humanity.
How many people do you know that only use a computer for myspace and music that had to shell out $1000+ in order to get the hardware just to run Vista?
Precisely none.
I've seen plenty, and it pisses me off. All that hardware and money wasted for an OS that's overpriced to begin with.
Ah yes. It must be entirely the fault of the Microsoft Conspiracy - after all, without the Conspiracies orbital mind control lasers nobody would replace perfectly functioning boxes. It can't possible be a problem in the brain/chair interface.
He _sounds_ rather accurate - but he confuses assumptions with facts. He's also vastly wrong in his implication that inflation and deflation of currency are not problems in a hard money economy.
Re:We need this type of thing done in the classroo
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Tell that to the people a generation ago that was doing it without any modern technology as it WAS modern tech at the time. They got by just fine.
Just it because it isn't modern high tech doesn't mean it doesn't have a significant technological infrastructure in it's own right behind it.
Things like this would be the stepping stones to get back on track because of their lack of reliance on todays 21st century tech.
In really bad science fiction novels, sure. In reality it takes a lot of effort to support even 18th century technology.
This limited inflation (the only way to deflate the currency was to send bankers to the hills to mine metals) and was real value.
ROTFLMAO. Have you actually studied the history of economics? You might try is sometime rather than parroting bullshit you've cut and pasted from the web somewhere.
The OLPC project, as originally conceived, had huge collaborative potential. Put an open platform into the hands of many, many people. Let them figure out what direction they want to take it.
Sure, choice is good. But with the XO-1 you don't actually have a choice - it only ships with one OS.
Close that platform, and suddenly it makes no sense at all.
Giving people a choice of OS is closing the platform? Didn't you just say that people should be given a chance to choose their own direction? (Or did you actually mean "they have a free choice - conform to my biases or do without"?)
It's no longer an extensible means of cultural and technological expression but just another consumer product, good for nothing more than keeping the Third World in its place, right at the bottom.
Seriously, are you on drugs? Do honestly believe that acess only to a computer with Windows (which isn't what is being proposed here.), that they won't acess the net, participate in social networks, use them for education, etc... etc... (I.E. all the things the XO-1 is being touted for). What leads you to think that a Windows machine isn't a "extensible means of cultural and technological expression"? (Setting aside the question of the value of such vague buzzwords.) There isn't much that can be done with the average Linux box that can't be done with the average Windows box - anything more requires significantly more technical skills than the target market for the XO-1 has.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not cynical - it's just recognition of good business practice.
Why wouldn't they be? Quick charge means they constantly (or nearly constantly) have maximum capacity available - which is the ideal state for a backup system (because it makes system performance predictable and maximizes uptime in the event of power outage).
It's not a generational thing at all.
Many extra hours a month? Methinks you exaggerate, or haven't shopped in so long (or were a poor shopper) that the time it takes has grown, in your mind, to exceed the time it actually takes. I spend about ten hours a month shopping - but mostly because I am long practiced and 80% of it is done on autopilot.
Again, exaggeration - but beyond that required to make a point, and into the territory of strawmen.
To extend that logic to it's conclusion - why do you even bother to cook? If you are all about saving effort and maximal convience, why don't you just order food to be delivered fully cooked and ready to eat?
Yes, and I've also been told by the maintainers of a F/OSS app 'yes, we fixed that. The fix will be in the next release.' Four years later, and there not only has not been a next release... The project website is now an adfarm and emails to every single one of the developers adresses bounce, and have been bouncing for years. As a normal user, I only downloaded the executeable files - and nobody that I can find has a copy of the source of this little piece of niche software. (It never was on Sourceforge.)
How precisely am I better off? Lock-in can happen just as easily with F/OSS, and unless you a programmer yourself or can arrange for a fork... you are going to stay locked in. If I hadn't abandoned the project for other reasons, I'd have had to spend days recreating my work on what was regarded (at the time, and for good reason) as a distant second place application.
Let's put it this way: The total cost of the US space program to date wouldn't pay the 2007 budget of any one of those 'important problems'. It wouldn't even come close.
To suggest that space funding would materially effect the solutions to the problems is utter lunacy. (Especially in light of the vast sums of money poured in them, the latter two especially, with little practical benefit.)
To date, that's what the OLPC program has been. Negroponte in the past has all but ruled out selling the OLPC in America - because he intended the OLPC for 'poor nations'. (Rather than needy children.)
But, as usual his real reasons shine through: 'The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community'. It's all about politics, and the children only interest Negroponte to the extent they allow him to pursue his political goals.
Do you also contest the law of gravity?
I would say, as you abundantly prove, that you have no idea what you are talking about.
ROTFLMAO.
If the demonstrator was thumbing through 20's anywhere - it was in the lobby of a bank. Nowhere near the bad side of town.
ROTFLMAO.
ROTFLMAO.
You are a sad and addled individual.
Because that capacity is only needed for a very short period annually, which means the amortized cost of the plants in extremely high - far too high to afford. Kinda like buying a brand new pickup truck, and then only using it to purchase your Christmas tree and a couple of weeks later to haul it away.
Like most systems, the power grid is designed handle the maximum average load - not the maximum possible spikes. Even if we were 100% nuclear, the same problem would remain.
Except - that doesn't really work all that well in real life except when the submarine is very close to those who would like to detect it. Much, much closer than those trying to dectect the submarine actually want that submarine to be. The background noise in the ocean isn't stable enough to routinely depend on detection by occulation - it varies on a short time scale. It's more of a generalized (and varying) background roar than point sources that can be individually detected.
It can be made to work under certain circumstances, you just can't rely on it.
Ah yes, the old "blame-the-victim" argument. If someone heaves a rock through my window, you'd probably say it was my fault for not covering them with plywood.
That's pretty being even more paranoid than the TSA. One generally expects professional to act like professionals - the same way I don't lock up all my valuables before letting a guest into my home.
It's funny how when your Leave It To Beaver vision of the 1950's is challenged, you haul out a bunch of numbers - most of which have nothing to do with your original claims. I never claimed that we have less to worry about today, only that your rosy picture of the 1950's has nothing to do with reality.
Been watching Leave It To Beaver reruns again? Because you describe is la-la land in some far off time, not the US in 1958.
Yeah, I laughed at the too. The only difference between the parties at the end of the day is the spelling of the name - both are equally beholden to industry.
No, it's nothing at all like that.
It wasn't precisely advice - it was a subtle way of rejecting a strawman. If you don't like the risk, don't take it. If you do take the risk, don't complain when the dice come up snake eyes.
That was aimed less at you, than at techies in general. They, as a class, seem to insist they know everything better than anyone. They know business, without any experience. They know marketing, without any experience, etc... etc...
The part that is aimed at you adresses your implication that a 'good businessman' will guarantee success.. Which couldn't be further from the truth. There's many a good businessman working at Burger King because they had the wrong idea, or they had the right idea - but the business failed from factors beyond their control. There's many a random MBA living on easy street because he had the right idea at the right time, or because he hitched onto a rising star at the right time. (And in both statements, you can exchange one for the other and still have a true statement.)
Let's posit a scenario - the train is going in a straight line at speed, then suddenly... isn't. (I.E. it goes through the switch.) What do you think is going to happen?
Answer: It's going to derail. That's why there are speed limits going through switches.
It never occurred to me that folks might not know something so elementary as "if you suddenly and unexpectedly turn something that was going in a straight line, Bad Thing Happen".
If you get a paycheck, what does it matter?
So don't apply to any startups - problem solved.
Many people in the business world are annoyed with programmers because of the arrogance and ignorance you display above.
The article in question is slashdotted, but from the responses it sounds like yet another programmers wet dream - where they aren't held to any standards and aren't required to actually prove themselves. The mere fact that they are programmers places them above the constraints applied to mere humanity.
Precisely none.
Ah yes. It must be entirely the fault of the Microsoft Conspiracy - after all, without the Conspiracies orbital mind control lasers nobody would replace perfectly functioning boxes. It can't possible be a problem in the brain/chair interface.
He _sounds_ rather accurate - but he confuses assumptions with facts. He's also vastly wrong in his implication that inflation and deflation of currency are not problems in a hard money economy.
Just it because it isn't modern high tech doesn't mean it doesn't have a significant technological infrastructure in it's own right behind it.
In really bad science fiction novels, sure. In reality it takes a lot of effort to support even 18th century technology.
Certainly. _IF_ one of the two OSes had that misfeature. Neither does.
Try working forward from facts rather than spewing FUD. Read the fucking article.
ROTFLMAO. Have you actually studied the history of economics? You might try is sometime rather than parroting bullshit you've cut and pasted from the web somewhere.
Sure, choice is good. But with the XO-1 you don't actually have a choice - it only ships with one OS.
Giving people a choice of OS is closing the platform? Didn't you just say that people should be given a chance to choose their own direction? (Or did you actually mean "they have a free choice - conform to my biases or do without"?)
Seriously, are you on drugs? Do honestly believe that acess only to a computer with Windows (which isn't what is being proposed here.), that they won't acess the net, participate in social networks, use them for education, etc... etc... (I.E. all the things the XO-1 is being touted for). What leads you to think that a Windows machine isn't a "extensible means of cultural and technological expression"? (Setting aside the question of the value of such vague buzzwords.) There isn't much that can be done with the average Linux box that can't be done with the average Windows box - anything more requires significantly more technical skills than the target market for the XO-1 has.
It also shows that open source has failed to use a common tool to self audit - it took a third party to do so.
Less encouraging is that they existed in the first place - doubly so since all the software you list is more-or-less 'mature'.