No, I am referring to you calling ZMA a vitamin - which it isn't. When you actually read the Wikipedia entry you cite - you'll note that the scientific uses aren't very well documented or supported. If you actually study the search links you provided, and discard the shill sites, you find the same thing.
I was responsible for such systems as a submariner in the USN, as well as having studied safety issues as an interested (and experienced/knowledgeable) amateur.
Nobody is saying that we should ignore even a single case where safety systems came in to play. All should be investigated and we should understand what, if anything, should be done differently.
That's the exact opposite of what your original post strongly implies. An implication which you then repeat in the balance of this message.
When safety systems work, we don't see that as a sign of danger, we see it as a confirmation that the safety systems were necessary.
That attitude is what killed the astronauts on Challenger... The safety systems (the backup O-rings) held - so they continued to fly.
When safety systems are called on to operate - something has failed. Period.
Your attitude arises from the fact that your safety experience is in single discrete incidents and any safety issues are over in a few hours - the fire is out, the rescue completed, etc... It is entirely inappropriate to the domains (airlines, nuclear power) to which you attempt to apply it, which are not discrete events but rather are ongoing operation across years or decades.
Is this proof that that the system is unsafe? Seems to me that something went wrong, safety systems kicked in, people took action as trained, and a problem was mitigated.
I recall the last few years of service of the Maine Yankee power plant not far from here. One day there was some kind of problem. Safety systems came in to play. The plant was shut down. Nobody was hurt. Nothing dangerous was released. All was well. Some people screamed at the danger of having the plant around.
Ah, yes - since the safety systems functioned, there is obviously no problem.
Wrong
Safety systems are circuit breakers - if nothing is wrong, if there is no problem, then they don't get tripped. But when there is a problem, they trip to prevent something far worse from happening. If they trip, something has gone wrong - by definition.
The comments on Walmart's site were rather interesting. Many people gave this a five star rating, but those people also mentioned that they knew Linux, were upgrading the hardware on this computer, and seemed to be very tech savvy.
Then there were the one star raters. These people talked about how cheap the PC was, and couldn't understand why it couldn't run their other software. They found the desktop confusing and the programs it came with overly complex.
This was brought up the first time this machine was covered on Slashdot post release. The Slashdot crowd ignored it, as it was evidence that fails to fit their preconcieved notions.
As many of the replies to this review show, they are ignoring it still.
This computer was an interesting experiment, and we'll see many more in the years to come. There's no way companies can sell $200 computers while buying a Windows license.
Nor are there very many places interested in selling a $200 computer in the first place. The profit margins at that price as slender, and the market segment that will be buy that computer are likely to require a great deal of support and handholding. Wal-mart wants to sell one because 'cheap' is their watchword - and they are losing ground (slowly) to other retailers who concentrate a little less on 'cheap' and a little more on 'quality'/'style'/etc...
You're going to see a lot more Linux computers for the masses before the end of next year. Someone is going to get it right.
I submit that it will be impossible to get 'right'. In the first place, ever since the Web exploded into the public consciousness various 'computers' simplified for web browsing, email, etc... have been released - to universal failure. Why? Because it turns out that not many people want such a 'crippled' device in the first place, and many who think they do soon learn different when they find the many things their 'computer' cannot do. (Such as run that cool game their $RELATIVE or $FRIEND has. Or run that interesting program that they found on the shelves at Costco.)
Okay-- the linux PC SOLD OUT. How can you argue with a product selling out? It may be a 1.5 rating compared to a new whizbang box (that sells for $1800) but at $200, a lot of people felt it was a 4.0 rating.
Because one also must answer the question "why did it sell out?". Did it sell out because it was cheap? Did it sell out because it was Linux? Did is sell out because it wasn't Windows? Did it sell out because it wasn't a Mac either?
Rumours and anecdotal evidence around the release date suggests that a large number of them went not to John Q. Public, but to Linux devotees wanting a cheap and preconfigured box. If this is true - then it suggests that the next batch may not sell quite as well.
A single data point does not define a curve.
The key is this... Microsoft's "network effect" is fading. Vista sucks so developers can't count on it being installed
But they can bet on XP being installed - and that is a lot of boxen. The "network effect" is still there, faded only slightly at best.
No, it is a response to your (false) implication that Google Apps are like the transistor radio - wildly sucessful because it filled it a niche market with little competition. I then go further and show how that 'sucess' is actually quite limited, as invariably the product is discarded for another as the customer ages.
Google is a great company today because it saw that you don't try to sell Linux to the same customers who buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office the same way that Microsoft sells those products: in a desktop computer or notebook used by power users. At least not at first. Instead, rent Linux to them 1/10th of a second at a time.
ROTFLMAO. Google neither rents nor sells Linux - the OS of it's web applications are utterly irrelevant.
[snippage of your further application of case studies to situations where they have no relevance.]
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
Disruptive innovations often start out underperforming the market leaders' products.
So do many failed innovations.
Oh, and BTW, when was the last time you bought an RCA product? What about a Sony product? Yet when Sony was young, it was mocked as "cheap Japanese crap." Think of that next time someone mocks Google Apps.
"They laughed at Columbus. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Disruptive innovations often start out underperforming the market leaders' products. This has happened time and time again in history. The classic example is Sony's transistor radios. When they first came out in the 1960s, they had poor sound volume, poor reception, and poor sound quality. But they did just fine for the teenagers who bought them in droves, because they teenagers didn't care about sound quality back then -- they cared about mobility!!! They wanted to listen to their rebel music away from their parents' reach, because their parents disapproved of the music.
And then they grew up and bought home stereo systems. Their children meanwhile bought boomboxes. When they grew up, they too bought home stereo systems. Their children bought Walkmen... Lather, rinse, repeat. Right down to the iPod. (Which increasingly serves as a memory unit to transfer songs between the car stereo and... home stereo systems.)
All of that aside, Google is probably the biggest reason why Google Apps aren't being widely accepted - on the street they have the highly deserved repuation for bringing out feature incomplete applications, and then leaving them untouched (in "beta") for months at a time. When they do revisit them, it is often to add 'bling' rather than to add useful features or fix longstanding bugs.
the most widespread consumer gps chipset is sirf star II. it doesn't support dgps.
The chipset supports it just fine. But few GPSr's implement it because DGPS [1] is useful in only a few locations, since it is designed for maritime use. [2] The -II chipset also implements WAAS just fine.
The reason most consumer grade GPSr's have accuracy problems has nothing at all to do with DGPS or WAAS - but with the low accuracy of the clock and oscillators used.
[1] Consumer grade GPSr's routinely state they support DGPS, when they mean they support WAAS.
[2] The earliest commercial GPSR's were intented for maritime use - when they were ported over into general handheld, they kept the 'D' to indicate they were recieving correction information in the UI. This misleads those not familiar with the system into believing they are using DGPS when they are actually using WAAS. The marketing departments and manual writers haven't cleared up the confusion any.
The awesome thing about Heathkits was that it was just some components you soldered together. You could understand each piece of it,
There was no magic black box.
Sure there was - Heathkit simply labled it "Resistor R1" or "Capacitor C17" to make you feel like a real electronics tech. Except you weren't - any more than someone who uses a paint-by-numbers kit is the equivalent of a Matisse or a Picasso.
if you can build it from scratch, you can fix it.
That's true - of something you build from scratch. But you don't built a Heathkit from scratch. You build it from a kit closely following the directions provided to you. A Heathkit is the electronic equivalent of Hamburger Helper.
There isn't space in a Slashdot comment box to describe the many things wrong with this proposal, so I'll sum up:
If the new snake oil powered launchers come online on schedule, and the unobtanium mines in Siberia don't have a another bad winter - this proposal has abour.01% of a chance in hell of meeting the costs and schedules laid out in the article. (Though I suspect the high worldwide demand for handwavium integrated circuits, needed for aiming the satellite's antenna, may be the bottleneck in the end.)
Yes, satirizing his name and tough guy image is fair game - but using his name and like is not. The line between the two is kinda fuzzy, but it is there.
Right. So now, not only do I have the capital cost of adding solar panels to my house - I have the additional capital cost of replacing all my appliances. Wonderful.
Sure - if you only want to furnish your home from the limited range of DC appliances available and only use them when you have power from the panels. Or spend a great deal of money on more panels than you'll need and a bank of batteries. And hope they never run down... Or spend a goodly sum on an AC/DC converter...
As soon as I can I'm going to because I'm sick of the high electric bills in the summer. I can do nothing about it because you have to run your air conditioner when it's 115 degrees outside.
No you don't have to run the air conditioner when it is 115 degrees outside - you choose to do so rather than adapting to living at those temperatures.
Even if you only run at 25% capacity on average, taking into account varying daily solar intensity, the investment pays for itself in 6.5 years.
No - that only pays for the panel in 6.5 years. Now factor in shipping & handling, installation, the equipment to convert the panels DC output into AC, maintenance...
Yes, maintenance. At a minimum you'll need to head out and clean off the panels now and again. Plus you have wiring exposed to the weather, conversion equipment, etc... etc...
Worse yet, in large swaths of the US - 25% capacity is nothing but a pipe dream.
These people are being punished, not because they actually caused a problem, but because they COULD have caused one? that problem being the helicopter crashing?
So, we should let a drunk driver weave his merry way down the road until he actually kills someone?
It doesn't matter who lost how many getting started. It doesn't matter whose safety record is good or bad. It doesn't matter who in the race was the tortise and who was the hare.
They aren't flying, they aren't close to flying, they are vaporware. Period.
Calling facts 'trolling' while indulging in fanboi handwaving, hoping, and dreaming doesn't change that.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I am referring to you calling ZMA a vitamin - which it isn't. When you actually read the Wikipedia entry you cite - you'll note that the scientific uses aren't very well documented or supported. If you actually study the search links you provided, and discard the shill sites, you find the same thing.
Isn't the placebo effect amazing? It can even convince you that a vitamin that science has never heard of exists.
The two are considerably different, they also are not the topic of discussion between us.
That's the exact opposite of what your original post strongly implies. An implication which you then repeat in the balance of this message.
That attitude is what killed the astronauts on Challenger... The safety systems (the backup O-rings) held - so they continued to fly.
When safety systems are called on to operate - something has failed. Period.
Your attitude arises from the fact that your safety experience is in single discrete incidents and any safety issues are over in a few hours - the fire is out, the rescue completed, etc... It is entirely inappropriate to the domains (airlines, nuclear power) to which you attempt to apply it, which are not discrete events but rather are ongoing operation across years or decades.
Ah, yes - since the safety systems functioned, there is obviously no problem.
Wrong
Safety systems are circuit breakers - if nothing is wrong, if there is no problem, then they don't get tripped. But when there is a problem, they trip to prevent something far worse from happening. If they trip, something has gone wrong - by definition.
Whether or not the pattern so recognized actually exists.
This was brought up the first time this machine was covered on Slashdot post release. The Slashdot crowd ignored it, as it was evidence that fails to fit their preconcieved notions.
As many of the replies to this review show, they are ignoring it still.
Nor are there very many places interested in selling a $200 computer in the first place. The profit margins at that price as slender, and the market segment that will be buy that computer are likely to require a great deal of support and handholding. Wal-mart wants to sell one because 'cheap' is their watchword - and they are losing ground (slowly) to other retailers who concentrate a little less on 'cheap' and a little more on 'quality'/'style'/etc...
I submit that it will be impossible to get 'right'. In the first place, ever since the Web exploded into the public consciousness various 'computers' simplified for web browsing, email, etc... have been released - to universal failure. Why? Because it turns out that not many people want such a 'crippled' device in the first place, and many who think they do soon learn different when they find the many things their 'computer' cannot do. (Such as run that cool game their $RELATIVE or $FRIEND has. Or run that interesting program that they found on the shelves at Costco.)
The smart ones never upgraded to Vista in the first place.
Because one also must answer the question "why did it sell out?". Did it sell out because it was cheap? Did it sell out because it was Linux? Did is sell out because it wasn't Windows? Did it sell out because it wasn't a Mac either?
Rumours and anecdotal evidence around the release date suggests that a large number of them went not to John Q. Public, but to Linux devotees wanting a cheap and preconfigured box. If this is true - then it suggests that the next batch may not sell quite as well.
A single data point does not define a curve.
But they can bet on XP being installed - and that is a lot of boxen. The "network effect" is still there, faded only slightly at best.
No, it is a response to your (false) implication that Google Apps are like the transistor radio - wildly sucessful because it filled it a niche market with little competition. I then go further and show how that 'sucess' is actually quite limited, as invariably the product is discarded for another as the customer ages.
ROTFLMAO. Google neither rents nor sells Linux - the OS of it's web applications are utterly irrelevant.
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
So do many failed innovations.
"They laughed at Columbus. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
And then they grew up and bought home stereo systems. Their children meanwhile bought boomboxes. When they grew up, they too bought home stereo systems. Their children bought Walkmen... Lather, rinse, repeat. Right down to the iPod. (Which increasingly serves as a memory unit to transfer songs between the car stereo and... home stereo systems.)
All of that aside, Google is probably the biggest reason why Google Apps aren't being widely accepted - on the street they have the highly deserved repuation for bringing out feature incomplete applications, and then leaving them untouched (in "beta") for months at a time. When they do revisit them, it is often to add 'bling' rather than to add useful features or fix longstanding bugs.
Land surveyors shouldn't be in a hurry in the first place - because their measurements can affect people for generations.
The chipset supports it just fine. But few GPSr's implement it because DGPS [1] is useful in only a few locations, since it is designed for maritime use. [2] The -II chipset also implements WAAS just fine.
The reason most consumer grade GPSr's have accuracy problems has nothing at all to do with DGPS or WAAS - but with the low accuracy of the clock and oscillators used.
[1] Consumer grade GPSr's routinely state they support DGPS, when they mean they support WAAS.
[2] The earliest commercial GPSR's were intented for maritime use - when they were ported over into general handheld, they kept the 'D' to indicate they were recieving correction information in the UI. This misleads those not familiar with the system into believing they are using DGPS when they are actually using WAAS. The marketing departments and manual writers haven't cleared up the confusion any.
C'mon - this is Slashdot. Folks don't need to read the articles! Regardless of the topic, they know more than anyone about any subject.
Sure there was - Heathkit simply labled it "Resistor R1" or "Capacitor C17" to make you feel like a real electronics tech. Except you weren't - any more than someone who uses a paint-by-numbers kit is the equivalent of a Matisse or a Picasso.
That's true - of something you build from scratch. But you don't built a Heathkit from scratch. You build it from a kit closely following the directions provided to you. A Heathkit is the electronic equivalent of Hamburger Helper.
There isn't space in a Slashdot comment box to describe the many things wrong with this proposal, so I'll sum up:
.01% of a chance in hell of meeting the costs and schedules laid out in the article. (Though I suspect the high worldwide demand for handwavium integrated circuits, needed for aiming the satellite's antenna, may be the bottleneck in the end.)
If the new snake oil powered launchers come online on schedule, and the unobtanium mines in Siberia don't have a another bad winter - this proposal has abour
Home Depot is ten miles from my house in a part of town I rarely go. That's not convient at all.
Yes, satirizing his name and tough guy image is fair game - but using his name and like is not. The line between the two is kinda fuzzy, but it is there.
Right. So now, not only do I have the capital cost of adding solar panels to my house - I have the additional capital cost of replacing all my appliances. Wonderful.
Sure - if you only want to furnish your home from the limited range of DC appliances available and only use them when you have power from the panels. Or spend a great deal of money on more panels than you'll need and a bank of batteries. And hope they never run down... Or spend a goodly sum on an AC/DC converter...
No you don't have to run the air conditioner when it is 115 degrees outside - you choose to do so rather than adapting to living at those temperatures.
No - that only pays for the panel in 6.5 years. Now factor in shipping & handling, installation, the equipment to convert the panels DC output into AC, maintenance...
Yes, maintenance. At a minimum you'll need to head out and clean off the panels now and again. Plus you have wiring exposed to the weather, conversion equipment, etc... etc...
Worse yet, in large swaths of the US - 25% capacity is nothing but a pipe dream.
Interfering with an aircraft in flight _is_ a federal case by default - no embellishment needed.
That's a funny way to spell "and this how idiots who endanger other people should be treated".
So, we should let a drunk driver weave his merry way down the road until he actually kills someone?
That make perfect sense!
It doesn't matter who lost how many getting started. It doesn't matter whose safety record is good or bad. It doesn't matter who in the race was the tortise and who was the hare.
They aren't flying, they aren't close to flying, they are vaporware. Period.
Calling facts 'trolling' while indulging in fanboi handwaving, hoping, and dreaming doesn't change that.