...for average use in the home 1920x1080 (1080p) *resolution* is not the problem for a ~60-70" TV (still considered high end!) from 10' away. The limiting factor for quality is still the encoding rate for anything less than BD bitrates. So, for anything other than physical media 4K is not even remotely practical, and even for physical media it's such a diminishing return few consumers will care. Combine that with the fact physical media is in decline and I don't see 4K adoption any time soon...
Yes, there is nothing about OSX or iOS that is remotely interesting or useful, and it's all just pretty enclosures making them $40B a year in profit. You are so right and all of Apple's engineers are incompetent!
Implementing the first iPhone was about 1% ID, 5% hardware, and the rest software by resources. And whatever you think of it personally, it absolutely redefined the mobile industry and has been so ridiculously successful it made Apple the most valuable company in the world. Fools, indeed.
True, you'd have to tariff based on the product coming from China. I think losing manufacturing of electronics to countries like Malaysia, etc. would be a strong disincentive to China, since that's a lot more lucrative industry than rare earth mining.
Though you are right on the scope as well, this would need to be more than just the US, it needs to be at the WTO level. Let's see if they can actually accomplish something useful or are just a bunch of pussies who like to send their representatives on nice vacations while inciting local riots...
In the end I'm starting to wonder why an industry like this isn't subsidized by the US government in the first place. I mean, how many billions are spent paying for corn no one needs? The future of the US economy is not going to be in feed corn...
The problem is China can turn on production whenever they want and undercut any competition, driving those other producers out of business again and again so that no one wants to invest in such a risky industry.
I'm not a big fan of excessive tariffs, but the only way to prevent China from manipulating the market like that is for other governments to step in with their own manipulation, putting enough tariffs on Chinese exports that domestic mining of rare earths can survive (and also showing China if they pull this shit, there will be consequences).
The problem is businesses and consumers are so into short term savings they are more than happy to screw over their long term viability - when that happens it may be up to regulatory bodies/governments to look at the long term.
Sony must have some seriously incompetent people working on their security to let this leak.
Any reasonable secure platform puts the initial bootloader keys in tamper-resistant silicon with some secure hardware with onboard and/or scrambled RAM, etc to decrypt, and stores those keys on a physically isolated machine used just for encrypting the bootloader.
But I guess it's not that surprising, Sony has already proven their incompetence with security many times over...
Actually, I'd say the opposite is true. It doesn't really matter for well-known performers. Those performers don't have a problem booking venues and selling tickets, their problem is they have many more fans than available dates, and they usually sell out. This strategy would be most useful for performers with a small but loyal fan base looking to become more well-known and/or fill a larger venue.
Maybe you were thinking of big name artists selling tickets directly and not through the ticket monopolies like Ticketmaster? That's a very different idea, and of course does work better when there are so many potential buyers it's worth the effort of self-promoting, sales, logistics, etc.
Think of it more like an early investor vs. just a customer - like they said, it's sort of like Kickstarter for concerts. If the show sells well, the early investors/promoters get a return on their investment of the price of a ticket.
Investment, like their premium for a ticket, involves risk, which is done in expectation of a possible reward.
Well that's a bit like saying that since iOS and OS X use the same Xcode tools that there's an advantage.
No, it's not. Have you developed Metro-style apps for Windows Phone, Windows RT, and Xbox 360? There is a ton of code (not just tools) that can be shared. While there are UI layout and API differences to deal with, that's not much different from the situation Apple is in now with a bunch of different screen resolutions & aspect ratios, hardware capabilities, etc. iOS devs have to deal with all of that, they just combine all of it into one binary, big deal (and sometimes they don't - there are plenty of separate iPhone and iPad versions of apps out there).
But it does little for the consumer who still needs to buy apps for both iOS and OS X and learn how to use each (often the apps have very little in common in terms of UI).
Umm, now I'm confused about your point. That's something Microsoft *has* addressed that Apple hasn't... Metro-style apps are very similar in terms of UI, and can be developed on pretty much every platform they have. If anything, the common look and feel is their whole *point*. The implementation of that is the thing that will be more effort.
But with Microsoft, it's confusing and frustrating to the user when the purchased app for their phone won't run on their tablet or vice versa.
Why is that? Metro apps are installed through an app store, anyway. There is no reason Microsoft can't just install the correct version for each platform via that store. I don't know if they plan to do that, but it's NOT an inherent technical issue. As I said before, it is somewhat more work for app developers to build separate binaries, but not *that* much more. It is a somewhat different strategy from Apple, and it remains to be seen if it will succeed, but there is no reason it *has* to be difficult for the customer.
And, while I agree the "2x mode" iPhone apps did help the iPad initially, it was never a particularly good experience. And in no way are they "universal binaries" - that term means binaries running on more than one CPU architecture. iOS apps are about as much universal binaries as a Windows app that runs on a laptop and a desktop.
Heh, now I bet the slashdot trolls will start calling me a Microsoft apologist/fanboy/paid shill because I defended their products. Well, I prefer to use a Macbook Pro (with both Linux and Windows VMs as needed), iPhone, and iPad at home, but I develop software running on Linux, Android, Windows, XBox, and iOS. Use the platforms you like, develop for the platforms your customers want.
In fact, it is all about the available apps. If the same apps are ported to the different platforms, consumers really won't care. And porting/cross compiling Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, and Windows 8 (metro) apps really isn't that hard (Windows 8 desktop apps are a different story, but that's not really relevant here). Hell, even the Xbox 360 media apps can use a lot of the same tools and code as those other platforms.
Now, whether people will write apps for these platforms is an interesting question. But given the user and developer bases Microsoft has, I'm guessing they will.
Actually, *8* is the key word. He said "Windows 8 Tablet", which is correct. The OSes for tablets are "Windows RT" and "Windows 8 (Pro)". Windows RT is the ARM port. Windows 8 is the x86 port. "Pro" is just a different version of Windows 8. And both Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro can run (full) Office for x86.
Yeah, that's my point... running DOS on an x86 doesn't make it a microcontroller;)
But in fact your statement is not really true anyway - so start, the BCM SoC uses DRAM (and has a cache, and MMU, etc) which requires a fair bit of setup, etc, compared to the SRAM on the Arduino. And all of the peripherals are completely different. "Running on bare metal" means the code (at some level) is not abstracted by an OS so you have to deal with the differences yourself, making it very NON compatible...
The Pi has an SoC based on an ARM core with cache, MMU, DMA, multimedia co-processor, and GPU w/ 3D support. *That's* the reason it's a "System on a Chip" and not a microcontroller, not the software that happens to run on it...
The Pi is just a Broadcom 2835 on a PCB with a bunch of connectors. I have worked with half a dozen BRCM SoCs over more than a decade and no one has *ever* called them "microcontrollers".
It's all silly semantics anyway, but if you want to go with industry convention (which defines the silly semantics) no, the rest of the (professional) world does not consider them to be microcontrollers.
No, it's a pretty good example, human power is still power. Try using a sledgehammer to shingle a roof or install hardwood flooring and you will quickly understand how important power consumption can be (while the guy with the purpose-built hammer is still going strong, and the guy with the nail driver is already finished).
$8.8B for foreign aid is a lot, that's great - but as the *Christian newspaper* says, it's only 37% compared to what the US government provides. "Great majority" and "simple fact"? Yeah, try again...
In general, all stats I have looked up say that religious (NOT just Christian, all religions) make up about 1/3 of charitable donations in the US. As I said above, that's admirable, but had nothing to do with my point.
But you could have looked ALL of this up just as easily if you really cared about truth vs truthiness.
Well, given the millions/billions of dollars sitting around in the bank accounts of these rich people and the horrible state of health care and public welfare system in the US, they are clearly failing in that charity department as well. I seriously doubt it will get *better* if you stop taking any tax money from them.
And *please* mention Romeny's Mormon tithe as a counter argument. He gave what, like $2M to the Mormon Church last year? That's good, I think that about covers the Mormon contributions to support the passive of Proposition 8 in California a few years ago. What an important, selfless cause that was.
Face it, it really is human nature to look our for yourself. The point of government is to force people through (sometimes tyranny of) the majority to work together to provide the planning, infrastructure, and services that aren't possible on their own. No one will agree with all of it, but so far no one has been able to come up with anything better...
You mean "teach a man to fish if he's already wealthy enough to afford to pay for his education." Free public education is another thing Rand was against.
That's also the most amusing part - at least Ayn Rand was consistent in her disdain for helping others in need.
The religious right will quote the Bible left and right when it suits their agenda, but then try to avoid one of the most important messages of the New Testament, which is to... wait for it... help others in need. I wonder how Jeebus felt about the 47%?
I say yes to most, but with serious and strong caveats on those "yes" statements...
Ok, you would probably make a decent lifeguard then (assuming you can swim;)
Actually, your responses did point out an interesting difference in unions in the US and elsewhere, and more importantly *why* they are different. In most of Europe (AFAIK) there are much stronger government regulations in place for basic employee rights and benefits - vacation, sick policy, retirement/pension, overtime, wages, safety, and most importantly single payer healthcare.
In the US many of those are only available because of what unions accomplished, which is what makes them both important, and yet as you say, confrontational. If the health and welfare services in the US were as well developed as they are in Europe, I'm not sure unions would look anything like they do now. If only the conservatives would understand that the best way to bust the unions is to give everyone free health care...
Similar story for affirmative action, really. It's more than just marginalized minorities, it's practically a form of restitution for the fact that they weren't even allowed into many *public* schools or facilities as late as the 1960's in some parts of the country. I hope as you say some day it will become obsolete and discrimination is discrimination, but as long as there are still people alive today who were wrongly denied basic public services, I think those affected still have a right to be assisted.
Ok, I'm tired of defending my original simple point, as it sounds like I'm defending Apple or Foxconn now, both of which I think are responsible for some pretty crappy working conditions. But I suppose I hate intentionally misleading journalism through misuse of statistics (or/. posters who keep arguing my statistical point with little more accuracy than the article!) even more...
Anyway, I looked up some stats, too - your number is also not the right value to compare, because the rural suicide rate is higher among elderly than the young. Best I could find for young, urban population was something like 50% over the average. But say it is 3:1 - as the overall national rate in 2010 was 10x higher (33/100k or 0.033% vs 10/300k, or 0.003%) than the Foxconn rate - 3:1 would still make Foxconn rates more than 3x lower. Still not "striking concentration"...
I suspect they are not, the point they are probably making is that if the suicide rate is say 5% amongst the general population, but only 1% in the industry of tech manufacturing yet Foxconn's rate is 3% then it is striking, it means that something at Foxconn is leading to a higher suicide rate than in other people of a similar income level and job role.
And if you are going to try to correct someone, why wouldn't you at least use real numbers rather than absurd made up ones? 5% suicide rate in China? That would be 60 million people a year! The real numbers are 0.003% for Foxconn, 0.032% nationally. 10x difference. If you look only at similar demographics (urban young adults) it's lower overall, but still about 4x higher than Foxconn averages.
So, not, that was NOT the point they are "probably making" (or if they were, that's even worse as it has no support). They had access to the same statistics I just provided (as you did, if you had bothered to look them up before ranting). That's what I find annoying - does journalism really have to be so bad these days that readers have to assume the article has errors or lies and fact check all information themselves!?
Slashdot Mirror
...for average use in the home 1920x1080 (1080p) *resolution* is not the problem for a ~60-70" TV (still considered high end!) from 10' away. The limiting factor for quality is still the encoding rate for anything less than BD bitrates. So, for anything other than physical media 4K is not even remotely practical, and even for physical media it's such a diminishing return few consumers will care. Combine that with the fact physical media is in decline and I don't see 4K adoption any time soon...
Yes, there is nothing about OSX or iOS that is remotely interesting or useful, and it's all just pretty enclosures making them $40B a year in profit. You are so right and all of Apple's engineers are incompetent!
Implementing the first iPhone was about 1% ID, 5% hardware, and the rest software by resources. And whatever you think of it personally, it absolutely redefined the mobile industry and has been so ridiculously successful it made Apple the most valuable company in the world. Fools, indeed.
True, you'd have to tariff based on the product coming from China. I think losing manufacturing of electronics to countries like Malaysia, etc. would be a strong disincentive to China, since that's a lot more lucrative industry than rare earth mining.
Though you are right on the scope as well, this would need to be more than just the US, it needs to be at the WTO level. Let's see if they can actually accomplish something useful or are just a bunch of pussies who like to send their representatives on nice vacations while inciting local riots...
In the end I'm starting to wonder why an industry like this isn't subsidized by the US government in the first place. I mean, how many billions are spent paying for corn no one needs? The future of the US economy is not going to be in feed corn...
The problem is China can turn on production whenever they want and undercut any competition, driving those other producers out of business again and again so that no one wants to invest in such a risky industry.
I'm not a big fan of excessive tariffs, but the only way to prevent China from manipulating the market like that is for other governments to step in with their own manipulation, putting enough tariffs on Chinese exports that domestic mining of rare earths can survive (and also showing China if they pull this shit, there will be consequences).
The problem is businesses and consumers are so into short term savings they are more than happy to screw over their long term viability - when that happens it may be up to regulatory bodies/governments to look at the long term.
Sony must have some seriously incompetent people working on their security to let this leak.
Any reasonable secure platform puts the initial bootloader keys in tamper-resistant silicon with some secure hardware with onboard and/or scrambled RAM, etc to decrypt, and stores those keys on a physically isolated machine used just for encrypting the bootloader.
But I guess it's not that surprising, Sony has already proven their incompetence with security many times over...
Yeah, and appropriately, monetarily it's not that much of a reward, either :)
Actually, I'd say the opposite is true. It doesn't really matter for well-known performers. Those performers don't have a problem booking venues and selling tickets, their problem is they have many more fans than available dates, and they usually sell out. This strategy would be most useful for performers with a small but loyal fan base looking to become more well-known and/or fill a larger venue.
Maybe you were thinking of big name artists selling tickets directly and not through the ticket monopolies like Ticketmaster? That's a very different idea, and of course does work better when there are so many potential buyers it's worth the effort of self-promoting, sales, logistics, etc.
Think of it more like an early investor vs. just a customer - like they said, it's sort of like Kickstarter for concerts. If the show sells well, the early investors/promoters get a return on their investment of the price of a ticket.
Investment, like their premium for a ticket, involves risk, which is done in expectation of a possible reward.
Well that's a bit like saying that since iOS and OS X use the same Xcode tools that there's an advantage.
No, it's not. Have you developed Metro-style apps for Windows Phone, Windows RT, and Xbox 360? There is a ton of code (not just tools) that can be shared. While there are UI layout and API differences to deal with, that's not much different from the situation Apple is in now with a bunch of different screen resolutions & aspect ratios, hardware capabilities, etc. iOS devs have to deal with all of that, they just combine all of it into one binary, big deal (and sometimes they don't - there are plenty of separate iPhone and iPad versions of apps out there).
But it does little for the consumer who still needs to buy apps for both iOS and OS X and learn how to use each (often the apps have very little in common in terms of UI).
Umm, now I'm confused about your point. That's something Microsoft *has* addressed that Apple hasn't... Metro-style apps are very similar in terms of UI, and can be developed on pretty much every platform they have. If anything, the common look and feel is their whole *point*. The implementation of that is the thing that will be more effort.
But with Microsoft, it's confusing and frustrating to the user when the purchased app for their phone won't run on their tablet or vice versa.
Why is that? Metro apps are installed through an app store, anyway. There is no reason Microsoft can't just install the correct version for each platform via that store. I don't know if they plan to do that, but it's NOT an inherent technical issue. As I said before, it is somewhat more work for app developers to build separate binaries, but not *that* much more. It is a somewhat different strategy from Apple, and it remains to be seen if it will succeed, but there is no reason it *has* to be difficult for the customer.
And, while I agree the "2x mode" iPhone apps did help the iPad initially, it was never a particularly good experience. And in no way are they "universal binaries" - that term means binaries running on more than one CPU architecture. iOS apps are about as much universal binaries as a Windows app that runs on a laptop and a desktop.
Heh, now I bet the slashdot trolls will start calling me a Microsoft apologist/fanboy/paid shill because I defended their products. Well, I prefer to use a Macbook Pro (with both Linux and Windows VMs as needed), iPhone, and iPad at home, but I develop software running on Linux, Android, Windows, XBox, and iOS. Use the platforms you like, develop for the platforms your customers want.
In fact, it is all about the available apps. If the same apps are ported to the different platforms, consumers really won't care. And porting/cross compiling Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, and Windows 8 (metro) apps really isn't that hard (Windows 8 desktop apps are a different story, but that's not really relevant here). Hell, even the Xbox 360 media apps can use a lot of the same tools and code as those other platforms.
Now, whether people will write apps for these platforms is an interesting question. But given the user and developer bases Microsoft has, I'm guessing they will.
Actually, *8* is the key word. He said "Windows 8 Tablet", which is correct. The OSes for tablets are "Windows RT" and "Windows 8 (Pro)". Windows RT is the ARM port. Windows 8 is the x86 port. "Pro" is just a different version of Windows 8. And both Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro can run (full) Office for x86.
Yeah, that's my point... running DOS on an x86 doesn't make it a microcontroller ;)
But in fact your statement is not really true anyway - so start, the BCM SoC uses DRAM (and has a cache, and MMU, etc) which requires a fair bit of setup, etc, compared to the SRAM on the Arduino. And all of the peripherals are completely different. "Running on bare metal" means the code (at some level) is not abstracted by an OS so you have to deal with the differences yourself, making it very NON compatible...
The Pi has an SoC based on an ARM core with cache, MMU, DMA, multimedia co-processor, and GPU w/ 3D support. *That's* the reason it's a "System on a Chip" and not a microcontroller, not the software that happens to run on it...
The Pi is just a Broadcom 2835 on a PCB with a bunch of connectors. I have worked with half a dozen BRCM SoCs over more than a decade and no one has *ever* called them "microcontrollers".
It's all silly semantics anyway, but if you want to go with industry convention (which defines the silly semantics) no, the rest of the (professional) world does not consider them to be microcontrollers.
Not really, it's mostly a hobbyist tool. People who use Arduino's *often* leave it where it was designed in.
If you are a company who is going to mass produce a product and buy lots of Atmel or TI chips you can just get the Atmel or TI reference kits.
No, it's a pretty good example, human power is still power. Try using a sledgehammer to shingle a roof or install hardwood flooring and you will quickly understand how important power consumption can be (while the guy with the purpose-built hammer is still going strong, and the guy with the nail driver is already finished).
Whoosh.
Obama.
First: wrong. These things are trivial to research, this link took me 10 seconds to find.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/u-s-religious-donations-at-8-8-billion-for-developing-world-32354/
$8.8B for foreign aid is a lot, that's great - but as the *Christian newspaper* says, it's only 37% compared to what the US government provides. "Great majority" and "simple fact"? Yeah, try again...
And second: I didn't say anything about "Christians", I was pointing out hypocricy of the wealthy religious right. Do you know where a disproportionate amount of religious donations come from? Those who can barely afford to donate... http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/19/68456/americas-poor-are-its-most-generous.html
In general, all stats I have looked up say that religious (NOT just Christian, all religions) make up about 1/3 of charitable donations in the US. As I said above, that's admirable, but had nothing to do with my point.
But you could have looked ALL of this up just as easily if you really cared about truth vs truthiness.
Well, given the millions/billions of dollars sitting around in the bank accounts of these rich people and the horrible state of health care and public welfare system in the US, they are clearly failing in that charity department as well. I seriously doubt it will get *better* if you stop taking any tax money from them.
And *please* mention Romeny's Mormon tithe as a counter argument. He gave what, like $2M to the Mormon Church last year? That's good, I think that about covers the Mormon contributions to support the passive of Proposition 8 in California a few years ago. What an important, selfless cause that was.
Face it, it really is human nature to look our for yourself. The point of government is to force people through (sometimes tyranny of) the majority to work together to provide the planning, infrastructure, and services that aren't possible on their own. No one will agree with all of it, but so far no one has been able to come up with anything better...
You mean "teach a man to fish if he's already wealthy enough to afford to pay for his education." Free public education is another thing Rand was against.
That's also the most amusing part - at least Ayn Rand was consistent in her disdain for helping others in need.
The religious right will quote the Bible left and right when it suits their agenda, but then try to avoid one of the most important messages of the New Testament, which is to... wait for it... help others in need. I wonder how Jeebus felt about the 47%?
I say yes to most, but with serious and strong caveats on those "yes" statements...
Ok, you would probably make a decent lifeguard then (assuming you can swim ;)
Actually, your responses did point out an interesting difference in unions in the US and elsewhere, and more importantly *why* they are different. In most of Europe (AFAIK) there are much stronger government regulations in place for basic employee rights and benefits - vacation, sick policy, retirement/pension, overtime, wages, safety, and most importantly single payer healthcare.
In the US many of those are only available because of what unions accomplished, which is what makes them both important, and yet as you say, confrontational. If the health and welfare services in the US were as well developed as they are in Europe, I'm not sure unions would look anything like they do now. If only the conservatives would understand that the best way to bust the unions is to give everyone free health care...
Similar story for affirmative action, really. It's more than just marginalized minorities, it's practically a form of restitution for the fact that they weren't even allowed into many *public* schools or facilities as late as the 1960's in some parts of the country. I hope as you say some day it will become obsolete and discrimination is discrimination, but as long as there are still people alive today who were wrongly denied basic public services, I think those affected still have a right to be assisted.
Ok, I'm tired of defending my original simple point, as it sounds like I'm defending Apple or Foxconn now, both of which I think are responsible for some pretty crappy working conditions. But I suppose I hate intentionally misleading journalism through misuse of statistics (or /. posters who keep arguing my statistical point with little more accuracy than the article!) even more...
Anyway, I looked up some stats, too - your number is also not the right value to compare, because the rural suicide rate is higher among elderly than the young. Best I could find for young, urban population was something like 50% over the average. But say it is 3:1 - as the overall national rate in 2010 was 10x higher (33/100k or 0.033% vs 10/300k, or 0.003%) than the Foxconn rate - 3:1 would still make Foxconn rates more than 3x lower. Still not "striking concentration"...
I suspect they are not, the point they are probably making is that if the suicide rate is say 5% amongst the general population, but only 1% in the industry of tech manufacturing yet Foxconn's rate is 3% then it is striking, it means that something at Foxconn is leading to a higher suicide rate than in other people of a similar income level and job role.
And if you are going to try to correct someone, why wouldn't you at least use real numbers rather than absurd made up ones? 5% suicide rate in China? That would be 60 million people a year! The real numbers are 0.003% for Foxconn, 0.032% nationally. 10x difference. If you look only at similar demographics (urban young adults) it's lower overall, but still about 4x higher than Foxconn averages.
So, not, that was NOT the point they are "probably making" (or if they were, that's even worse as it has no support). They had access to the same statistics I just provided (as you did, if you had bothered to look them up before ranting). That's what I find annoying - does journalism really have to be so bad these days that readers have to assume the article has errors or lies and fact check all information themselves!?