Or I could freely go to linux and ditch 99% of my software.
Fortunately, that is simply not true. The vast majority of software will run under Linux in one way or another. The only major exceptions are games, and even many of those will work.
The reality that Microsoft has been FUDing around for years is that Linux really is a viable alternative for almost every windows use case.
Many people have a single application that will not run under windows. Something work related or a specific game. I have two such applications, and I am constantly reminding the developers of those applications that it is a race to see which happens first: they get a Linux version working or one of their competitors gets a Linux version working. I am a relatively small fry, but I am not the only one asking about it. In the mean time, I have two PCs. I have a Linux machine that does my day to day heavy lifting, and I have the windows machine that only ever turns on when I need to run one of those applications (about once or twice a month). The windows Box had automatic updates turned off and gutted the GWX, so I can never again trust it exposed to the network, which is fine because it will never again *be* exposed to the network. I added the cost of the hardware to the cost of the two software packages and that is the end of it.
It should be noted that the free ( as in freedom ) versions of things I need run just fine on a core 2 quad with 2GB of ram, whereas the windows machine had to be an i5 or better with 4GB just to keep from pissing me off.
Most everything from a users perspective in Ubuntu is pretty simple. Although I would call myself a power user, I rarely have to resort to that level to get things done, and even then, its mostly related to experimentation and learning. For just about everything I have tried to do, a google search for "apt-get xxx" finds exactly what I want.
The user interface in Ubuntu is "good enough for grandma". With the advent of smartphones and tablets, and the radical differences between how windows works and tablets work, people have been primed to be able to learn some simple differences in UI pretty quickly. Almost everyone I have exposed to Ubuntu has taken to it easily enough. The one exception was completely computer illiterate before we started, and it took him a little longer than otherwise, because computers and tablets / etc... were all new to him.
My current car has 108,000 miles on and hasn't had a ball joint fail.
I had an '01 Suzuki Areo that had 5 ball joints fail while it was still under warranty. When it failed the last time, Suzuki offered to buy the car back for the amount of my outstanding loan (far more than the blue book value of the car). Naturally I accepted and was happy to be rid of the problem. Even though it hadn't cost me any money, it was a pain to have to deal with it again every couple of months. The dealer said it was likely an alignment tolerances problem when the car was originally manufactured, and the only way to fix it permanently would be to replace the entire front differential which would cost even more than what Suzuki gave me for it.
police can ask other people about you without a warrant.
The problem here is that Blackberry has deliberately built their system in such a way as they will always have access to, and subsequently the ability to divulge, your secrets. If you don't want blackberry decrypting your communications and giving that information to anyone who asks; Don't use Blackberry. That is the lesson they are trying to teach their customers.
Blackberry has deliberately set themselves up as a third party to every conversation such that you as the individual no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy and as such, the police don't even need a warrant to get at your information. Apple by contrast has gone to great lengths to ensure that they *are not a party to your information*, and as such Apple can't be compelled to give away your secrets because they don't have them.
As always, all bets are off if you use cloud services, but then that just makes you a moron.
They got praised for refusing to unlock phones but most ignored when people pointed out they gave up "cloud data" in a heartbeat.
People have no reasonable expectation of privacy with cloud data. Its is well understood that once you send your data out into the world, it is fair game. If you don't like it, encrypt it, or make sure it doesn't leave your private devices. That is why the push for encrypted communications. Third parties are legally required to hand over data, but there is no requirement that the data be decrypted if the third party doesn't have the tools to do so. Apple makes sure that they do not have the tools to decrypt, as do many other software and hardware developers. Blackberry *does* have the tools to decrypt, and they are waaaay too ready to do so.
It is simply amazing that the folks calling the shots at Blackberry cant see how downright idiotic this policy is.
From a PR standpoint, its a miserable failure: Every news cycle for the last year, there has been some story or other implying that Cops are out killing innocent people in scores and droves. If you're blackberry, you get up and cheer on the killers.
From a monetary standpoint, this is a miserable failure. Lets just advertise that we hand out your information to every two bit despot and charlatan that asks. Thats a way to instill confidence in your product as a secure device fit for the leader of the free world. I wonder how sales of their newer devices is doing?
From an ethics standpoint, this is a miserable failure. "Those who will give up fundamental data security for a little perceived safety are morons" -Abraham Lincoln 1859
Except crony capitalism is rampant, and so it is not a truly free market.
A truly free market will quickly devolve into corruption. Its the same process that will convert any anarchy into a feudal system. Without systemic controls, those that can amass power and wealth, will do so, then use that power and wealth to prevent others from doing the same. The free market is a myth, it can't exist for long, as it will fundamentally destroy itself.
I run linux on both my desktop and my laptop. I run pfsense on my gateway machine. How in the name of the eight worlds of Sol is Microsoft going to convert them all to XBoxes?
I'm guessing it has something to do with Microsofts recent flirting with open source software. Maybe the next revision of GWX is going to get truly ambitious...
a) 64 bit processors can do 64-bit arithmetic in a single cycle.
No, they don't. They *start* an instruction every cycle, but if there are data dependencies (which pointers are nothing but dependencies), the pipeline will stall. Typical 64 bit mult has a pipeline depth of 7-9 cycles. and Mult is a key instruction for array access( which is used everywhere).
False. Most modern x86 CPUs can do 16/32/64bit arithmetic all with 1/2, 1/3rd, or 1/4 cycle throughput and 1 cycle latency. 32bit and 64bit arithmetic have exactly the same latency and throughput for all Intel and AMD cpus I have ever seen. 10% performance hit is because of additional padding caused by alignment for 64bit and 2x larger pointers eating up slightly more memory. That's for general purpose programs. That is a memory access and cacheline issue, nothing to do with the internals of the CPU registers or execution units. Many algorithms and programs benefit from 2x more registers and 2x+ faster 64bit operations.
Wow, knowing there are people like you out there explains why there is so much shit code floating around
A modern processor is a pipeline design. What this means is that the processor can start unrelated instructions at a rate of one per cycle (or more if there are parallel pipelines available like most processors in the last decade). The key is that the instructions themselves actually take multiple cycles to finish, but the processor doesn't have to wait for the previous instructions to finish before starting the next one. The exception to that model comes when the next instruction depends on data from an instruction that is currently in the pipeline. When this happens, the processor cannot start any new instructions until it finishes processing the critical instruction. This is called a pipeline stall. Good compilers (GCC, Intel's custom compiler, Microsoft's compilers) all re-order instructions to minimize this effect, but with pointer math, there is very little that you can do, almost all code relies heavily on pointer math, and the nature of the dependency limits how useful instruction re-ordering will be. 32 bit pointer math is generally very fast. Add and sub are typically single cycle instructions. Mult is 3 or 4 typically. With 64 bit, The add and sub are usually 2 cycle (although I think Haswell and beyond might be down to 1 cycle). 64 bit mult is around 7 - 9 cycles.
That 7-9 cycle latency for the multiply is what kills you. Mult is used whenever you index into an array. Array access is everywhere in compiled code, and these pipeline stalls have a significant cost.
a) 64 bit processors can do 64-bit arithmetic in a single cycle.
No, no they don't. The processors can start, and finish those instructions 1 per second, but if there are data dependencies, then the processor will pipeline stall. Pointer math has tremendous data dependencies, and will typically result in many pipeline stalls. This is the reason that 64 addressing has been hacked around with the use of localized memory spaces, and memory address translation to allow the use of 32 bit addressing (There are other reasons for this as well).
Is it stupid to assume that an operating system that has been designed for end users will not go out of its way to harm those users?
Windows 10 wasn't designed for end users. It was designed to meet Microsofts needs and business plan. Any semblance it has to be a product *for* users is purely accidental.
This incident was like the Fukushima accident -- a whole bunch of rare things stacking up.
Bullshit. This was a simple case of Microsoft being completely out of touch with their user base. Even to this very moment, the powers that be at Microsoft have the attitude of "who gives a damn? What are they gonna do about it? Switch to Linux? Hahahaha"
Microsofts core customers are ignorant and Microsoft knows it. The rest of us have been held at ransom by this core bunch of retards for decades now. Those of us who could, switched to anything else long ago for everything we could.
They should do something like oh I dont know 'recompile it as 64 bit' and PROVE IT and show their work?!
I don't have to see the compilation to understand that it is going to be slower: I can read processor spec sheets. All modern processors can do 32 bit pointer arithmetic in a single instruction. This is critical because pointer math is highly linear in nature and *will cause pipeline stalls*. 64 bit arithmetic by contrast is typically several cycles long, and will commonly stall the pipeline. The performance hit I have commonly heard is 10%, and seems to come from some amount of informal testing.
Take a look at this for an idea of some of the testing that gets done on these kinds of things.
I never thought I would hear myself have to say this, but Microsoft is right. Doing memory addressing in 64 bits carries with it a performance penalty, as even modern processors are not as fast at processing 64 bit arithmetic as 32 bit, and as such, allowing 64 bit memory addressing will slow things down, and many Microsoft developers are not smart enough to handle the memory addressing properly (Yes I said it, on average Microsoft devs are dumb and or lazy).
Microsoft is absolutely right, there is practically no good reason to address that much memory, and it is almost always a sign of a fundamental failing on the part of the developer.
Another way to say it is: If you are looking for the ability to process and handle that much memory all within a flat memory model, you probably want a cloud based solution as your piddly PC ain't gonna handle it anyways.
100? In a mall with 5000 spots? we're projecting mainstream electric vehicles here. 100 is sufficient for 2015-2020... but what about when half of all new cars are electric? or 2/3rds? that's potentially not THAT far away.
Yes, that would be relatively acceptable. People will typically *NOT* be charging at places like the mall, or Taco Bell, or whatever in the new transportation economy. The reason is necessity. Charging during the day is likely to remain more expensive than at night, and once people have to pay to charge at these locations, they will mostly not bother. The amount of charge you get by a half an hour on a 15Amp circuit is not enough to make or break a trip to the mall, so no one will care. The places that will have to have a very high percentage of charging locations are places of employment. The two places people spend a lot of time are work and home, and these are the places to charge. The only other major use case is travel, which is where the superchargers come in. New York has been installing charging stations left and right. There is one every square mile in and around everything bigger than a village in New York now thanks to the states energy initiative, but as an EV driver, they simply don't factor into the equation. I either have enough charge to make it to the mall or I don't take the electric car, because in the hour that I am there, the charge will only give me an extra 3 miles of range. It's pointless to even care. Where I work is another matter. I live 46 miles from where I work. The EV has a range of 60 miles (wife drives it to her job). If there were charging stations at work, I would drive the car to work, charge at work and drive it home and charge at home. With a 200 mile range this would be far less of an issue, but with current EVs, it matters. The only really limiting factor in EV adoption is the lack of charging stations at places of employment. My wifes company has four stations and they are always occupied. Some days she gets a spot, some days not. The local mall by contrast has 5 spots, and I have never seen more than one occupied. The only reason I ever consider using them is because A: they are free, and B: they are right behind the handicapped spots, so convenient parking.
If the goal is to increase EV adoption, make a requirement (like handicapped parking) that a certain number of charging stations are available per 100 employees. That alone will drive a huge number of people to get an EV as their commuter car. You can even charge $0.20 per kWh, and they will still be hugely popular.
So, yes, 100 spots is plenty for a typical mall with 5000 parking spaces, and almost every house in this country can support the extra electrical load that one or two EVs will place on their electrical service. Some places might need some upgraded electrical infrastructure, but not very many, and that work mostly needs to be done with or without EVs on the road.
And most of the money isn't going to the electricity itself, but to the electrification upgrades, and the billing and support infrastructure to charge for it.
It is a common misconception that EVs require lots of power. Even the least efficient of the lot use far less electricity than you would expect. It is largely because people have been accustomed to home electrical equipment that seems underpowered compared to gasoline equivalents. It gives people the impression that it takes a huge amount of power to move a car. In reality, it doesn't take nearly that much. A typical EV traveling 10 miles each way for a daily commute uses the same amount of power as leaving a mid sized window air conditioner running 24/7.
Compare that to the normal power consumption of a typical shopping mall (around 1MW), or approximately 1000 mid sized window air conditioners, and you can see that installing a hundred or so slow charging outlets (not superchargers), will not require a significant change to the infrastructure at all. The misconception comes from the "filling station" mentality where people need to recharge their car in a few minutes, and that is the primary way the cars get charged. This has turned out to be ridiculous in practice, and as such the instantaneous load EVs place on the power grid is vastly lower than anyone ever expected. In fact, until workplace charging becomes more ubiquitous, EVs draw most of their power at night when the power grid is far more than adequate to meet the demand.
BS. A business exists, because it provides service, that people are willing to pay for. It does not need "society's permission".
Absolutely they need society's permission. That is what the concept of a corporate charter is all about. Any given state has the legal authority to grant or refuse to grant charters, thereby given the state the power to prevent companies from forming. Up until recently, Any company which did not have some inherent value to society was not allowed to incorporate, and was effectively barred from operation. Recently, however, profit alone became an acceptable reason for a company to exist, and states have been allowing corporations to get away with all kinds of things that run contrary to the very concept of corporate charters.
2. Yes. At least the GWX program for 7 will not proceed if it detects any hardware that does not already have a certified Windows 10 driver. For your convenience, it will then link to places to purchase newer computers that are Windows 10 compatible. (I still plan to try to force an update on that one sometime this month, but only once I'm sure I have a plan for video card upgrading if it refuses to run at any comfortable resolution)
What a great idea! I'll start selling the "anti-upgrade" dongle for your home PC. it includes an absolutely ancient USB device that has no actual purpose other than to have no windows 10 driver, thereby preventing GWX for doing the update! brilliant!
You do make money by encouraging buyers to come back due to your great support (including continuing to provide updated drivers) for products already sold.
While nice sounding in theory, the marketing types have discovered through significant research that this simply isnt the case any more. People have very little brand loyalty these days. The few companies that are able to trade on it, do, but almost all of the established players burned their credibility long ago, and the cost of rebuilding that credibility is vastly more than the reputation would be worth. In short, electronics have become highly fungible. People don't expect them to last more than a few years, but they do expect them to be quite cheap. The few exceptions out there (like apple) are only one serious mis-step away from loosing their credibility and ending up wallowing in the mud with the rest of the players.
I have a 6yo laptop (Dell, not Samsung) that is on the "Windows 10 not supported" list for Dell and Win10 works just fine. Bash them all you want, but MS does a decent job of supporting really old hardware......in spite of the manufacturers not updating their drivers.
6 years old is not "really old", even in the PC world. come back and talk when the new software works with hardware older than a decade.
It should also be noted that continuing to support old hardware is really not all that difficult, as long as you have a compatibility layer that can interact with the old drivers (which MS does). It allows them to re-use almost all of their old drivers. The only reason most of this hardware remains on the "not windows 10 ready" list is because absolutely no one intends to ever test any of it to validate that it really does work right. Theres no money in it for anyone except Microsoft, why would anyone else waste their time and money, and Microsoft could blow away a billion dollars testing just the relatively common hardware out there, and it would not add very much value to their product, so they don't bother either.
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Or I could freely go to linux and ditch 99% of my software.
Fortunately, that is simply not true. The vast majority of software will run under Linux in one way or another. The only major exceptions are games, and even many of those will work.
The reality that Microsoft has been FUDing around for years is that Linux really is a viable alternative for almost every windows use case.
Many people have a single application that will not run under windows. Something work related or a specific game. I have two such applications, and I am constantly reminding the developers of those applications that it is a race to see which happens first: they get a Linux version working or one of their competitors gets a Linux version working. I am a relatively small fry, but I am not the only one asking about it. In the mean time, I have two PCs. I have a Linux machine that does my day to day heavy lifting, and I have the windows machine that only ever turns on when I need to run one of those applications (about once or twice a month). The windows Box had automatic updates turned off and gutted the GWX, so I can never again trust it exposed to the network, which is fine because it will never again *be* exposed to the network. I added the cost of the hardware to the cost of the two software packages and that is the end of it.
It should be noted that the free ( as in freedom ) versions of things I need run just fine on a core 2 quad with 2GB of ram, whereas the windows machine had to be an i5 or better with 4GB just to keep from pissing me off.
Most everything from a users perspective in Ubuntu is pretty simple. Although I would call myself a power user, I rarely have to resort to that level to get things done, and even then, its mostly related to experimentation and learning. For just about everything I have tried to do, a google search for "apt-get xxx" finds exactly what I want.
The user interface in Ubuntu is "good enough for grandma". With the advent of smartphones and tablets, and the radical differences between how windows works and tablets work, people have been primed to be able to learn some simple differences in UI pretty quickly. Almost everyone I have exposed to Ubuntu has taken to it easily enough. The one exception was completely computer illiterate before we started, and it took him a little longer than otherwise, because computers and tablets / etc... were all new to him.
My current car has 108,000 miles on and hasn't had a ball joint fail.
I had an '01 Suzuki Areo that had 5 ball joints fail while it was still under warranty. When it failed the last time, Suzuki offered to buy the car back for the amount of my outstanding loan (far more than the blue book value of the car). Naturally I accepted and was happy to be rid of the problem. Even though it hadn't cost me any money, it was a pain to have to deal with it again every couple of months. The dealer said it was likely an alignment tolerances problem when the car was originally manufactured, and the only way to fix it permanently would be to replace the entire front differential which would cost even more than what Suzuki gave me for it.
police can ask other people about you without a warrant.
The problem here is that Blackberry has deliberately built their system in such a way as they will always have access to, and subsequently the ability to divulge, your secrets. If you don't want blackberry decrypting your communications and giving that information to anyone who asks; Don't use Blackberry. That is the lesson they are trying to teach their customers.
Blackberry has deliberately set themselves up as a third party to every conversation such that you as the individual no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy and as such, the police don't even need a warrant to get at your information. Apple by contrast has gone to great lengths to ensure that they *are not a party to your information*, and as such Apple can't be compelled to give away your secrets because they don't have them.
As always, all bets are off if you use cloud services, but then that just makes you a moron.
why do we even bother with passwords? all data is freely available to everyone so why bother securing it?
It keeps the honest folks honest, doesn't it?
They got praised for refusing to unlock phones but most ignored when people pointed out they gave up "cloud data" in a heartbeat.
People have no reasonable expectation of privacy with cloud data. Its is well understood that once you send your data out into the world, it is fair game. If you don't like it, encrypt it, or make sure it doesn't leave your private devices. That is why the push for encrypted communications. Third parties are legally required to hand over data, but there is no requirement that the data be decrypted if the third party doesn't have the tools to do so. Apple makes sure that they do not have the tools to decrypt, as do many other software and hardware developers. Blackberry *does* have the tools to decrypt, and they are waaaay too ready to do so.
It is simply amazing that the folks calling the shots at Blackberry cant see how downright idiotic this policy is.
From a PR standpoint, its a miserable failure: Every news cycle for the last year, there has been some story or other implying that Cops are out killing innocent people in scores and droves. If you're blackberry, you get up and cheer on the killers.
From a monetary standpoint, this is a miserable failure. Lets just advertise that we hand out your information to every two bit despot and charlatan that asks. Thats a way to instill confidence in your product as a secure device fit for the leader of the free world. I wonder how sales of their newer devices is doing?
From an ethics standpoint, this is a miserable failure. "Those who will give up fundamental data security for a little perceived safety are morons" -Abraham Lincoln 1859
Except crony capitalism is rampant, and so it is not a truly free market.
A truly free market will quickly devolve into corruption. Its the same process that will convert any anarchy into a feudal system. Without systemic controls, those that can amass power and wealth, will do so, then use that power and wealth to prevent others from doing the same. The free market is a myth, it can't exist for long, as it will fundamentally destroy itself.
If they do this I will never use a microsoft OS ever again.
Yes you will. If you really meant that, you'd have left windows long ago. Microsoft knows you're just going to whimper like a dog and roll over.
I run linux on both my desktop and my laptop. I run pfsense on my gateway machine. How in the name of the eight worlds of Sol is Microsoft going to convert them all to XBoxes?
I'm guessing it has something to do with Microsofts recent flirting with open source software. Maybe the next revision of GWX is going to get truly ambitious...
Yes, three sensors. Like The Minority Report.
Yes, because anecdotes are how all real science and engineering is done.
a) 64 bit processors can do 64-bit arithmetic in a single cycle.
No, they don't. They *start* an instruction every cycle, but if there are data dependencies (which pointers are nothing but dependencies), the pipeline will stall. Typical 64 bit mult has a pipeline depth of 7-9 cycles. and Mult is a key instruction for array access( which is used everywhere).
False. Most modern x86 CPUs can do 16/32/64bit arithmetic all with 1/2, 1/3rd, or 1/4 cycle throughput and 1 cycle latency. 32bit and 64bit arithmetic have exactly the same latency and throughput for all Intel and AMD cpus I have ever seen. 10% performance hit is because of additional padding caused by alignment for 64bit and 2x larger pointers eating up slightly more memory. That's for general purpose programs. That is a memory access and cacheline issue, nothing to do with the internals of the CPU registers or execution units. Many algorithms and programs benefit from 2x more registers and 2x+ faster 64bit operations.
Wow, knowing there are people like you out there explains why there is so much shit code floating around
A modern processor is a pipeline design. What this means is that the processor can start unrelated instructions at a rate of one per cycle (or more if there are parallel pipelines available like most processors in the last decade). The key is that the instructions themselves actually take multiple cycles to finish, but the processor doesn't have to wait for the previous instructions to finish before starting the next one. The exception to that model comes when the next instruction depends on data from an instruction that is currently in the pipeline. When this happens, the processor cannot start any new instructions until it finishes processing the critical instruction. This is called a pipeline stall. Good compilers (GCC, Intel's custom compiler, Microsoft's compilers) all re-order instructions to minimize this effect, but with pointer math, there is very little that you can do, almost all code relies heavily on pointer math, and the nature of the dependency limits how useful instruction re-ordering will be. 32 bit pointer math is generally very fast. Add and sub are typically single cycle instructions. Mult is 3 or 4 typically. With 64 bit, The add and sub are usually 2 cycle (although I think Haswell and beyond might be down to 1 cycle). 64 bit mult is around 7 - 9 cycles.
That 7-9 cycle latency for the multiply is what kills you. Mult is used whenever you index into an array. Array access is everywhere in compiled code, and these pipeline stalls have a significant cost.
a) 64 bit processors can do 64-bit arithmetic in a single cycle.
No, no they don't. The processors can start, and finish those instructions 1 per second, but if there are data dependencies, then the processor will pipeline stall. Pointer math has tremendous data dependencies, and will typically result in many pipeline stalls. This is the reason that 64 addressing has been hacked around with the use of localized memory spaces, and memory address translation to allow the use of 32 bit addressing (There are other reasons for this as well).
Is it stupid to assume that an operating system that has been designed for end users will not go out of its way to harm those users?
Windows 10 wasn't designed for end users. It was designed to meet Microsofts needs and business plan. Any semblance it has to be a product *for* users is purely accidental.
This incident was like the Fukushima accident -- a whole bunch of rare things stacking up.
Bullshit. This was a simple case of Microsoft being completely out of touch with their user base. Even to this very moment, the powers that be at Microsoft have the attitude of "who gives a damn? What are they gonna do about it? Switch to Linux? Hahahaha"
Microsofts core customers are ignorant and Microsoft knows it. The rest of us have been held at ransom by this core bunch of retards for decades now. Those of us who could, switched to anything else long ago for everything we could.
They should do something like oh I dont know 'recompile it as 64 bit' and PROVE IT and show their work?!
I don't have to see the compilation to understand that it is going to be slower: I can read processor spec sheets. All modern processors can do 32 bit pointer arithmetic in a single instruction. This is critical because pointer math is highly linear in nature and *will cause pipeline stalls*. 64 bit arithmetic by contrast is typically several cycles long, and will commonly stall the pipeline. The performance hit I have commonly heard is 10%, and seems to come from some amount of informal testing.
Take a look at this for an idea of some of the testing that gets done on these kinds of things.
We don't want to do the work.
I never thought I would hear myself have to say this, but Microsoft is right. Doing memory addressing in 64 bits carries with it a performance penalty, as even modern processors are not as fast at processing 64 bit arithmetic as 32 bit, and as such, allowing 64 bit memory addressing will slow things down, and many Microsoft developers are not smart enough to handle the memory addressing properly (Yes I said it, on average Microsoft devs are dumb and or lazy).
Microsoft is absolutely right, there is practically no good reason to address that much memory, and it is almost always a sign of a fundamental failing on the part of the developer.
Another way to say it is: If you are looking for the ability to process and handle that much memory all within a flat memory model, you probably want a cloud based solution as your piddly PC ain't gonna handle it anyways.
Also what would they be buying?
They're going to need a fair amount of antibiotics, and soap, lots of soap.
100? In a mall with 5000 spots? we're projecting mainstream electric vehicles here. 100 is sufficient for 2015-2020... but what about when half of all new cars are electric? or 2/3rds? that's potentially not THAT far away.
Yes, that would be relatively acceptable. People will typically *NOT* be charging at places like the mall, or Taco Bell, or whatever in the new transportation economy. The reason is necessity. Charging during the day is likely to remain more expensive than at night, and once people have to pay to charge at these locations, they will mostly not bother. The amount of charge you get by a half an hour on a 15Amp circuit is not enough to make or break a trip to the mall, so no one will care. The places that will have to have a very high percentage of charging locations are places of employment. The two places people spend a lot of time are work and home, and these are the places to charge. The only other major use case is travel, which is where the superchargers come in. New York has been installing charging stations left and right. There is one every square mile in and around everything bigger than a village in New York now thanks to the states energy initiative, but as an EV driver, they simply don't factor into the equation. I either have enough charge to make it to the mall or I don't take the electric car, because in the hour that I am there, the charge will only give me an extra 3 miles of range. It's pointless to even care. Where I work is another matter. I live 46 miles from where I work. The EV has a range of 60 miles (wife drives it to her job). If there were charging stations at work, I would drive the car to work, charge at work and drive it home and charge at home. With a 200 mile range this would be far less of an issue, but with current EVs, it matters. The only really limiting factor in EV adoption is the lack of charging stations at places of employment. My wifes company has four stations and they are always occupied. Some days she gets a spot, some days not. The local mall by contrast has 5 spots, and I have never seen more than one occupied. The only reason I ever consider using them is because A: they are free, and B: they are right behind the handicapped spots, so convenient parking.
If the goal is to increase EV adoption, make a requirement (like handicapped parking) that a certain number of charging stations are available per 100 employees. That alone will drive a huge number of people to get an EV as their commuter car. You can even charge $0.20 per kWh, and they will still be hugely popular.
So, yes, 100 spots is plenty for a typical mall with 5000 parking spaces, and almost every house in this country can support the extra electrical load that one or two EVs will place on their electrical service. Some places might need some upgraded electrical infrastructure, but not very many, and that work mostly needs to be done with or without EVs on the road.
And most of the money isn't going to the electricity itself, but to the electrification upgrades, and the billing and support infrastructure to charge for it.
It is a common misconception that EVs require lots of power. Even the least efficient of the lot use far less electricity than you would expect. It is largely because people have been accustomed to home electrical equipment that seems underpowered compared to gasoline equivalents. It gives people the impression that it takes a huge amount of power to move a car. In reality, it doesn't take nearly that much. A typical EV traveling 10 miles each way for a daily commute uses the same amount of power as leaving a mid sized window air conditioner running 24/7.
Compare that to the normal power consumption of a typical shopping mall (around 1MW), or approximately 1000 mid sized window air conditioners, and you can see that installing a hundred or so slow charging outlets (not superchargers), will not require a significant change to the infrastructure at all. The misconception comes from the "filling station" mentality where people need to recharge their car in a few minutes, and that is the primary way the cars get charged. This has turned out to be ridiculous in practice, and as such the instantaneous load EVs place on the power grid is vastly lower than anyone ever expected. In fact, until workplace charging becomes more ubiquitous, EVs draw most of their power at night when the power grid is far more than adequate to meet the demand.
BS. A business exists, because it provides service, that people are willing to pay for. It does not need "society's permission".
Absolutely they need society's permission. That is what the concept of a corporate charter is all about. Any given state has the legal authority to grant or refuse to grant charters, thereby given the state the power to prevent companies from forming. Up until recently, Any company which did not have some inherent value to society was not allowed to incorporate, and was effectively barred from operation. Recently, however, profit alone became an acceptable reason for a company to exist, and states have been allowing corporations to get away with all kinds of things that run contrary to the very concept of corporate charters.
2. Yes. At least the GWX program for 7 will not proceed if it detects any hardware that does not already have a certified Windows 10 driver. For your convenience, it will then link to places to purchase newer computers that are Windows 10 compatible. (I still plan to try to force an update on that one sometime this month, but only once I'm sure I have a plan for video card upgrading if it refuses to run at any comfortable resolution)
What a great idea! I'll start selling the "anti-upgrade" dongle for your home PC. it includes an absolutely ancient USB device that has no actual purpose other than to have no windows 10 driver, thereby preventing GWX for doing the update! brilliant!
step 3: Profit!
You do make money by encouraging buyers to come back due to your great support (including continuing to provide updated drivers) for products already sold.
While nice sounding in theory, the marketing types have discovered through significant research that this simply isnt the case any more. People have very little brand loyalty these days. The few companies that are able to trade on it, do, but almost all of the established players burned their credibility long ago, and the cost of rebuilding that credibility is vastly more than the reputation would be worth. In short, electronics have become highly fungible. People don't expect them to last more than a few years, but they do expect them to be quite cheap. The few exceptions out there (like apple) are only one serious mis-step away from loosing their credibility and ending up wallowing in the mud with the rest of the players.
I have a 6yo laptop (Dell, not Samsung) that is on the "Windows 10 not supported" list for Dell and Win10 works just fine. Bash them all you want, but MS does a decent job of supporting really old hardware......in spite of the manufacturers not updating their drivers.
6 years old is not "really old", even in the PC world. come back and talk when the new software works with hardware older than a decade.
It should also be noted that continuing to support old hardware is really not all that difficult, as long as you have a compatibility layer that can interact with the old drivers (which MS does). It allows them to re-use almost all of their old drivers. The only reason most of this hardware remains on the "not windows 10 ready" list is because absolutely no one intends to ever test any of it to validate that it really does work right. Theres no money in it for anyone except Microsoft, why would anyone else waste their time and money, and Microsoft could blow away a billion dollars testing just the relatively common hardware out there, and it would not add very much value to their product, so they don't bother either.
part of what the two companies say is the start of a long-term partnership.
Translation: This is the start of the eventual destruction and liquidation of Xiaomi
I can only hope someone has warned the executives at Xiaomi about whom they are dealing with, but apparently they either don't know or don't care
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