voodoo graphics was bought out by whom again? ati got bought out by AMD.. nvidia isn't as insulated against failure as you imply... not to mention what happened to early graphic companies like Hercules graphics.
that being said, IBM has been all over the place, doing a little of everything. they've been the king of the hill, and they've struggled to not be taken over by hostile forces.
they realized free open source software could be a microsoft killer, microsoft was a mistake IBM made, when they pushed desktop computers as typewriter replacements. they made a lot of mistakes, including half writing windows NT for Microsoft.
IMO this whole article is just another slashvertisment for all the work IBM has put into trying to get businesses to drop microsoft and adopt IBM by using free open source software to make their costs slightly lower. IBM started embracing server linux when they realized they could make money off it, so not much new to see here.
all because Vista is hated, and Microsoft doesn't want people still using xp or nt. linux will finally get a chance to replace desktop windows systems, it might be small gains at the beginning, but this is really going to make a huge difference, the more people using desktop linux the better it gets.
yeah, 1970's tech has never really died, training load of cheap india laborers to work on 70 style computer systems will help fill a void that the high tech countries are finding hard to fill, because between learning how to write assembly for a z-80 vs playing halo 3 for 10 hours a day, the halo 3 wins out with american kids.
so using embedded system technology that is widely used by various companies to train people in india how to maintain say the code for a programmable thermostat is very useful for maintaining technology even if kids in the US aren't up to learning valuable skills.
cellphones are sold on contract basis, the maker of the phone actually gets a significant lump sum for each phone sold with each service provider.
paying $49 for a phone means it probably has $150-$200 in hardware inside it.
as far as calculators go, they either use the same IC as a 'smart' keyboard that could connect to a SD TV set or else they cost more (because they have custom design IC)
they're working on making a hardware hack for the existing device to give it more capabilities.
I know you can get better, but the company that sells these units is all looking at profit, so starting with basically an apple ][ is going to be cheaper. they want to make the device more educational, than the existing product.
basically, the advantage of having a $12 device to 'train' users to use keyboards + computers means that you can get a lot more 'trained' computer users in india without having to send them all to college, so they might take less pay and make more profit for american companies that outsource to india.
well actually the project is to make things better in india, but there are limits, the computer industry can't produce a billion jobs for everyone who wants one and suddenly make money accessible to everyone... still, at $12 + existing tv (many people in india have tv sets, or a relative with one if they don't personally own one) it does make computing more accessible to the average person in india.
once nice thing about cheap computing devices is that they are very low power, so they're a lot greener than modern computers.
I think bullets were tried in the african war over the congo. last i checked Zimbabwe had given up on paying their military with taxes, and were going for printing as many bills as possible and buying as much foreign currency as they can to pay for their military.
while 12 cent bullets are pretty cheap, getting that 12 cent bullet to the head of every person you don't personally like goes up a whole lot more when they have as many 12 cent bullets as you and as many guns as you, and they just rob all the local farms instead of paying for food.
in theory 12 cent bullets are pretty cheap, in practice, it can cost billions of dollars (like the war in iraq.) especially if you're not going for all out genocide. genocide is a lot cheaper since you just shoot everything that moves that isn't the right color/etc.
"personally, i am a fan of the digital innovations skip doctor. it won't fix a label-side scratch, but i can only think of a couple of discs with intact foil that i've not been able to repair with mine."
my Standard operating procedure for 'fixing' discs involves 1. cleaning the optical media either with a gentle detergent, or with rubbing alcohol*. I always use basic cotton cloths, they're washable, and a fairly gentle cloth. oh yeah and they're cheap. 2. basic car wax I use 'original' turtle wax, but i originally was referred to use carnuba wax. Just avoid anything abrasive, use circular strokes, to avoid possible damage to the media, have it set down on a clean, hard surface, maybe with your cotton cloth underneath. i rub the car wax in with my fingers til it's dry, than lightly brush the disc to a clear surface with the cloth, this fills scratches, and makes disks more readable, oh yeah and it's cheap, if you have to buy cotton cloth and wax you're under $5.
finally, if you've got top scratches use one of the various programs recommended by other readers, you can still usually rip all but 1 or 2 songs, and they might not even be important enough to you, rather than losing a whole disc. automatic disc repair setups i find are lackluster compared to a 'human touch' you'll never put excessive force, the devices polishing discs wont get dirty or be of an unknown material that may be substandard for repairing discs... if your time is more precious to you than money you can probably find a kid willing to learn how to fix the discs and do all the manual labor for you.
*= never had problems with either but some people say not to use alcohol on plastic, ymmv.
ah but that's the thing, you can read slashdot on the kindle, I'm not sure if it's free or not, they like to charge $9.99 for things, but you are paying $400 for a device that has much less expensive hardware, and doesn't charge the end user for their bandwidth, despite using cellular data service...
"More than 350 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post--all updated wirelessly throughout the day."
if one of those 240,000 kindle users could just reply with what blog reading actually costs (do they insert ads for ebooks? to offset bandwidth use? do they charge $1 a month? what?) ah well.
whoops. forgot the obligatory "/" at the end of the command... it would still do damage in the home directory, but without the "/" it won't render linux completely useless
but the first joker who replies 'oh you need to "sudo rm -rf" then enter your password...' when they complain that format c: didn't work, will probably wind up with the machine in the trash, if they can't afford to send it to a computer shop, which will charge them $400 to put windows on it, cuz it didn't ship with windows, and thus the user can only reinstall linux, which they probably don't know how to find software for (with sourceforge, or a package manager like adept or synaptics.)
newbies even say linux is worthless because you can't buy software for it, they just don't understand that there would be a utility to find 'new' software based on keyword searches.
They don't even need to sign a form. They just send a text to a number they see on tv with "sign me up" or something. Sure, all the fine print is right there on the tv...
no you're thinking of the 'legit' operations like the deal or no deal lucky case game.
fraud 'text message spam' works off a simple principal, step 1. set up a shell company 2. market clueless users. 3. rake in the dough. originally, some of the companies tried to pretend to be legit, like saying they'd text you once a week, etc for $1.99 a week, but they found out they couldn't recoup their losses for advertising on TV, so they got crooked and found they could take the money and run, but taking advantage of 'when' companies bill, to heavily spam e-mail spams for these sites, the last week of the month, so people don't see the charges for a month, and so the company can collect on a whole week of the scams before they ditch their shell corporation with all the money.
it's the # 1 problem in any country where sending an SMS to an arbitrary number can be bound as an 'electronic signature' because the scam is so easy to run, and so cheap, and yet you can reap massive rewards...
"Also, the US government in the late 80's funded a research project that studied how often cows chew their cud. This project received $250,000. At about the same time, the US government funded a study into how often people smile in bowling alleys. This project received $375,000. These amounts of money might be drops in the bucket, however, these two projects are both far more useless than studying pigmentation in something we thought previously lacked pigmentation... namely fossils."
my favorite government pork is the 'bridge to nowhere' not only did the government allocate over 200 million dollars to the project, the state scrapped building the bridge because the actual cost was double what they got!
i wouldn't bank on the federal government getting a refund on that cash either.
"I'll give you Lotus, but not WP. Word was almost always better than WP while Excel beat Lotus by being an adequate clone bundled with office. Excel beat Lotus on the back of the success of Word."
WP died with dos, their windows version have been lackluster. as is demonstrated by their efforts to get bought out more than any other hopelessly obsolete software. the fact is, Microsoft was copying claris. and claris was ruined by mismanagement and lost most of their developers to either Microsoft of failed startups. http://roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/19/office-wars-1-claris-and-the-origins-of-apple-iwork/
it's not just spammers. think wrong numbers! we're putting in tons of new area codes to deal with the cellular problem (assigning numbers to every person, perhaps several for each person if work numbers etc get counted) think kids who text 1500 messages a day, what if they 'enter in' a friends phone number in their cell, and try to text you 4-5 times, before you get fed up and call them and explain they got the wrong number...
every text message i've received has been a wrong number, because my carrier doesn't sell numbers to spammers, and doesn't 'automatically' generate telephone or cell phone listing pages for spammers to harvest. If you can prove your carrier actually SOLD your number to a SMS spammer, they're in even worse trouble, if they're actually charging you for each inbound text message.. it's called racketeering here in the states.
as long as we're going for far fetched explainations, why not include this one.
poor russian immagrent coder working for PC Mark decides, he'll never get his 112 russian relatives outside of moscow legally, so he decided to extort money from intel, so he writes the benchmark to specifically favor intel and by quite a bit, he then also comes up with falsified, but damning evidince that intel paid him off and then he blackmails intel for millions and threatens to 'reveal' his story to the press, only intel instead of paying him, call up their mob connection, have him hit, too bad he overdosed on his massive pain killer addiction that nobody knew about...
only the code was still released because nobody knew about it, Except intel and they were fine with his code, and then via found out about it in this way.
"But why would icc make AMD better than "no name" beats me."
because the code patht he originally wrote for AMD cpus was never tested on AMD cpus, and testers reported multiple lock up scenarios and threatened to never use this Fsking bench mark again and then they 'fixed' it and got a little speed boost, but not enough to anger intel.
"I disagree. At this point there is controversy. It will be explained by the vendor and people will have to either accept the explanation or not.
If it were open source, the facts of how the code behaves could be determined by third parties and publicized. We wouldn't have to take anyone's word for it."
I disagree as well, but for the simple reason that processor vendors have paid coders. i remember when a certain free open source video editing tool was released, and some websites started using it for benchmarking, then AMD got wind of this, and released a 'optimized' version for amd fanbois that increased the performance of the app more than 20% on amd hardware.
if a benchmarks app is free open source software, the vendors themselves are going to fork it if it gets bad results on their hardware, and they can make it do better.
does Intel bribe benchmark makers to make the benchmarks favor intel? you better believe it. I'm kinda surprized that AMD hasn't exposed this stuff sooner by allowing their chips to verify as 'genuine intel' but then again they license stuff from intel, and they might legally be unable to do so.
what drives me crazy is i know from many FOSS software that intel hasn't had a real lead on any AMD chip since the 1ghz days yet intel fanboys all promote the latest 'benchmark' scores instead of real world, open source applications who have nothing to gain, and reputation to lose, except the recent 'TLB' bug quad cores. videogame makers have the most to gain, because they can simulatenously take nvidia bribes on top of intel bribes.
and then they can further tweak the benchmarks to only run at full speed if 4 GB of ram is detected, to appease the corrupt memory industry.
sigh. if there ever was an honest software company i think they got fed up, sold out and switched to open source, which explains the demise of netscape, and rise of firefox nicely.
"Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here."
so, who owns chess, and who owns shogi?
and if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble?
the only game i can recall having 'dupes' are kismet 'the modern game of yacht' and yahtzee. and kismet went so far as to change the color of the pips on the dice.
oh wait, i see you didn't understand, Modular battery is required for electric Taxis, there aren't going to be 500 models of vehicles in a taxi fleet, there is going to be 1. usp has a single design of package delivery vehicles, a robo taxi isn't going to be made of a different mix of passenger cars.
for passenger vehicles the battery pack can be fixed, or require significant disassembly to remove them. after-all for a passenger vehicle taking 10 minutes to charge is completely different from a robotic taxis service, where the robots need no rest.
your assertion of where the battery 'must' be located doesn't fly with me. the battery in the tesla isn't 'low' to the ground, although it is over the rear axle.
i realize having too high a center of gravity is bad, but i don't think a modular, removable battery pack for an electric taxi is unrealistic. let's say you put it Directly underneath the rear passenger seat, all you need to do to make it modular, is have an access panel, and say have the battery be 'drop in' with a locking bar to keep it from flying out in the event the taxi rolls, from a bad traffic accident... the locking bar has to be strong enough to hold the battery weight, so that does add to total vehicle weight, oh yeah, and for electric vehicles to get decent ranges they need to be made from carbon fiber, not steel. the problem is that a steel body electric vehicle gets like 40 mile ranges, you were right, there is a problem, but your assertion that modular batteries might be the problem is off base.
it's total vehicle weight that kills steel based electric cars. hybrids have much smaller battery packs.
"I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90."
yeah there is. first off, you're ignoring one important thing. a computer really only needs an 8-bit processor. 8-bit processors use very low amounts of ram, because of their word length. 64k is often the total ram of a powerful 8-bit microprocessor.
zilog processors can sell for as little as $1. you said there is no way no how a processor can cost $1, yet basic 8-bit zilog processors cost as little as $1 and for that you get a healthy 20 mhz, over 5 times faster than the colecovision adam home computer (z-80 at 3.8 mhz).
they even sell a 50-mhz 8 bit processor, but 20 mhz is plenty fast.
i don't know about intel or motorolla, but zilog still sells a wide line of 8-bit 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors, including a low power Zilog that can run on as little as 2 volts. if that's not enough for you they sell an 8-bit chip with tcp/ip that can generate http web pages, eg: for web control interfaces for a microcomputer..
"eZ80® is revolutionizing the high-performance microprocessor market for today's 8-bit embedded applications. The eZ80® can operate at speeds up to 50MHz and address 16MB without a Memory Management Unit. This family supports demanding TCP/IP networking applications, featuring an Embedded Internet protocol stack that enables the transmission of HTML form data and the dynamic generation of web pages, and supports additional higher-level networking functions such as email and SNMP."
i don't know what an ez80 chip costs, but your 'everything must cost $30' assumption assumes a lot of things. how would an 'electronic controlled' thermostat cost $30 if the microprocessor couldn't be reduced below $30? the simple fact is, yeah it can be, and you don't need to make a zilog on 45 nanometer dies to get great price/performance ratios..
also, the Z-80 product line is virtually unchanged since the 1970's
that makes implementing z-80 products extremely cheap, since you don't have to design new code if you already have access to old code that was designed for z-80s.
and before you say 'but you could never get windows on an 8-bit cpu' remember that the NES was a z-80 derived product. you can have a simple, streamlined 8-bit OS and gui, that works just fine without all the HZ, and does just what you need... you could get a $10 laptop, if you really were willing to restrict it to all 8-bit software and the inherent limitations.
they have a whole line of 8-bit 16-bit and 32-bit chips
the reason? the cost of a Z-80 is super cheap and low power nowadays, and the Z-80 powered a lot or popular computing devices, from microcomputers, to the NES console. in the embedded space the Z-80 is still great.
intel might not use it's old chip designs anymore, but the Z-80 is alive and well.
Slashdot Mirror
voodoo graphics was bought out by whom again? ati got bought out by AMD.. nvidia isn't as insulated against failure as you imply... not to mention what happened to early graphic companies like Hercules graphics.
that being said, IBM has been all over the place, doing a little of everything. they've been the king of the hill, and they've struggled to not be taken over by hostile forces.
they realized free open source software could be a microsoft killer, microsoft was a mistake IBM made, when they pushed desktop computers as typewriter replacements. they made a lot of mistakes, including half writing windows NT for Microsoft.
IMO this whole article is just another slashvertisment for all the work IBM has put into trying to get businesses to drop microsoft and adopt IBM by using free open source software to make their costs slightly lower. IBM started embracing server linux when they realized they could make money off it, so not much new to see here.
all because Vista is hated, and Microsoft doesn't want people still using xp or nt. linux will finally get a chance to replace desktop windows systems, it might be small gains at the beginning, but this is really going to make a huge difference, the more people using desktop linux the better it gets.
yeah, 1970's tech has never really died, training load of cheap india laborers to work on 70 style computer systems will help fill a void that the high tech countries are finding hard to fill, because between learning how to write assembly for a z-80 vs playing halo 3 for 10 hours a day, the halo 3 wins out with american kids.
so using embedded system technology that is widely used by various companies to train people in india how to maintain say the code for a programmable thermostat is very useful for maintaining technology even if kids in the US aren't up to learning valuable skills.
cellphones are sold on contract basis, the maker of the phone actually gets a significant lump sum for each phone sold with each service provider.
paying $49 for a phone means it probably has $150-$200 in hardware inside it.
as far as calculators go, they either use the same IC as a 'smart' keyboard that could connect to a SD TV set or else they cost more (because they have custom design IC)
they're working on an existing product in india.
they're working on making a hardware hack for the existing device to give it more capabilities.
I know you can get better, but the company that sells these units is all looking at profit, so starting with basically an apple ][ is going to be cheaper. they want to make the device more educational, than the existing product.
basically, the advantage of having a $12 device to 'train' users to use keyboards + computers means that you can get a lot more 'trained' computer users in india without having to send them all to college, so they might take less pay and make more profit for american companies that outsource to india.
well actually the project is to make things better in india, but there are limits, the computer industry can't produce a billion jobs for everyone who wants one and suddenly make money accessible to everyone... still, at $12 + existing tv (many people in india have tv sets, or a relative with one if they don't personally own one) it does make computing more accessible to the average person in india.
once nice thing about cheap computing devices is that they are very low power, so they're a lot greener than modern computers.
I think bullets were tried in the african war over the congo. last i checked Zimbabwe had given up on paying their military with taxes, and were going for printing as many bills as possible and buying as much foreign currency as they can to pay for their military.
while 12 cent bullets are pretty cheap, getting that 12 cent bullet to the head of every person you don't personally like goes up a whole lot more when they have as many 12 cent bullets as you and as many guns as you, and they just rob all the local farms instead of paying for food.
in theory 12 cent bullets are pretty cheap, in practice, it can cost billions of dollars (like the war in iraq.) especially if you're not going for all out genocide. genocide is a lot cheaper since you just shoot everything that moves that isn't the right color/etc.
"personally, i am a fan of the digital innovations skip doctor. it won't fix a label-side scratch, but i can only think of a couple of discs with intact foil that i've not been able to repair with mine."
my Standard operating procedure for 'fixing' discs involves 1. cleaning the optical media either with a gentle detergent, or with rubbing alcohol*. I always use basic cotton cloths, they're washable, and a fairly gentle cloth. oh yeah and they're cheap. 2. basic car wax I use 'original' turtle wax, but i originally was referred to use carnuba wax. Just avoid anything abrasive, use circular strokes, to avoid possible damage to the media, have it set down on a clean, hard surface, maybe with your cotton cloth underneath. i rub the car wax in with my fingers til it's dry, than lightly brush the disc to a clear surface with the cloth, this fills scratches, and makes disks more readable, oh yeah and it's cheap, if you have to buy cotton cloth and wax you're under $5.
finally, if you've got top scratches use one of the various programs recommended by other readers, you can still usually rip all but 1 or 2 songs, and they might not even be important enough to you, rather than losing a whole disc. automatic disc repair setups i find are lackluster compared to a 'human touch' you'll never put excessive force, the devices polishing discs wont get dirty or be of an unknown material that may be substandard for repairing discs... if your time is more precious to you than money you can probably find a kid willing to learn how to fix the discs and do all the manual labor for you.
*= never had problems with either but some people say not to use alcohol on plastic, ymmv.
ah but that's the thing, you can read slashdot on the kindle, I'm not sure if it's free or not, they like to charge $9.99 for things, but you are paying $400 for a device that has much less expensive hardware, and doesn't charge the end user for their bandwidth, despite using cellular data service...
"More than 350 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post--all updated wirelessly throughout the day."
if one of those 240,000 kindle users could just reply with what blog reading actually costs (do they insert ads for ebooks? to offset bandwidth use? do they charge $1 a month? what?) ah well.
whoops. forgot the obligatory " /" at the end of the command... it would still do damage in the home directory, but without the " /" it won't render linux completely useless
but the first joker who replies 'oh you need to "sudo rm -rf" then enter your password...' when they complain that format c: didn't work, will probably wind up with the machine in the trash, if they can't afford to send it to a computer shop, which will charge them $400 to put windows on it, cuz it didn't ship with windows, and thus the user can only reinstall linux, which they probably don't know how to find software for (with sourceforge, or a package manager like adept or synaptics.)
newbies even say linux is worthless because you can't buy software for it, they just don't understand that there would be a utility to find 'new' software based on keyword searches.
They don't even need to sign a form. They just send a text to a number they see on tv with "sign me up" or something. Sure, all the fine print is right there on the tv...
no you're thinking of the 'legit' operations like the deal or no deal lucky case game.
fraud 'text message spam' works off a simple principal, step 1. set up a shell company 2. market clueless users. 3. rake in the dough. originally, some of the companies tried to pretend to be legit, like saying they'd text you once a week, etc for $1.99 a week, but they found out they couldn't recoup their losses for advertising on TV, so they got crooked and found they could take the money and run, but taking advantage of 'when' companies bill, to heavily spam e-mail spams for these sites, the last week of the month, so people don't see the charges for a month, and so the company can collect on a whole week of the scams before they ditch their shell corporation with all the money.
it's the # 1 problem in any country where sending an SMS to an arbitrary number can be bound as an 'electronic signature' because the scam is so easy to run, and so cheap, and yet you can reap massive rewards...
"Also, the US government in the late 80's funded a research project that studied how often cows chew their cud. This project received $250,000. At about the same time, the US government funded a study into how often people smile in bowling alleys. This project received $375,000. These amounts of money might be drops in the bucket, however, these two projects are both far more useless than studying pigmentation in something we thought previously lacked pigmentation... namely fossils."
my favorite government pork is the 'bridge to nowhere' not only did the government allocate over 200 million dollars to the project, the state scrapped building the bridge because the actual cost was double what they got!
i wouldn't bank on the federal government getting a refund on that cash either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
"I'll give you Lotus, but not WP. Word was almost always better than WP while Excel beat Lotus by being an adequate clone bundled with office. Excel beat Lotus on the back of the success of Word."
WP died with dos, their windows version have been lackluster. as is demonstrated by their efforts to get bought out more than any other hopelessly obsolete software. the fact is, Microsoft was copying claris. and claris was ruined by mismanagement and lost most of their developers to either Microsoft of failed startups. http://roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/19/office-wars-1-claris-and-the-origins-of-apple-iwork/
it's not just spammers. think wrong numbers! we're putting in tons of new area codes to deal with the cellular problem (assigning numbers to every person, perhaps several for each person if work numbers etc get counted) think kids who text 1500 messages a day, what if they 'enter in' a friends phone number in their cell, and try to text you 4-5 times, before you get fed up and call them and explain they got the wrong number...
every text message i've received has been a wrong number, because my carrier doesn't sell numbers to spammers, and doesn't 'automatically' generate telephone or cell phone listing pages for spammers to harvest. If you can prove your carrier actually SOLD your number to a SMS spammer, they're in even worse trouble, if they're actually charging you for each inbound text message.. it's called racketeering here in the states.
as long as we're going for far fetched explainations, why not include this one.
poor russian immagrent coder working for PC Mark decides, he'll never get his 112 russian relatives outside of moscow legally, so he decided to extort money from intel, so he writes the benchmark to specifically favor intel and by quite a bit, he then also comes up with falsified, but damning evidince that intel paid him off and then he blackmails intel for millions and threatens to 'reveal' his story to the press, only intel instead of paying him, call up their mob connection, have him hit, too bad he overdosed on his massive pain killer addiction that nobody knew about...
only the code was still released because nobody knew about it, Except intel and they were fine with his code, and then via found out about it in this way.
"But why would icc make AMD better than "no name" beats me."
because the code patht he originally wrote for AMD cpus was never tested on AMD cpus, and testers reported multiple lock up scenarios and threatened to never use this Fsking bench mark again and then they 'fixed' it and got a little speed boost, but not enough to anger intel.
"Because that would require a non-trivial amount of work for a signifigant reduction in bribe money from intel"
There, fixed that for you. PC gaming is a corrupt industry any company not taking cash, went under, or went to consoles.
"I disagree. At this point there is controversy. It will be explained by the vendor and people will have to either accept the explanation or not.
If it were open source, the facts of how the code behaves could be determined by third parties and publicized. We wouldn't have to take anyone's word for it."
I disagree as well, but for the simple reason that processor vendors have paid coders. i remember when a certain free open source video editing tool was released, and some websites started using it for benchmarking, then AMD got wind of this, and released a 'optimized' version for amd fanbois that increased the performance of the app more than 20% on amd hardware.
if a benchmarks app is free open source software, the vendors themselves are going to fork it if it gets bad results on their hardware, and they can make it do better.
does Intel bribe benchmark makers to make the benchmarks favor intel? you better believe it. I'm kinda surprized that AMD hasn't exposed this stuff sooner by allowing their chips to verify as 'genuine intel' but then again they license stuff from intel, and they might legally be unable to do so.
what drives me crazy is i know from many FOSS software that intel hasn't had a real lead on any AMD chip since the 1ghz days yet intel fanboys all promote the latest 'benchmark' scores instead of real world, open source applications who have nothing to gain, and reputation to lose, except the recent 'TLB' bug quad cores. videogame makers have the most to gain, because they can simulatenously take nvidia bribes on top of intel bribes.
and then they can further tweak the benchmarks to only run at full speed if 4 GB of ram is detected, to appease the corrupt memory industry.
sigh. if there ever was an honest software company i think they got fed up, sold out and switched to open source, which explains the demise of netscape, and rise of firefox nicely.
there are plenty of way to keep discs oriented easily. not the least of which is to have a thick disc with a square back, and a round face. eg: ([ ])
you've never played othello have you? round discs, no problems playing it ever.
"Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here."
so, who owns chess, and who owns shogi?
and if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble?
the only game i can recall having 'dupes' are kismet 'the modern game of yacht' and yahtzee. and kismet went so far as to change the color of the pips on the dice.
I think you might want to read
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=rip+off+Venture+capital
it's funny, laugh!
oh wait, i see you didn't understand, Modular battery is required for electric Taxis, there aren't going to be 500 models of vehicles in a taxi fleet, there is going to be 1. usp has a single design of package delivery vehicles, a robo taxi isn't going to be made of a different mix of passenger cars.
for passenger vehicles the battery pack can be fixed, or require significant disassembly to remove them. after-all for a passenger vehicle taking 10 minutes to charge is completely different from a robotic taxis service, where the robots need no rest.
your assertion of where the battery 'must' be located doesn't fly with me. the battery in the tesla isn't 'low' to the ground, although it is over the rear axle.
i realize having too high a center of gravity is bad, but i don't think a modular, removable battery pack for an electric taxi is unrealistic. let's say you put it Directly underneath the rear passenger seat, all you need to do to make it modular, is have an access panel, and say have the battery be 'drop in' with a locking bar to keep it from flying out in the event the taxi rolls, from a bad traffic accident... the locking bar has to be strong enough to hold the battery weight, so that does add to total vehicle weight, oh yeah, and for electric vehicles to get decent ranges they need to be made from carbon fiber, not steel. the problem is that a steel body electric vehicle gets like 40 mile ranges, you were right, there is a problem, but your assertion that modular batteries might be the problem is off base.
it's total vehicle weight that kills steel based electric cars. hybrids have much smaller battery packs.
"I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90."
yeah there is. first off, you're ignoring one important thing. a computer really only needs an 8-bit processor. 8-bit processors use very low amounts of ram, because of their word length. 64k is often the total ram of a powerful 8-bit microprocessor.
zilog processors can sell for as little as $1. you said there is no way no how a processor can cost $1, yet basic 8-bit zilog processors cost as little as $1 and for that you get a healthy 20 mhz, over 5 times faster than the colecovision adam home computer (z-80 at 3.8 mhz).
they even sell a 50-mhz 8 bit processor, but 20 mhz is plenty fast.
i don't know about intel or motorolla, but zilog still sells a wide line of 8-bit 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors, including a low power Zilog that can run on as little as 2 volts. if that's not enough for you they sell an 8-bit chip with tcp/ip that can generate http web pages, eg: for web control interfaces for a microcomputer..
"eZ80® is revolutionizing the high-performance microprocessor market for today's 8-bit embedded applications. The eZ80® can operate at speeds up to 50MHz and address 16MB without a Memory Management Unit. This family supports demanding TCP/IP networking applications, featuring an Embedded Internet protocol stack that enables the transmission of HTML form data and the dynamic generation of web pages, and supports additional higher-level networking functions such as email and SNMP."
i don't know what an ez80 chip costs, but your 'everything must cost $30' assumption assumes a lot of things. how would an 'electronic controlled' thermostat cost $30 if the microprocessor couldn't be reduced below $30? the simple fact is, yeah it can be, and you don't need to make a zilog on 45 nanometer dies to get great price/performance ratios..
also, the Z-80 product line is virtually unchanged since the 1970's
that makes implementing z-80 products extremely cheap, since you don't have to design new code if you already have access to old code that was designed for z-80s.
and before you say 'but you could never get windows on an 8-bit cpu' remember that the NES was a z-80 derived product. you can have a simple, streamlined 8-bit OS and gui, that works just fine without all the HZ, and does just what you need... you could get a $10 laptop, if you really were willing to restrict it to all 8-bit software and the inherent limitations.
z-80 chips are still used in electronic devices today.
http://www.zilog.com/products/businessline.asp?bl=273
they have a whole line of 8-bit 16-bit and 32-bit chips
the reason? the cost of a Z-80 is super cheap and low power nowadays, and the Z-80 powered a lot or popular computing devices, from microcomputers, to the NES console. in the embedded space the Z-80 is still great.
intel might not use it's old chip designs anymore, but the Z-80 is alive and well.