Here's hoping the rest of the market doesn't make like apple-obsessed sheep for once and make the 3.5mm headphone jack obsolete.
Yep. The 3.5mm jack....it just works and it also doesn't need a goddamn battery. It provides total, 100% compatibility with hundreds of thousands of different devices.
But Apple wants to sell $169 earbuds to every sucker on the planet, so it has to die. That's what this is about, not sound quality or "waterproofing".
My $99 Samsung Rugby Pro is water resistant and it has a 3.5mm jack. It meets the IP67 water resistance spec (can be submerged in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes).
So that whole "make it waterproof" thing is bullshit. They just want to sell people earbuds for $169 a pop.
Great- another fucking thing that needs a battery. Or is that two things? Either way, it's fucking stupid.
Because a wired device is just so quaint, right Apple? The whole "waterproofing" angle is utter bullshit- a 3.5mm jack is easy to waterproof. Or is Apple telling us that waterproofing the jack is beyond their technical ability? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The 3.5mm jack is one of the the most standardized connectors in the history of electronics and it works just fine, so OF COURSE we must throw it away and use something so we can force people to either buy an adapter for it or a whole new set of earbuds or headphones. At the same time we can encumber it with DRM. Yippee!
if you want to make an engineering argument against a project, at least read the project's bloody design document first.
Should I also read the design docs for a "Telepathy-Powered Perpetual Motion Machine" if Elon Musk pretends to build one of those, too?
Sometimes you don't need to delve deeply into the docs to know something is bullshit. I may be wrong, but I'll bet anyone $1,000 right now that I'm not.
Since you're so certain it's a done deal, I'll bet you US $1,000 that this it's never built and never becomes operational in any real sense. We can put the money in escrow and set a time limit of ten years on it if you like.
I'll bet you US $1,000 that this it's never built and never becomes operational in any real sense. We can put the money in escrow and set a time limit of ten years on it if you like.
Question: How do you prevent nutjobs from shooting at all those miles of exposed vacuum tubing? Answer: Errrrrrr....you don't!
Question: How do you handle the explosive decompression if there's an accident of any sort? Answer: Errrrrrr....you don't!
Question: What happens when there's an earthquake? Answer: California never has earthquakes, so stop with the negativity!
Question: Are there really enough people who want to go from LA to San Fran or back to make this economically feasible? Answer: Of course not!
So first the whole tube thing - I guess he didn't know we have thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines that operate from 200psi to 1500psi and have a lot of the same design concerns.
Those are pressurized lines, not vacuum lines, and many of them are below ground. Maintaining a vacuum is a completely different story than using a pressurized system. Pressurized systems are often self-sealing by nature, and they're not used to carry stuff at supersonic speeds nor do they carry passengers.
And then there's Phil Mason, a lone voice in the wilderness, saying it will never work.
He's not the only one, but he's one of the better known ones.
-
Pardon me if I side with the optimists on this one.
I think this is the triumph of hope over reason.:)
It would be super cool if this worked, but between the insurmountable engineering issues, the right-of-way issues, and the glaring security problems, I don't think it's ever going to happen. Minor faults (not to mention sabotage) make this thing a major death trap. It would be the juiciest target ever. Getting a decent vacuum pulled in a miles-long tube 10 or 20 feet in diameter is also a feat that is going to be next to impossible to do in a practical way, and the heating/cooling problems with vacuum seals in the California climate are also pretty daunting. The cost is outrageous, and for what? So you can go from LA to San Francisco really fast? Why not just shoot people in rockets from LA to San Francisco into giant nets outside of Levi's Stadium?
As someone else mentioned, this is like the Concorde on steroids, times 1,000. It's unfeasible from an engineering perspective and the utility of it is questionable at best. It's the same reason Boeing never built the Sonic Cruiser- billions spent to capture a minuscule potential audience, at great expense (and that didn't even include the danger of a catastrophic failure scenario).
Cool idea, but in the end, I don't think it's going to happen. I'd be willing to bet anyone $1,000 that it never gets out of the planning/testing phase. None of the stations will ever be built.
It's not a high vacuum. What is hard about this for you to understand?
Even low to moderate vacuum doesn't contain enough air to provide the lifting or cushioning effects that this thing would require. Even the vacuum produced by a $20 Seal-A-Meal gadget would remove enough air so that lift or dynamic cushioning wouldn't be possible, even at extreme speeds.
You really think that shipping people at supersonic speeds in a ground-based platform of vacuum tubes is ever going to happen? Given the engineering "issues" (lol, to put it mildly) and the delicious soft-target nature of this thing, I can tell you that it's 100% pie-in-the-sky.
Oh sure, they'll fuck around with it and burn through millions if not billions of sucker-bucks, but in reality it's never going to materialize.
its not a complete vacuum. At supersonic speed there is still enough air to provide some lift (also heating, compression wave, etc). Engineering fun.
Errrr, no. As someone who's dealt with both vacuum and high-vac equipment, let me be the first to tell you that even at 800 mph there's not enough air to provide any meaningful lift or cushioning effect.
It lines up with what I said before: the whole thing is bullshit based on impossible-to-overcome engineering problems. It's never going to be built as it was originally laid out, and I mean never. No one is going to build an evacuated tube 100 miles long under the existing terrestrial conditions. That is simply never going to happen and I'll bet anyone $1,000 right now that it never happens.
Some completely different and mostly impractical thing called a "Hyper-something" may be built, but it's going to be nothing, repeat NOTHING like the pie-in-the-sky concept first advertised, err, I mean "proposed". The original concept is ridiculously impractical from an engineering standpoint and will never be built. And that's not even taking into account the insane security problems.
Similarly, don't tell other people what they should like.
Now you're making shit up again. I never told you what you should like or prefer. In fact, I said pretty much the opposite: "If other people want a non-replaceable battery that they have to pay to have swapped out, then good for them".
There was no logging before the machines were captured. It's probably turned on now
This assumes that the Feds hadn't tapped the line and were logging the data without the people at Perfect Privacy knowing about it. They could log the data for a while (weeks? months?) which would then give them the justification they needed to be able to secure a warrant and seize the servers.
Why is it so important to you that I stop liking what you don't like, anyway?
It's not. As I said above, "If you want to drag around an extra battery, be my guest".
You were the one that made the claim that "people complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery", and I said that was nonsense, there's no evidence whatsoever of people complaining about any such thing.
The part that is difficult to grasp is that you're talking about dragging around two batteries anyway -- one inside your phone, one outside your phone.
No, I don't drag around two batteries- that's the whole point. If you want to drag around an extra battery, be my guest, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about not being able to replace the battery in your phone, like you can do for almost any other battery-powered device.
Are you that scared to open a device to change a battery or are you so weak that the extra couple of grams would tax your muscles? Is popping off the back of your phone and changing the battery once every couple of years too technical for you?
When my battery degrades it's literally a 2-minute job to swap it out and I'm good for another year or two. You have to send yours in and you lose your phone for a couple of days. Where's the advantage in that?
-
If you have a wristwatch, how easy is it to change the battery in that? Do you complain about that?
I don't use a wristwatch anymore, but when I did changing the battery was a 5-minute job I could do myself, and no, I didn't complain about it. If I had to send it in for service to change the battery then I would have considered that stupid and I wouldn't have bought that wristwatch.
Some of us aren't scared to change a battery and value the utility of being able to do so over the minuscule amount of added weight (if there even is any). My old Nokia had a removable battery and making it non-removable wouldn't have saved any weight since the back had to come off to change the SIM and SD Card anyway. Where, exactly, would the reduction in weight come from and how much would it be? A gram, maybe?
Slashdot Mirror
It's already played out. It will take a miracle for Trump to win the White House.
Or an asteroid obliterating the Earth.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/file...
Sorry bro, Trump represents the majority of Americans,
I'd like some of the same medication you're taking, except in a smaller dose.
This is about decorum and not ideology.
Ahhh, "decorum", another "go-to" excuse for censoring things that might be controversial or make someone feel bad, ashamed, or uneasy.
There's a place for decorum and then there are times it must be ignored in favor of the truth.
You're assuming they've even heard of the vietnam war.
Correct. And if they did, they probably wouldn't give a shit.
We should tell them it was the Hipster War, as in, "You probably never heard of it."
Here's hoping the rest of the market doesn't make like apple-obsessed sheep for once and make the 3.5mm headphone jack obsolete.
Yep. The 3.5mm jack....it just works and it also doesn't need a goddamn battery. It provides total, 100% compatibility with hundreds of thousands of different devices.
But Apple wants to sell $169 earbuds to every sucker on the planet, so it has to die. That's what this is about, not sound quality or "waterproofing".
My $99 Samsung Rugby Pro is water resistant and it has a 3.5mm jack. It meets the IP67 water resistance spec (can be submerged in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes).
So that whole "make it waterproof" thing is bullshit. They just want to sell people earbuds for $169 a pop.
So they can track everything, seriously. Most of these devices have no real need of an internet connection.
What? You mean my 'Flashlight Extreme 2.0' app doesn't need an internet connection or access to my microphone, camera, and contact list?
Ha Ha Ha Ha, err, I mean, that's terrible!!
Signed,
Hackers Everywhere
Great- another fucking thing that needs a battery. Or is that two things? Either way, it's fucking stupid.
Because a wired device is just so quaint, right Apple? The whole "waterproofing" angle is utter bullshit- a 3.5mm jack is easy to waterproof. Or is Apple telling us that waterproofing the jack is beyond their technical ability? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The 3.5mm jack is one of the the most standardized connectors in the history of electronics and it works just fine, so OF COURSE we must throw it away and use something so we can force people to either buy an adapter for it or a whole new set of earbuds or headphones. At the same time we can encumber it with DRM. Yippee!
Fuck you, Apple.
A solution in search of a problem.
Indeed. An unwanted solution in search of a non-existent problem.
"The refrigerators will use Microsoft's object recognition technology to create a list of your groceries..."
Great...I can't wait to pay thousands of dollars for Microsoft to do what I've happily been doing for years with a pencil and paper.
if you want to make an engineering argument against a project, at least read the project's bloody design document first.
Should I also read the design docs for a "Telepathy-Powered Perpetual Motion Machine" if Elon Musk pretends to build one of those, too?
Sometimes you don't need to delve deeply into the docs to know something is bullshit. I may be wrong, but I'll bet anyone $1,000 right now that I'm not.
Since you're so certain it's a done deal, I'll bet you US $1,000 that this it's never built and never becomes operational in any real sense. We can put the money in escrow and set a time limit of ten years on it if you like.
I'll bet you US $1,000 that this it's never built and never becomes operational in any real sense. We can put the money in escrow and set a time limit of ten years on it if you like.
Question: How do you prevent nutjobs from shooting at all those miles of exposed vacuum tubing?
Answer: Errrrrrr....you don't!
Question: How do you handle the explosive decompression if there's an accident of any sort?
Answer: Errrrrrr....you don't!
Question: What happens when there's an earthquake?
Answer: California never has earthquakes, so stop with the negativity!
Question: Are there really enough people who want to go from LA to San Fran or back to make this economically feasible?
Answer: Of course not!
So first the whole tube thing - I guess he didn't know we have thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines that operate from 200psi to 1500psi and have a lot of the same design concerns.
Those are pressurized lines, not vacuum lines, and many of them are below ground. Maintaining a vacuum is a completely different story than using a pressurized system. Pressurized systems are often self-sealing by nature, and they're not used to carry stuff at supersonic speeds nor do they carry passengers.
And then there's Phil Mason, a lone voice in the wilderness, saying it will never work.
He's not the only one, but he's one of the better known ones.
-
Pardon me if I side with the optimists on this one.
I think this is the triumph of hope over reason. :)
It would be super cool if this worked, but between the insurmountable engineering issues, the right-of-way issues, and the glaring security problems, I don't think it's ever going to happen. Minor faults (not to mention sabotage) make this thing a major death trap. It would be the juiciest target ever. Getting a decent vacuum pulled in a miles-long tube 10 or 20 feet in diameter is also a feat that is going to be next to impossible to do in a practical way, and the heating/cooling problems with vacuum seals in the California climate are also pretty daunting. The cost is outrageous, and for what? So you can go from LA to San Francisco really fast? Why not just shoot people in rockets from LA to San Francisco into giant nets outside of Levi's Stadium?
As someone else mentioned, this is like the Concorde on steroids, times 1,000. It's unfeasible from an engineering perspective and the utility of it is questionable at best. It's the same reason Boeing never built the Sonic Cruiser- billions spent to capture a minuscule potential audience, at great expense (and that didn't even include the danger of a catastrophic failure scenario).
Cool idea, but in the end, I don't think it's going to happen. I'd be willing to bet anyone $1,000 that it never gets out of the planning/testing phase. None of the stations will ever be built.
It's not a high vacuum. What is hard about this for you to understand?
Even low to moderate vacuum doesn't contain enough air to provide the lifting or cushioning effects that this thing would require. Even the vacuum produced by a $20 Seal-A-Meal gadget would remove enough air so that lift or dynamic cushioning wouldn't be possible, even at extreme speeds.
You really think that shipping people at supersonic speeds in a ground-based platform of vacuum tubes is ever going to happen? Given the engineering "issues" (lol, to put it mildly) and the delicious soft-target nature of this thing, I can tell you that it's 100% pie-in-the-sky.
Oh sure, they'll fuck around with it and burn through millions if not billions of sucker-bucks, but in reality it's never going to materialize.
See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Cool idea for sure, but it's never going to happen.
its not a complete vacuum. At supersonic speed there is still enough air to provide some lift (also heating, compression wave, etc). Engineering fun.
Errrr, no. As someone who's dealt with both vacuum and high-vac equipment, let me be the first to tell you that even at 800 mph there's not enough air to provide any meaningful lift or cushioning effect.
Just out of curiosity, how would an air cushion work in a vacuum tube?
Shhhhh, don't point out obvious problems like this or the suckers funding it will run away.
It lines up with what I said before: the whole thing is bullshit based on impossible-to-overcome engineering problems. It's never going to be built as it was originally laid out, and I mean never. No one is going to build an evacuated tube 100 miles long under the existing terrestrial conditions. That is simply never going to happen and I'll bet anyone $1,000 right now that it never happens.
Some completely different and mostly impractical thing called a "Hyper-something" may be built, but it's going to be nothing, repeat NOTHING like the pie-in-the-sky concept first advertised, err, I mean "proposed". The original concept is ridiculously impractical from an engineering standpoint and will never be built. And that's not even taking into account the insane security problems.
Similarly, don't tell other people what they should like.
Now you're making shit up again. I never told you what you should like or prefer. In fact, I said pretty much the opposite: "If other people want a non-replaceable battery that they have to pay to have swapped out, then good for them".
There was no logging before the machines were captured. It's probably turned on now
This assumes that the Feds hadn't tapped the line and were logging the data without the people at Perfect Privacy knowing about it. They could log the data for a while (weeks? months?) which would then give them the justification they needed to be able to secure a warrant and seize the servers.
Keep on pretending nobody complained about phones being too thick or too heavy, dude.
Please feel free to cite some sources showing people who said they'd be happy to give up a replaceable battery in order to save a little weight.
Why is it so important to you that I stop liking what you don't like, anyway?
It's not. As I said above, "If you want to drag around an extra battery, be my guest".
You were the one that made the claim that "people complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery", and I said that was nonsense, there's no evidence whatsoever of people complaining about any such thing.
The part that is difficult to grasp is that you're talking about dragging around two batteries anyway -- one inside your phone, one outside your phone.
No, I don't drag around two batteries- that's the whole point. If you want to drag around an extra battery, be my guest, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about not being able to replace the battery in your phone, like you can do for almost any other battery-powered device.
Are you that scared to open a device to change a battery or are you so weak that the extra couple of grams would tax your muscles? Is popping off the back of your phone and changing the battery once every couple of years too technical for you?
When my battery degrades it's literally a 2-minute job to swap it out and I'm good for another year or two. You have to send yours in and you lose your phone for a couple of days. Where's the advantage in that?
-
If you have a wristwatch, how easy is it to change the battery in that? Do you complain about that?
I don't use a wristwatch anymore, but when I did changing the battery was a 5-minute job I could do myself, and no, I didn't complain about it. If I had to send it in for service to change the battery then I would have considered that stupid and I wouldn't have bought that wristwatch.
Some of us aren't scared to change a battery and value the utility of being able to do so over the minuscule amount of added weight (if there even is any). My old Nokia had a removable battery and making it non-removable wouldn't have saved any weight since the back had to come off to change the SIM and SD Card anyway. Where, exactly, would the reduction in weight come from and how much would it be? A gram, maybe?