Humans are much cheaper (to make and maintain) than robots.
That is clearly not true, at least once the economies of scale kick in. While humans are cheap to produce initially, the approximately eighteen years of care, feeding and education they require is, in military terms, a huge liability. Then there is the cost of training them for the task at hand.
Contrast this with say, fighter drones (autonomous fighter aircraft). Not only can they be mass-produced, but they will all instantly be equally skillful with no training flight time required. New tactics or information will only require a download. They will last far longer than manned aircraft, since there's no need to stress the wings or airframe with frequent training/practice flights. This will also as well as being much less expensive to operate. The final plum is that no dollars need to be spent on ejection seats, oxygen systems, cockpit glass, displays or any other item catering to the needs of humans - which also saves weight and ups performance.
Oh yeah, and they also don't require a limit on turn G forces, so autonomous fighters will be able to massively outmaneuver piloted fighters.
The concern with this kind of automated killing is that it makes things too easy. If you want to fight a war, your own ass should be on the line too. You shouldn't be able to just press a button and murder people on the other side of the planet.
The problem with the way you're thinking of this is that you're not looking at the potential for an adversary to develop this tech.
Leaving nukes out of the equation for a minute, imagine China or some other adversary develops a means to mass-produce adequately performing autonomous soldier robots, perhaps each capable of running for several months at a time using a small nuclear power source. They wouldn't necessarily look anthropomorphic, perhaps more like small tanks, and could be developed and tested in total secrecy. They then send a few hundred thousand of these into Russia with no warning.
Do you think the Russians would prefer to fight back with human troops, or their own automated army?
I believe autonomous military units of all types are coming, it is a new arms race. The only thing is that no country besides the US seems to be very good at developing new military tech these days - but the US always wants to stay ahead of the game.
Right, because we all know C is the be-all and end-all of programming languages.
Oh wait, it's not. In fact, it's a fairly archaic, cruft-ridden effort at "portable assembler", with not too much to offer in terms of a standard library.
I really think we can do better in the search for an improved browser-based programming language. We've learned quite a bit in the forty years since C was invented.
If you travel a lot, that's great... but it is just a gimmick for most people. I honestly don't see the point in watching a movie on a smartphone, pad, or even a computer without a giant monitor and great surround sound...
There are a couple of points to watching video on a pad device. First, someone else might want to watch something else on your main screen (you sound single, but...). Also, you might want to watch somewhere you don't have a TV handy. Since you're watching a device two feet or so away, the screen size isn't much of an issue, and headphones sure address the surround-sound "problem".
sure, if I'm stuck on a plane it's one thing, but if I'm at home it makes no sense. I can't use it when I commute or when I'm sleeping... 90% of the rest of the time I'm either at home with access to my PC or at work.
I don't know about you, but for me it's very nice to not be tied to my desk, and a tablet is a much nicer form-factor for just browsing/reading/watching/gaming than a laptop.
Even when I go out... honestly, as a computing professional, the last thing I need in a bar while playing pool is another computer.
So it's reasonable to see that there are certainly people who can get a lot out of them, but for most people all they get is a "wow" factor, especially if you've already got a smart phone.
That's right. Laptops aren't very good reading devices compared to either dedicated readers or tablets.
Basically the tablet is a content consumption device, with a teensy bit of interactivity and form filling thrown in.
Here's where I have quibble. OpenGL + excellent sound + gyroscope + capacitive touchscreen is a lot more than "a teensy bit of interactivity". The tablets are quite hot as a gaming platform.
Acer doesn't want to get into the content distribution market, and Amazon's Kindle is just crap in comparison.
What??? Kindle is extremely popular, and by most accounts the best dedicated e-reader.
So Acer is likely right, the tablet PC market has passed it fad moment and the big fight will be on for a more functional and colourful table eReader, subsidised by content distribution.
No, Acer is likely wrong. The current tablets will come down in price over time (first-gen iPads are already under $400), and then there's the entry-level Android tablet, the Nook Color. Tablets are much more than just e-readers.
Now the real question is will the major content distribution empires jump into the fray, a free fully featured tablet with a two year subscription contract to their whole media empire, including archived content. They have got the content and they can tell Apple et al to go jump and basically distribute direct.
Of course not. They'll work a deal with Apple, just as Amazon and others have. Android and Windows 8 tablets will also do OK, but the most recent projections show Apple dominating the tablet space for several years.
Apple has done a brilliant job creating a software ecosystem for the iOS devices, and I don't see the others catching up anytime soon. That will continue to make the iPad the most successful of the bunch.
I really like what Amazon has done with Kindle, making readers available on every platform you can think of. That's the first place I look for content these days. I have a good chance of it working with any device I choose down the road.
If you can do 90% of your job from an iPad, then there's about a 99% chance you're an expendable employee. Better hope the company doesn't catch on.
Most executives can do 90% of their job using an iPad. They are expendable (like you and every other employee, don't kid yourself) but if they are "expended" they get that nice golden parachute thing...
iPads most definitely fill a highly useful niche, and the form factor is here to stay. As voice input matures, that "keyboard" device will become more and more optional...
The tea party and the abuse of the fillabuster created this.
I'm guessing you meant the "Tea Party" and "filibuster" respectively.
You're way off base though, since the Republicans control the House there was no filibuster necessary - the Dems had to convince them or nothing could pass.
The main thing the Dems wanted, increased taxes, would have been an absurdity with the way the economy's going. Higher taxes would have killed any economic growth, which we desperately need.
What is necessary are meaningful spending cuts. That was not achieved with this bill, it only lessened the rate of future increase. Government remains far too large - cuts will be necessary probably sooner rather than later. We are also facing the issue of retiring baby boomers, which will move millions of taxpayers into tax consumer status.
0bama's handling of the economy since his election will guarantee that he's a one-term President. We'll see how President Palin (or some pale imitation if she doesn't run) does after 2012. I hope it'll be far better than this current bunch of losers. I hope he enjoyed his birthday party this weekend at any rate.:-P
By the way, the other credit rating agencies will almost certainly downgrade the US rating as well, it won't be just S&P.
It clearly shows 2010 as cooler than 1998, a significant cold snap in 2008, and that 2011 dipped below the baseline in the beginning of the year.
I'm personally quite sure that Earth's tropospheric heat content is driven more by albedo and solar effects (not necessarily just insolation) than by an increase in a weak trace greenhouse gas (CO2). There is very likely a negative feedback from water vapor (rather than positive as portrayed in the climate models) for one thing. Clouds have very high albedo, and were likely the mechanism for cooling when CO2 was at high levels in the paleoclimate. There's no reason to think the same effect isn't happening today.
The cooling during the Maunder and Dalton minimums was quite significant, and if the Sun follows through as NASA now predicts I expect we'll see fairly sharp and noticeable global cooling over the next 3-4 decades. This will not be a full-scale "Ice Age", but instead a "Little Ice Age" similar to previous solar Grand Minima. That should give us time to really understand the impact of increasing CO2, and to develop effective technologies to deal with it. Regardless of anything else, there should be a large investment in (possibly thorium based) nuclear power generation.
The future of the human race is dim if the approach is to try to throttle down technology and progress in the name of "sustainability" - that will simply kill the first world nations, and ensure the dominance of China and other bad actors as time passes.
My post was that climate can be modeled and predicted BECAUSE it is chaotic, that if it were not chaotic you couldn't model it, but weather CANNOT for the very same reason.
Aside from the fact that your sentence is very poorly constructed and the last phrase makes no sense, it certainly appears that you're claiming that you can't model non-chaotic processes. That is nonsense.
You also seem to be claiming that you "CANNOT" model weather - yet there are dozens of quite capable weather models being run in the real world. It is true that the quality of the forecasting drops as you go further into the future.
Christ! Do I have to get English 101 lessons for you guys?
And if they are fundamental conceptual problems that cannot be fixed?
There aren't. The best (and only reasonable) "fix" is a "This site wants to access your graphics hardware. Allow?" prompt from the browser.
Just as with any native code (like a DirectX game, for instance) there is no way to ensure "safety"...although I'd think almost any other attack vector would be easier than WebGL.
In the end, you just have to trust the source of the code, or not.
While I don't think electromagmetic radiation is a significant cause of cancer, there may be danger involved in the long term effects of the cellular heating caused by absorbing the radiation.
I think you should do the calculation for how much "cellular heating" that level of radiation is causing.
If there was an issue from that, any consistent exposure to full sun would up the incidence of brain cancer 10x or more...
As I said earlier in the discussion, if TEPCO had merely done a reasonable job of protecting the backup generators (not at all that expensive of a thing to do) the entire Fukushima radiation release would have been averted.
While it does show the effect of human fallibility, it also shows that with a little more planning even a Richter 9 earthquake and tsunami wouldn't have caused a major problem.
this is the territory you need to worry about if Palin were to inherit the White House.
LOL! Palin's grasp on the liberal mind is astonishing.
I'd say brace yourself, Palin may just pull a Reagan and get herself elected. The Republican field is looking weak, and she will do well in the primaries. It's looking all but certain that she's going to run.
so STILL going on about the same bullshit attitude ? 'nuclear power will never end' ? what's with this nuclear power morondom ?
Nuclear power will never end. It will be used by the countries that succeed, versus the ones that'll be ever more irrelevant. Interesting that France will start selling nuclear generated power to Germany, eh?
Then there's China, which has the foresight and will to invest heavily in thorium reactor technology. Good move, I hope the US wises up under the next (sane this time) administration!
Regardless of the radiation emitted by coal fired plants, the pollutants are (at a minimum) responsible for killing thousands of people a year.
Nuclear power is clearly desirable from many standpoints, and there are absolutely no insurmountable problems (most definitely including nuclear waste disposal/reuse).
Fukushima was a worst-case scenario involving both forty year old technology and very poor planning. If only the backup generators had been in a tsunami-proof vessel, like at other plants, there would have been no meltdown. Modern reactor designs would also avoid any meltdown scenario.
Go back and think about the point of taxes. The *actual* point. You buy civilization and loan environment with taxes. From the rest of all life on earth. So the mileage tax should bill you exactly the amount you wore down the street, and the gas tax should bill you exactly the cost of being environmentally neutral (so your kids can have kids who still can go outside too).
There is no "cost of being environmentally neutral" in the US, nor is there likely to be one in the future. The argument that CO2 emissions are measurably harmful is weak at best, and has no traction here. The current gas tax is intended to fund the highway system, but a mileage tax would be a better way for that really.
Looks like trying to create a carbon trading system in Australia is causing quite a stir down under as well...;-)
They shouldnt be used for general law enforcement like speeding,etc..
When first implemented they'll say they won't be used except for accident investigation. Then over time, the use will expanded far beyond anything reasonable.
Look at the seat belt laws. When first implemented, the story was that a seat belt violation alone wouldn't result in being pulled over. Now, they will pull you over in a heartbeat if they spot you not wearing one.
Yes, the other thing that'll be required is an in-car camera recording at all times. That way it'll be easy for the "friendly" state trooper to check if you're wearing your seat belt, or texting...or doing anything else illegal.
I wonder how much longer eating in your car will be allowed. It causes a lot of accidents, you know...
What's wrong with taxing based on mileage? We already do it indirectly through gas taxes.
Actually, nothing's wrong with it any more than any other tax scheme - as long as the gas tax goes away first. Double taxation isn't right.
The other point is that there's already a "mileage tracking device" in the car called an "odometer". There's no need for a "black box" to collect a mileage tax.
Dumb it down, and then what? What's next? "We take this Intel i7 and make it compatible with an 8 bit microcontroller! Previously, multi-core 64 bit processors were hard to use to make motors spin and LEDs light up, but NOW"
Seems faintly ridiculous, along the lines of just doing something for the sake of saying we did it, like a manned Moon landing.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. This gives you a fairly powerful (well, 72 MHz) 32-bit processor in a small package, that's quite inexpensive. It's true that the amount of flash memory and RAM is small, although you could probably interface to more flash if you had to. However, what is nice is that the programming is easy, you have large registers, and you can do some fairly serious processing.
If you need less power, you can always just use the original Arduino line, or something even less powerful.
Having more choices and capability available is always a good thing.
The problem with a Mac is that it doesn't matter how clever you are.
You simply have no power.
[/quote]
WTF are you talking about? You can install any number of different apps, or not install them. You have access to the full range of excellent development environments, from Eclipse to Xcode. If you want to, you can install a VM and Windows, and have access to all of that software including development tools.
You can be just as stupid with a PC and spend less. In fact, I believe the OP implied just this very thing.
You can be even MORE stupid, trust me.
This helps the Mac user to be numb from the fact that they are paying 2x or 3x for the same thing.
It isn't the same thing. You're getting top notch hardware, industry leading industrial design, and access to more software than with any other computer. The OS and bundled apps (like iPhoto) are excellent. You also get better resale value than with 'regular' PCs, so that helps offset the cost.
There are other benefits, for instance all of the Apple displays are IPS, allowing you to see the full gamut of human-perceptible colors. Not like the el-cheapo $200 flatscreens... The 27" iMac is actually an excellent value, you should price out a comparable Windows system sometime.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you're not using mysql either then, eh?
(Since apparently you don't care that it can be forked as open source just like Java...)
This will also make them much less expensive to operate.
Sorry I didn't catch it before the post.
Humans are much cheaper (to make and maintain) than robots.
That is clearly not true, at least once the economies of scale kick in. While humans are cheap to produce initially, the approximately eighteen years of care, feeding and education they require is, in military terms, a huge liability. Then there is the cost of training them for the task at hand.
Contrast this with say, fighter drones (autonomous fighter aircraft). Not only can they be mass-produced, but they will all instantly be equally skillful with no training flight time required. New tactics or information will only require a download. They will last far longer than manned aircraft, since there's no need to stress the wings or airframe with frequent training/practice flights. This will also as well as being much less expensive to operate. The final plum is that no dollars need to be spent on ejection seats, oxygen systems, cockpit glass, displays or any other item catering to the needs of humans - which also saves weight and ups performance.
Oh yeah, and they also don't require a limit on turn G forces, so autonomous fighters will be able to massively outmaneuver piloted fighters.
The concern with this kind of automated killing is that it makes things too easy. If you want to fight a war, your own ass should be on the line too. You shouldn't be able to just press a button and murder people on the other side of the planet.
The problem with the way you're thinking of this is that you're not looking at the potential for an adversary to develop this tech.
Leaving nukes out of the equation for a minute, imagine China or some other adversary develops a means to mass-produce adequately performing autonomous soldier robots, perhaps each capable of running for several months at a time using a small nuclear power source. They wouldn't necessarily look anthropomorphic, perhaps more like small tanks, and could be developed and tested in total secrecy. They then send a few hundred thousand of these into Russia with no warning.
Do you think the Russians would prefer to fight back with human troops, or their own automated army?
I believe autonomous military units of all types are coming, it is a new arms race. The only thing is that no country besides the US seems to be very good at developing new military tech these days - but the US always wants to stay ahead of the game.
Right, because we all know C is the be-all and end-all of programming languages.
Oh wait, it's not. In fact, it's a fairly archaic, cruft-ridden effort at "portable assembler", with not too much to offer in terms of a standard library.
I really think we can do better in the search for an improved browser-based programming language. We've learned quite a bit in the forty years since C was invented.
If you travel a lot, that's great... but it is just a gimmick for most people. I honestly don't see the point in watching a movie on a smartphone, pad, or even a computer without a giant monitor and great surround sound...
There are a couple of points to watching video on a pad device. First, someone else might want to watch something else on your main screen (you sound single, but...). Also, you might want to watch somewhere you don't have a TV handy. Since you're watching a device two feet or so away, the screen size isn't much of an issue, and headphones sure address the surround-sound "problem".
sure, if I'm stuck on a plane it's one thing, but if I'm at home it makes no sense. I can't use it when I commute or when I'm sleeping... 90% of the rest of the time I'm either at home with access to my PC or at work.
I don't know about you, but for me it's very nice to not be tied to my desk, and a tablet is a much nicer form-factor for just browsing/reading/watching/gaming than a laptop.
Even when I go out... honestly, as a computing professional, the last thing I need in a bar while playing pool is another computer.
So it's reasonable to see that there are certainly people who can get a lot out of them, but for most people all they get is a "wow" factor, especially if you've already got a smart phone.
To each his own, of course...
There is another tablet market and that is of course the eReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book_reader market.
That's right. Laptops aren't very good reading devices compared to either dedicated readers or tablets.
Basically the tablet is a content consumption device, with a teensy bit of interactivity and form filling thrown in.
Here's where I have quibble. OpenGL + excellent sound + gyroscope + capacitive touchscreen is a lot more than "a teensy bit of interactivity". The tablets are quite hot as a gaming platform.
Acer doesn't want to get into the content distribution market, and Amazon's Kindle is just crap in comparison.
What??? Kindle is extremely popular, and by most accounts the best dedicated e-reader.
So Acer is likely right, the tablet PC market has passed it fad moment and the big fight will be on for a more functional and colourful table eReader, subsidised by content distribution.
No, Acer is likely wrong. The current tablets will come down in price over time (first-gen iPads are already under $400), and then there's the entry-level Android tablet, the Nook Color. Tablets are much more than just e-readers.
Now the real question is will the major content distribution empires jump into the fray, a free fully featured tablet with a two year subscription contract to their whole media empire, including archived content. They have got the content and they can tell Apple et al to go jump and basically distribute direct.
Of course not. They'll work a deal with Apple, just as Amazon and others have. Android and Windows 8 tablets will also do OK, but the most recent projections show Apple dominating the tablet space for several years.
Apple has done a brilliant job creating a software ecosystem for the iOS devices, and I don't see the others catching up anytime soon. That will continue to make the iPad the most successful of the bunch.
I really like what Amazon has done with Kindle, making readers available on every platform you can think of. That's the first place I look for content these days. I have a good chance of it working with any device I choose down the road.
If you can do 90% of your job from an iPad, then there's about a 99% chance you're an expendable employee. Better hope the company doesn't catch on.
Most executives can do 90% of their job using an iPad. They are expendable (like you and every other employee, don't kid yourself) but if they are "expended" they get that nice golden parachute thing...
iPads most definitely fill a highly useful niche, and the form factor is here to stay. As voice input matures, that "keyboard" device will become more and more optional...
The tea party and the abuse of the fillabuster created this.
I'm guessing you meant the "Tea Party" and "filibuster" respectively.
You're way off base though, since the Republicans control the House there was no filibuster necessary - the Dems had to convince them or nothing could pass.
The main thing the Dems wanted, increased taxes, would have been an absurdity with the way the economy's going. Higher taxes would have killed any economic growth, which we desperately need.
What is necessary are meaningful spending cuts. That was not achieved with this bill, it only lessened the rate of future increase. Government remains far too large - cuts will be necessary probably sooner rather than later. We are also facing the issue of retiring baby boomers, which will move millions of taxpayers into tax consumer status.
0bama's handling of the economy since his election will guarantee that he's a one-term President. We'll see how President Palin (or some pale imitation if she doesn't run) does after 2012. I hope it'll be far better than this current bunch of losers. I hope he enjoyed his birthday party this weekend at any rate. :-P
By the way, the other credit rating agencies will almost certainly downgrade the US rating as well, it won't be just S&P.
Not really. Catastrophic is actually looked down upon in the scientific community.
Excellent. Then there's no need to alter our way of life to the tune of trillions more dollars that we don't have.
Actually, not so much. Here's a plot with a longer baseline:
UAH Satellite Temperatures for Lower Atmosphere
It clearly shows 2010 as cooler than 1998, a significant cold snap in 2008, and that 2011 dipped below the baseline in the beginning of the year.
I'm personally quite sure that Earth's tropospheric heat content is driven more by albedo and solar effects (not necessarily just insolation) than by an increase in a weak trace greenhouse gas (CO2). There is very likely a negative feedback from water vapor (rather than positive as portrayed in the climate models) for one thing. Clouds have very high albedo, and were likely the mechanism for cooling when CO2 was at high levels in the paleoclimate. There's no reason to think the same effect isn't happening today.
The cooling during the Maunder and Dalton minimums was quite significant, and if the Sun follows through as NASA now predicts I expect we'll see fairly sharp and noticeable global cooling over the next 3-4 decades. This will not be a full-scale "Ice Age", but instead a "Little Ice Age" similar to previous solar Grand Minima. That should give us time to really understand the impact of increasing CO2, and to develop effective technologies to deal with it. Regardless of anything else, there should be a large investment in (possibly thorium based) nuclear power generation.
The future of the human race is dim if the approach is to try to throttle down technology and progress in the name of "sustainability" - that will simply kill the first world nations, and ensure the dominance of China and other bad actors as time passes.
My post was that climate can be modeled and predicted BECAUSE it is chaotic, that if it were not chaotic you couldn't model it, but weather CANNOT for the very same reason.
Aside from the fact that your sentence is very poorly constructed and the last phrase makes no sense, it certainly appears that you're claiming that you can't model non-chaotic processes. That is nonsense.
You also seem to be claiming that you "CANNOT" model weather - yet there are dozens of quite capable weather models being run in the real world. It is true that the quality of the forecasting drops as you go further into the future.
Christ! Do I have to get English 101 lessons for you guys?
The irony...
And if they are fundamental conceptual problems that cannot be fixed?
There aren't. The best (and only reasonable) "fix" is a "This site wants to access your graphics hardware. Allow?" prompt from the browser.
Just as with any native code (like a DirectX game, for instance) there is no way to ensure "safety"...although I'd think almost any other attack vector would be easier than WebGL.
In the end, you just have to trust the source of the code, or not.
While I don't think electromagmetic radiation is a significant cause of cancer, there may be danger involved in the long term effects of the cellular heating caused by absorbing the radiation.
I think you should do the calculation for how much "cellular heating" that level of radiation is causing.
If there was an issue from that, any consistent exposure to full sun would up the incidence of brain cancer 10x or more...
I'm pretty darned sure that's not the case. ;-)
Chernobyl was the result of a very poor reactor design (no containment) coupled with criminal stupidity.
That type of disaster will never happen in a first-world nation.
As I said earlier in the discussion, if TEPCO had merely done a reasonable job of protecting the backup generators (not at all that expensive of a thing to do) the entire Fukushima radiation release would have been averted.
While it does show the effect of human fallibility, it also shows that with a little more planning even a Richter 9 earthquake and tsunami wouldn't have caused a major problem.
this is the territory you need to worry about if Palin were to inherit the White House.
LOL! Palin's grasp on the liberal mind is astonishing.
I'd say brace yourself, Palin may just pull a Reagan and get herself elected. The Republican field is looking weak, and she will do well in the primaries. It's looking all but certain that she's going to run.
so STILL going on about the same bullshit attitude ? 'nuclear power will never end' ? what's with this nuclear power morondom ?
Nuclear power will never end. It will be used by the countries that succeed, versus the ones that'll be ever more irrelevant. Interesting that France will start selling nuclear generated power to Germany, eh?
Then there's China, which has the foresight and will to invest heavily in thorium reactor technology. Good move, I hope the US wises up under the next (sane this time) administration!
Watch and see what happens. ;-)
Regardless of the radiation emitted by coal fired plants, the pollutants are (at a minimum) responsible for killing thousands of people a year.
Nuclear power is clearly desirable from many standpoints, and there are absolutely no insurmountable problems (most definitely including nuclear waste disposal/reuse).
Fukushima was a worst-case scenario involving both forty year old technology and very poor planning. If only the backup generators had been in a tsunami-proof vessel, like at other plants, there would have been no meltdown. Modern reactor designs would also avoid any meltdown scenario.
Go back and think about the point of taxes. The *actual* point. You buy civilization and loan environment with taxes. From the rest of all life on earth. So the mileage tax should bill you exactly the amount you wore down the street, and the gas tax should bill you exactly the cost of being environmentally neutral (so your kids can have kids who still can go outside too).
There is no "cost of being environmentally neutral" in the US, nor is there likely to be one in the future. The argument that CO2 emissions are measurably harmful is weak at best, and has no traction here. The current gas tax is intended to fund the highway system, but a mileage tax would be a better way for that really.
Looks like trying to create a carbon trading system in Australia is causing quite a stir down under as well... ;-)
They shouldnt be used for general law enforcement like speeding,etc..
When first implemented they'll say they won't be used except for accident investigation. Then over time, the use will expanded far beyond anything reasonable.
Look at the seat belt laws. When first implemented, the story was that a seat belt violation alone wouldn't result in being pulled over. Now, they will pull you over in a heartbeat if they spot you not wearing one.
Yes, the other thing that'll be required is an in-car camera recording at all times. That way it'll be easy for the "friendly" state trooper to check if you're wearing your seat belt, or texting...or doing anything else illegal.
I wonder how much longer eating in your car will be allowed. It causes a lot of accidents, you know...
What's wrong with taxing based on mileage? We already do it indirectly through gas taxes.
Actually, nothing's wrong with it any more than any other tax scheme - as long as the gas tax goes away first. Double taxation isn't right.
The other point is that there's already a "mileage tracking device" in the car called an "odometer". There's no need for a "black box" to collect a mileage tax.
Dumb it down, and then what? What's next? "We take this Intel i7 and make it compatible with an 8 bit microcontroller! Previously, multi-core 64 bit processors were hard to use to make motors spin and LEDs light up, but NOW"
Seems faintly ridiculous, along the lines of just doing something for the sake of saying we did it, like a manned Moon landing.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. This gives you a fairly powerful (well, 72 MHz) 32-bit processor in a small package, that's quite inexpensive. It's true that the amount of flash memory and RAM is small, although you could probably interface to more flash if you had to. However, what is nice is that the programming is easy, you have large registers, and you can do some fairly serious processing.
If you need less power, you can always just use the original Arduino line, or something even less powerful.
Having more choices and capability available is always a good thing.
The problem with a Mac is that it doesn't matter how clever you are.
You simply have no power.
[/quote] WTF are you talking about? You can install any number of different apps, or not install them. You have access to the full range of excellent development environments, from Eclipse to Xcode. If you want to, you can install a VM and Windows, and have access to all of that software including development tools.
You can be just as stupid with a PC and spend less. In fact, I believe the OP implied just this very thing.
You can be even MORE stupid, trust me.
This helps the Mac user to be numb from the fact that they are paying 2x or 3x for the same thing.
It isn't the same thing. You're getting top notch hardware, industry leading industrial design, and access to more software than with any other computer. The OS and bundled apps (like iPhoto) are excellent. You also get better resale value than with 'regular' PCs, so that helps offset the cost.
There are other benefits, for instance all of the Apple displays are IPS, allowing you to see the full gamut of human-perceptible colors. Not like the el-cheapo $200 flatscreens... The 27" iMac is actually an excellent value, you should price out a comparable Windows system sometime.