Who elected WalMart to the position of official censor?
Fortunately, that power is in the hands of the customers. Nobody forces them to shop there. This quite obviously differs from the situation in China since the people can't choose their government.
What gives WalMart the right make those decisions?
Well, again, the shoppers do. If people not only felt more strongly about it but also acted on it, Wal-Mart would be compelled to respond or lose business.
The 1 (one) DSL provider that I have available to me is billions of dollars in debt, and isn't known for being good with customer service. It might be a little better than a dialup line, but then I run into the problem of having to have a dial-up line to begin with. (at least Qwest's site implies that...) I assume that ISDN would be similar.
Notice any more holes in logic? If so many other ISPs are having trouble staying afloat, how can the first increase in prices be considered "greed"?
Would that be your attitude if your phone company did that? I doubt it since life in America virtually requires you to have a phone. (Which is why phone rates are so heavily controlled...)
....
My situation, in particular, is a little more unique. I don't have a phone line, just a cell phone.
Umm.. notice the connection after reading these two sections more closely together? My solution to rising POTS costs was to get a cell phone and ditch the ground line.. sounds like you went the same route.
The alternative to cable TV is satellite TV and network TV. The alternatives to cable modems include ISDN, SDSL, ADSL, phone line and wireless access, many provided by disparate ISPs.
I don't think you have as few options as you make out. I think your quote above quite readily shows this fact.
Heavy use of SCSI drives does not impact system performance because you have a SCSI controller handling most of the low-level IO.
I have an ASUS motherboard with an IDE RAID controller built onboard (Highpoint HPT370). I don't use the RAID aspect of it, but it's just as suitable as an IDE controller and allows me to use the maximum performance of my IDE hard drives while utilizing about 5% of my CPU. It is amazing how much more work I can get done while my hard drives are pegged.
All this for about $30 increased motherboard price...
You are correct.. people always debate about the performance of SCSI vs. IDE when it actually has more to do with the SCSI _CONTROLLER_ than the actual standard. The SCSI controller offloads much of the low-level I/O required to communicate with the hardware. IDE drives are (slowly becoming "were", see below) commonly interfaced by the processor and are much more CPU intensive.
If you could copy a large file on a SCSI drive and an IDE drive, you may find that the performance is very similar.. as long as the CPU with the IDE drive is not the bottleneck. On the system with a SCSI controller, the CPU load might be as low as 5% while the CPU load with IDE drives could be near 100%.
This is changing now with IDE controllers. This allows you to retain the performance of the drive and severely cut the load on your CPU. I highly suggest picking one up as it makes your computer VERY useable even if your hard drives are cranked. There's nothing like being able to continue working while copying large files, burning CDs, or having your virtual memory file cleared out.
Personally, I have an HPT370 IDE controller that is built onto my ASUS motherboard. The difference in performance is astounding compared to bypassing the controller and plugging in the hard drives to the regular IDE channels. Seeing as the price difference for a motherboard is as little as $20-30 (not withstanding some driver hassles that are becoming lessened as time goes on), I don't see why anyone should go without an IDE controller on their motherboard.
Hahaha.. umm, it's called capitalism. If you don't like the mantra of harder, faster, smarter, I seriously hope you don't own any stock. Where do you think growth over time comes from?
Re:Wireless Monitor? Not happening...
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Wireless Monitors?
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Yes. I know this. However, you miss the point. If one can send a T3 (45mbps) of digital information in 6MHz of space (modulated on a much higher frequency), then you have the capability to transmit a computer screen. The eyeball frying power requirements is a function of the carrier frequency (900MHz is done to death) and the desired range of the device. (Noise becomes a big problem when the signal isn't on a shielded wire.) Do current 802.11a/b devices blind people? No.
Granted, the T3 instance is a bad example as T3's are rarely radio signals -- and when they are, they are on highly directional microwave carriers.
My calculations show that we'd need roughly 8x more bandwidth than 45 Mbps. Even with compression, overhead blah blah. But I'll give you all of that and say we can transmit a monitor screen with 45 Mbps of bandwidth.
Ever sit in front of a directional microwave antenna? Get that nice warm fuzzy feeling inside? Do you know what feeling is? Thank you for proving my original point.
Re:Wireless Monitor? Not happening...
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Wireless Monitors?
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· Score: 1
You have failed to make any distinction between the digital world of the computer and the analog world of RF radio. For example, a T3 is transmitted within 6MHz of analog space -- that's one cable TV channel, btw.
Sorry for the piecemeal replies, but I forgot to address this. In actuality, there is little difference between the two worlds you have mentioned, at least for the examples you have given.
There seems to be confusion between carrier frequencies and signal frequencies.. understandable for those who don't work in the RF industry. I have actually designed a cable modem, so I can address this directly.
Simply because something transmits at 900 MHz over the air does NOT mean that it has 900 MHz of bandwidth. If that were the case, you'd be wiping out a good chunk of the signals that exist from 450 MHz to 1.4 GHz, not to mention violating dozens of FCC regulations.
6 MHz, as you mentioned, is the signal frequency. These signal frequencies must be imposed upon carrier frequencies to coexist with each other over the air. For example, if you were to take a T3 with a 6 MHz signal frequency and use a 900 MHz carrier frequency, you would be taking up the band from 897 MHz to 903 MHz and probably violating FCC regulations even in that case.
Cable actually operates in much the same way as wireless comms with the added benefit of being highly immune to interference from outside sources. The 6 MHz signal would also have to be modulated to some carrier frequency before being transmitted over coax.
Re:Wireless Monitor? Not happening...
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Wireless Monitors?
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· Score: 2, Informative
So, you're telling me "TV" is impractical? TV is bearly more than 640x480x24(?) but there are dozens of devices to transmit analog video around. And none of them "kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer". (at least, not immediately.)
You have failed to make any distinction between the digital world of the computer and the analog world of RF radio. For example, a T3 is transmitted within 6MHz of analog space -- that's one cable TV channel, btw.
AND, you are assuming every pixel on the screen is changing 60 times per second. That's rarely true. And at any rate, it's far more efficient to send the function calls that are drawing the pixels instead of all half million pixels over and over again.
Actually, TV is more along 300 lines I think. Not to mention it's analog.. you may wonder what the difference is, but the fact is that going from analog to digital requires at least 10x more bandwidth. It's simply because analog is much more noise-tolerant... your signal may be affected, but it doesn't result in catastrophic loss as it does in digital systems.
So fine, lets do the HDTV comparison. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about HDTV to know what the exact bandwidth numbers are. But if you want to put a multi-million powerful antenna in your house and pay the monstrous power bill to be able to use a wireless monitor, more power to you. Granted, you don't need the range, but you certainly need the same amount of bandwidth as an HDTV station. Not to mention your best resoultion would be (about?) 1080 x 600.
To address the compression concerns, you can use MPEG2 compression on "lifelike" pictures with little noticeable loss in quality, especially on regular definition TVs. Don't think for a second that applies to word processing where per-pixel resolution is practically a requirement.
So fine, lets make a compression scheme that is good on static scenes. What happens then when you want to play a 3D game?
By my calculations, 800x600 16 bit color at 60Hz means you're sending 460,800,000 bits of information per second.
That's awfully close to fitting inside a 900MHz signal (axe it to 12bit color, perhaps?).
I'm ignoring overhead and whatnot, but you could fit this amount of data in a 2.4GHz signal without too much of a sweat, it seems. This doesn't mean that you'll be able to run your 1600x1200x32 screen, but whatever.
Of course, IANATE (telecommunications engineer).
900 MHz and 2.4 GHz are simply carrier frequencies. The actual signal frequency is latched within those frequences and are IQ or intermediate frequencies and could be on the order of only 100 kHz, for example.
This means that at 900 Mhz, you'd be taking up space from 899.5 MHz to 900.5 MHz. To do more (or, as you imply, from 0-900 MHz) would interfere outside the spectrum. At best, you wouldn't be able to watch TV or listen to the radio. At worst, the FCC would be knocking on your door.
Exact numbers for signal frequencies are determined by bandwidth requirements, power requirements and FCC regulations. In the end though, these frequencies are what determine the amount of bandwidth avaiable to you over the air and are unrelated (at least in the basic sense that we are discussing) to the actual carrier frequency (be it 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, etc.)
I don't see a wireless monitor happening unless the FCC disappears and there are some monumental discoveries in the RF world.
Wireless Monitor? Not happening...
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Wireless Monitors?
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· Score: 5, Informative
I work in the RF industry as a software engineer... I'm by no means an RF engineer, but I have to comment.
First of all, this is not a wireless monitor. It is a portable PC that communicates with other PCs via a network card. The video signal is NOT sent over the air.
The bandwidth requirements for a wireless monitor are impractical. It's certainly possible, but the amount of RF bandwidth and/or power required to do it would either kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer, depending on how you implement it.
Just a quick estimation (please don't criticize this, I have other work to do):
800 x 600 = 480,000 pixels 480 pixels x 16-bit = 7.68 Mb = 960 kB 960 kB x 60 Hz = 57.6 MB / s!
Given that 802.11b provides 11 Mb as a MAXIMUM (yes, that's bits, which translates to 1.4 MB / s), we'd only have about 1/50th the bandwidth necessary. And that doesn't account for automatic rate switching, interference, and other nodes on the network.
Isn't this a good thing? The worst hit from this will be taken by Nokia, because now consumers will wonder why they are being charged $150+ for the innards of a phone that goes for $30.
This should be pure joy for gizmo hackers.
What? Wake up? Who says the phones have to cost less than they are selling them for in this phase? It's obviously a "prototype" phase of some sort.. I'm sure they're not worried about showing a profit at this point... I think they're trying to show the service aspect of their business model.
Even if it weren't a "prototype" phase, do you really think the price of products is an accurate reflection of their cost? Think Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a profit? Of course not.. they make the bulk of their money with licensing costs. How about Oakleys and hair salon products? Man, I better stop now..
My cell phone sets its clock from the basestation automatically, and doesn't even have a way to manually set it. This is my favorite feature of my phone -- the time is always right.
Can't we have this for appliances?
This is so appropriate for a couple of projects I'm currently working on... of course you COULD have them in your appliances. However, in product design, it's never what's possible, but what will sell.
The reason it's so readily available in your phone is because that, by it's nature, it requires a wireless receiver to operate, as well as existence on a network. As a result, the equipment you need to get them time already exists and does not add to the cost of the phone (hardware cost, anyways).
In addition, the phone loses its time every power cycle. Swap batteries, dead charge, etc. Sure, you could probably implement a backup cap or coin cell to keep the time, but why not just get it off the network when your phone connects to it?
The extra $4 (and I'm being generous) it would take to implement a wireless receiver in an AC appliance would easily amount to $30-50 in the final price tag. Would you really pay this for each appliance, or have just one reliable clock in the house that you could set all others by?
Start a company? its a recession. Start a company? Against a monopoly like Microsoft? AOL? Impossible.
Face it, CEOs make Billions, if they made only slightly more than the programmers and other workers, i'd agree with you. Bill gates has over 50 billion dollars, programmers make about 100,000 a year.
Having more programmers means theres less demand, with less demand, comes cheaper prices.
Dont you know anything about capitalism? Right now big companies often hire people from isreal, pakistan and india because they are cheaper, not because they are better, not to save money for the consumer, hell hiring them means they hire less of us, and as for the consume r, the price of windows increases every release, software prices are going up.
just like with the music industry, prices go up not down because demand isnt going down.
Alright, this is the last reply I'm writing. I can't believe you guys keep getting modded up above me.. it just shows how unAmerican and socialist many Slashdot readers are. Basically, it always seems to amount to:
"It's the other guy always putting us down!"
It's a recession? Not in all markets. Start a company against a monopoly? Why do you have to start a company in a monopolistic market?
No offense, but with that attitude, you'll never make any money or be wildly successful. You've defeated your chances of making it on your own before you've even explored your options.
You have a pretty narrow view of the world if the only thing keeping you from going into business is AOL and Microsoft. I wrote a reply regarding your views on AOL and Microsoft, but deleted it since it is largely irrelevant to capitalism as a whole. To use them as an example (or the complete basis for your argument, in your case) and say that capitalism is a farce and largely unsuccessful is just you being blatantly ignorant, lazy or both.
I won't disagree with you on one point.. it's definitely easier (and feels better) to bitch about how many fish others are catching, missing out on your own, instead of catch your own damn fish.
If you think that lower costs for companies translate into lower costs for consumers, I have a bridge to sell you. Most markets actually have very little competition in them and prices are fixed so that shareholders and upper management can take away massive profits. Could Microsoft's costs be any lower? Sure, cut their programmer's salaries. Would your copy of XP be cheaper? Nope. Would Bill Gates get richer? Yup.
Capitalism is NOT an open-ended system. What comes around goes around.
Whine-bitch-piss-moan. Christ, I hate this socialist crap. If you think it's such a fucking gold mine for companies, by their goddamned stock. Retire rich. Or, fuck it, start a company.
Don't whine to me about not having the costs passed on to you. Either you are getting the return in the stocks, or you save when you buy. Don't like high CEO salaries? Don't complain if your return is great, or invest in companies with lower CEO salaries. Vote. Buy. Sell.
Yes, god forbid the salaries for techs lowers because that might lower the cost of doing business for companies. God forbid your salary gets lowered to 30k because you might be able to afford the car that is now $8k and has twice as many features in it and is also overengineered to the point of lasting 20 years. Or the fact that airplanes become much safer because of the additional amount of design time that could be added to it. Or the additional amount of research and exploration that would be performed, allowing us to have more frequent advances in medical, engineering and science.
Capitalism performs better the more skills and knowledge is prevalent in the industry. Having half a country fight for jobs at Burger King does NOT do well for the economy and employees as a whole, INCLUDING you. Don't you realize how much more expensive things are because of the LACK of knowledge?
The key is that they are light bulbs. Other resistors might have a lot of variability possible in how much power they consume. Here's what happens when you try to put a lot of current through a light bulb:
*pop*
That darkness doesn't sound very nice.. let me enlighten you.
We are not talking fuses here. Bulbs don't simply pop as soon as you exceed their wattage ratings. Instead, their efficency decreases in that they don't disperse as much total power over time as their ratings indicate.
For example, stick 200W through a 100W bulb, and you may only get 1000 kW-Hrs as opposed to 2000 kW-Hrs. 400W may only get you 400 kW-Hours.
The story gets better when you read it several times. Three 100 Watt light bulbs created a drain of 4500 Watts, according to the nameless inventor. That would be an impressive feat all by itself, except that it's total nonsense.
Oh sheesh, the article has been debunked by someone who insists that 100W bulbs always and only disperse 100W of power!
Nice. Do all your 6A fuses always pass 6A of current as well? Now that would be a feat that would equal the subject of this article.
A bulb's wattage rating simply tells you how much power is consumed with a 120V 60 Hz AC Source. Change the input, increase the voltage, make it DC, your power dispersion will go up or down accordingly.
To tell you the truth, I would tell customers/superiors that I can give them very accurate software estimates as long as they don't change project parameters on me after I start.
This whole estimation thing assumes that the project parameters do not change during development, which I have never come close to seeing happening on any of the projects I've been exposed to. Ahh.. to be able to work on a project on a fixed set of parameters..
There are the changes that people can never seem to stop making during product development, and they originate from: marketing, sales, superiors, customers, warehouses and factories, just to name a few.
Of course, there are also the factors that you can't predict ahead of time (and consequently, cannot quantify besides adding a qualitative factor) such as changing: product costs, product availability, product specifications, competition, benchmarking, and tool quality/availability.
The best thing I've found is to keep software simple, sweet and very amiable to changing design and specifications. Software estimation is very much an intuitive feel based on past experience; there are also certain characteristics that you know will throw uncertainty into the schedule. For example, not only do I give my superiors at work a "time estimation", but I also give them an "uncertainty" or "risk factor" that tells them how close I feel my time estimation to be. They can learn a lot when you tell them "4 weeks give or take a couple of days" or "4 weeks if it's feasible to do at all".
Now, B is 1/100th the size of A, right, but it too, is random, right (size 100).
On we go:
compress(B) = C (size is now 10)
compress(C) = D (size 1).
So everything compresses into 1 byte.
Or am I missing something.
There is nothing that implies the compressed file would be random as well.. or at least random data that would be treated the same by the decompression algorithm, as that would make what you say correct. In fact, the data would take on whole new meaning, being a description of patterns or formulae or what have you.
Think of the random data present in a fractal.. however, the data used to generate a fractal is much smaller in size.. could be simply a formula and some coefficients. If they are doing something like that here, eventually your raw data size becomes smaller than the size of the formulae and coefficients and you either cannot compress any further or you no longer have lossless compression.
Truly, you would never be able to compress down to one byte with a 'lossless' compression, and I'm sure their compression is 100:1 under certain optimal conditions.. after all, how much data is truly random?
I highly doubt the internet access would be wireless (for all the reasons you have unnecessarily explored) and it doesn't mention that it is in the article, so why speculate about it?
Phone access is also provided, and that is not wireless either. The only concern for interference then would be: (a) intentional internet communication from the plane to the satellite/ground and (b) unintentional radiation from the communications devices.
Since the airline obviously would control the communications specification from the plane, they could piggyback it on known channels or put it on another part of the spectrum as not to cause interference. Therefore, arguing about intentional interference is moot.
I'm sure the second problem would be solved then as it currently is now: no usage allowed during landings and takeoffs.
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If the ISP's get too greedy, what do we do?
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The 1 (one) DSL provider that I have available to me is billions of dollars in debt, and isn't known for being good with customer service. It might be a little better than a dialup line, but then I run into the problem of having to have a dial-up line to begin with. (at least Qwest's site implies that...) I assume that ISDN would be similar.
Notice any more holes in logic? If so many other ISPs are having trouble staying afloat, how can the first increase in prices be considered "greed"?
Would that be your attitude if your phone company did that? I doubt it since life in America virtually requires you to have a phone. (Which is why phone rates are so heavily controlled...)
....
My situation, in particular, is a little more unique. I don't have a phone line, just a cell phone.
Umm.. notice the connection after reading these two sections more closely together? My solution to rising POTS costs was to get a cell phone and ditch the ground line.. sounds like you went the same route.
The alternative to cable TV is satellite TV and network TV. The alternatives to cable modems include ISDN, SDSL, ADSL, phone line and wireless access, many provided by disparate ISPs.
I don't think you have as few options as you make out. I think your quote above quite readily shows this fact.
There is a solution to your dilemma....
Heavy use of SCSI drives does not impact system performance because you have a SCSI controller handling most of the low-level IO.
I have an ASUS motherboard with an IDE RAID controller built onboard (Highpoint HPT370). I don't use the RAID aspect of it, but it's just as suitable as an IDE controller and allows me to use the maximum performance of my IDE hard drives while utilizing about 5% of my CPU. It is amazing how much more work I can get done while my hard drives are pegged.
All this for about $30 increased motherboard price...
You are correct.. people always debate about the performance of SCSI vs. IDE when it actually has more to do with the SCSI _CONTROLLER_ than the actual standard. The SCSI controller offloads much of the low-level I/O required to communicate with the hardware. IDE drives are (slowly becoming "were", see below) commonly interfaced by the processor and are much more CPU intensive.
If you could copy a large file on a SCSI drive and an IDE drive, you may find that the performance is very similar.. as long as the CPU with the IDE drive is not the bottleneck. On the system with a SCSI controller, the CPU load might be as low as 5% while the CPU load with IDE drives could be near 100%.
This is changing now with IDE controllers. This allows you to retain the performance of the drive and severely cut the load on your CPU. I highly suggest picking one up as it makes your computer VERY useable even if your hard drives are cranked. There's nothing like being able to continue working while copying large files, burning CDs, or having your virtual memory file cleared out.
Personally, I have an HPT370 IDE controller that is built onto my ASUS motherboard. The difference in performance is astounding compared to bypassing the controller and plugging in the hard drives to the regular IDE channels. Seeing as the price difference for a motherboard is as little as $20-30 (not withstanding some driver hassles that are becoming lessened as time goes on), I don't see why anyone should go without an IDE controller on their motherboard.
Hahaha.. umm, it's called capitalism. If you don't like the mantra of harder, faster, smarter, I seriously hope you don't own any stock. Where do you think growth over time comes from?
My calculations show that we'd need roughly 8x more bandwidth than 45 Mbps. Even with compression, overhead blah blah. But I'll give you all of that and say we can transmit a monitor screen with 45 Mbps of bandwidth.
Ever sit in front of a directional microwave antenna? Get that nice warm fuzzy feeling inside? Do you know what feeling is? Thank you for proving my original point.
Sorry for the piecemeal replies, but I forgot to address this. In actuality, there is little difference between the two worlds you have mentioned, at least for the examples you have given.
There seems to be confusion between carrier frequencies and signal frequencies.. understandable for those who don't work in the RF industry. I have actually designed a cable modem, so I can address this directly.
Simply because something transmits at 900 MHz over the air does NOT mean that it has 900 MHz of bandwidth. If that were the case, you'd be wiping out a good chunk of the signals that exist from 450 MHz to 1.4 GHz, not to mention violating dozens of FCC regulations.
6 MHz, as you mentioned, is the signal frequency. These signal frequencies must be imposed upon carrier frequencies to coexist with each other over the air. For example, if you were to take a T3 with a 6 MHz signal frequency and use a 900 MHz carrier frequency, you would be taking up the band from 897 MHz to 903 MHz and probably violating FCC regulations even in that case.
Cable actually operates in much the same way as wireless comms with the added benefit of being highly immune to interference from outside sources. The 6 MHz signal would also have to be modulated to some carrier frequency before being transmitted over coax.
Actually, TV is more along 300 lines I think. Not to mention it's analog.. you may wonder what the difference is, but the fact is that going from analog to digital requires at least 10x more bandwidth. It's simply because analog is much more noise-tolerant... your signal may be affected, but it doesn't result in catastrophic loss as it does in digital systems.
So fine, lets do the HDTV comparison. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about HDTV to know what the exact bandwidth numbers are. But if you want to put a multi-million powerful antenna in your house and pay the monstrous power bill to be able to use a wireless monitor, more power to you. Granted, you don't need the range, but you certainly need the same amount of bandwidth as an HDTV station. Not to mention your best resoultion would be (about?) 1080 x 600.
To address the compression concerns, you can use MPEG2 compression on "lifelike" pictures with little noticeable loss in quality, especially on regular definition TVs. Don't think for a second that applies to word processing where per-pixel resolution is practically a requirement.
So fine, lets make a compression scheme that is good on static scenes. What happens then when you want to play a 3D game?
900 MHz and 2.4 GHz are simply carrier frequencies. The actual signal frequency is latched within those frequences and are IQ or intermediate frequencies and could be on the order of only 100 kHz, for example.
This means that at 900 Mhz, you'd be taking up space from 899.5 MHz to 900.5 MHz. To do more (or, as you imply, from 0-900 MHz) would interfere outside the spectrum. At best, you wouldn't be able to watch TV or listen to the radio. At worst, the FCC would be knocking on your door.
Exact numbers for signal frequencies are determined by bandwidth requirements, power requirements and FCC regulations. In the end though, these frequencies are what determine the amount of bandwidth avaiable to you over the air and are unrelated (at least in the basic sense that we are discussing) to the actual carrier frequency (be it 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, etc.)
I don't see a wireless monitor happening unless the FCC disappears and there are some monumental discoveries in the RF world.
I work in the RF industry as a software engineer... I'm by no means an RF engineer, but I have to comment.
First of all, this is not a wireless monitor. It is a portable PC that communicates with other PCs via a network card. The video signal is NOT sent over the air.
The bandwidth requirements for a wireless monitor are impractical. It's certainly possible, but the amount of RF bandwidth and/or power required to do it would either kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer, depending on how you implement it.
Just a quick estimation (please don't criticize this, I have other work to do):
800 x 600 = 480,000 pixels
480 pixels x 16-bit = 7.68 Mb = 960 kB
960 kB x 60 Hz = 57.6 MB / s!
Given that 802.11b provides 11 Mb as a MAXIMUM (yes, that's bits, which translates to 1.4 MB / s), we'd only have about 1/50th the bandwidth necessary. And that doesn't account for automatic rate switching, interference, and other nodes on the network.
What? Wake up? Who says the phones have to cost less than they are selling them for in this phase? It's obviously a "prototype" phase of some sort.. I'm sure they're not worried about showing a profit at this point... I think they're trying to show the service aspect of their business model.
Even if it weren't a "prototype" phase, do you really think the price of products is an accurate reflection of their cost? Think Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a profit? Of course not.. they make the bulk of their money with licensing costs. How about Oakleys and hair salon products? Man, I better stop now..
This is so appropriate for a couple of projects I'm currently working on... of course you COULD have them in your appliances. However, in product design, it's never what's possible, but what will sell.
The reason it's so readily available in your phone is because that, by it's nature, it requires a wireless receiver to operate, as well as existence on a network. As a result, the equipment you need to get them time already exists and does not add to the cost of the phone (hardware cost, anyways).
In addition, the phone loses its time every power cycle. Swap batteries, dead charge, etc. Sure, you could probably implement a backup cap or coin cell to keep the time, but why not just get it off the network when your phone connects to it?
The extra $4 (and I'm being generous) it would take to implement a wireless receiver in an AC appliance would easily amount to $30-50 in the final price tag. Would you really pay this for each appliance, or have just one reliable clock in the house that you could set all others by?
Alright, this is the last reply I'm writing. I can't believe you guys keep getting modded up above me.. it just shows how unAmerican and socialist many Slashdot readers are. Basically, it always seems to amount to:
"It's the other guy always putting us down!"
It's a recession? Not in all markets.
Start a company against a monopoly? Why do you have to start a company in a monopolistic market?
No offense, but with that attitude, you'll never make any money or be wildly successful. You've defeated your chances of making it on your own before you've even explored your options.
You have a pretty narrow view of the world if the only thing keeping you from going into business is AOL and Microsoft. I wrote a reply regarding your views on AOL and Microsoft, but deleted it since it is largely irrelevant to capitalism as a whole. To use them as an example (or the complete basis for your argument, in your case) and say that capitalism is a farce and largely unsuccessful is just you being blatantly ignorant, lazy or both.
I won't disagree with you on one point.. it's definitely easier (and feels better) to bitch about how many fish others are catching, missing out on your own, instead of catch your own damn fish.
Capitalism is NOT an open-ended system. What comes around goes around.
Whine-bitch-piss-moan. Christ, I hate this socialist crap. If you think it's such a fucking gold mine for companies, by their goddamned stock. Retire rich. Or, fuck it, start a company.
Don't whine to me about not having the costs passed on to you. Either you are getting the return in the stocks, or you save when you buy. Don't like high CEO salaries? Don't complain if your return is great, or invest in companies with lower CEO salaries. Vote. Buy. Sell.
Isn't capitalism wonderful?
The midwesterners (of which I am one, so I can say this) say they are the most confident with their computers.
Of course, as anybody knows, you are better at EVERYTHING while drinking, including being quiet, driving and hitting on women.
Yes, god forbid the salaries for techs lowers because that might lower the cost of doing business for companies. God forbid your salary gets lowered to 30k because you might be able to afford the car that is now $8k and has twice as many features in it and is also overengineered to the point of lasting 20 years. Or the fact that airplanes become much safer because of the additional amount of design time that could be added to it. Or the additional amount of research and exploration that would be performed, allowing us to have more frequent advances in medical, engineering and science.
Capitalism performs better the more skills and knowledge is prevalent in the industry. Having half a country fight for jobs at Burger King does NOT do well for the economy and employees as a whole, INCLUDING you. Don't you realize how much more expensive things are because of the LACK of knowledge?
That darkness doesn't sound very nice.. let me enlighten you.
We are not talking fuses here. Bulbs don't simply pop as soon as you exceed their wattage ratings. Instead, their efficency decreases in that they don't disperse as much total power over time as their ratings indicate.
For example, stick 200W through a 100W bulb, and you may only get 1000 kW-Hrs as opposed to 2000 kW-Hrs. 400W may only get you 400 kW-Hours.
Got it yet?
Oh sheesh, the article has been debunked by someone who insists that 100W bulbs always and only disperse 100W of power!
Nice. Do all your 6A fuses always pass 6A of current as well? Now that would be a feat that would equal the subject of this article.
A bulb's wattage rating simply tells you how much power is consumed with a 120V 60 Hz AC Source. Change the input, increase the voltage, make it DC, your power dispersion will go up or down accordingly.
Still think it's total nonsense?
To tell you the truth, I would tell customers/superiors that I can give them very accurate software estimates as long as they don't change project parameters on me after I start.
This whole estimation thing assumes that the project parameters do not change during development, which I have never come close to seeing happening on any of the projects I've been exposed to. Ahh.. to be able to work on a project on a fixed set of parameters..
There are the changes that people can never seem to stop making during product development, and they originate from: marketing, sales, superiors, customers, warehouses and factories, just to name a few.
Of course, there are also the factors that you can't predict ahead of time (and consequently, cannot quantify besides adding a qualitative factor) such as changing: product costs, product availability, product specifications, competition, benchmarking, and tool quality/availability.
The best thing I've found is to keep software simple, sweet and very amiable to changing design and specifications. Software estimation is very much an intuitive feel based on past experience; there are also certain characteristics that you know will throw uncertainty into the schedule. For example, not only do I give my superiors at work a "time estimation", but I also give them an "uncertainty" or "risk factor" that tells them how close I feel my time estimation to be. They can learn a lot when you tell them "4 weeks give or take a couple of days" or "4 weeks if it's feasible to do at all".
There is nothing that implies the compressed file would be random as well.. or at least random data that would be treated the same by the decompression algorithm, as that would make what you say correct. In fact, the data would take on whole new meaning, being a description of patterns or formulae or what have you.
Think of the random data present in a fractal.. however, the data used to generate a fractal is much smaller in size.. could be simply a formula and some coefficients. If they are doing something like that here, eventually your raw data size becomes smaller than the size of the formulae and coefficients and you either cannot compress any further or you no longer have lossless compression.
Truly, you would never be able to compress down to one byte with a 'lossless' compression, and I'm sure their compression is 100:1 under certain optimal conditions.. after all, how much data is truly random?
l.af
I highly doubt the internet access would be wireless (for all the reasons you have unnecessarily explored) and it doesn't mention that it is in the article, so why speculate about it?
Phone access is also provided, and that is not wireless either. The only concern for interference then would be: (a) intentional internet communication from the plane to the satellite/ground and (b) unintentional radiation from the communications devices.
Since the airline obviously would control the communications specification from the plane, they could piggyback it on known channels or put it on another part of the spectrum as not to cause interference. Therefore, arguing about intentional interference is moot.
I'm sure the second problem would be solved then as it currently is now: no usage allowed during landings and takeoffs.