Did you hear that Verizon? Your "next generation optical network" is now behind the clunky old cable modem guys on this issue. Where is your update? Hmmmm?
If the form factor is "square around 1'x1'x1' that has a standardized (and rugged!) connector on the bottom. Battery pack includes a chip that handles all of the maintenance and reports levels back to the car's computer using a standardized protocol" then it might not be impossible, but it would be quite the engineering challenge to manage, especially as people end up mixing and matching different battery techs and vintages. You would need very careful power management in the car.
The advantage of a scheme like this is you could replace some cells with fuel cells or other future tech without having to make any changes at all to the cars themselves. The disadvantage is that getting the standard right on the first try is almost impossible, and having a bunch of different standards is even worse. Maybe if someone started now and spent some years working the kinks out before the system got too large they could make it work, but it would be a small miracle.
Anything is possible if you're willing to leave the car in the shop for a few days. Doesn't mean there are any plans for it on their roadmap.
Re:Spare the mirror sites, use the torrents
on
Fedora 16 Released
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· Score: 1
Total download time was 17:30. Still only uploading at ~2.4mbps despite having plenty of bandwidth available. Looks to me like the torrent is pretty well seeded at this point.
It would be, except that the battery packs are 750lb and quite large. An access port to get at them would have to be fairly big (a quarter panel popping up perhaps), and there would have to be machinery to move the batteries, because a person could not do it themselves. Plus, the battery is considered part of the car for warranty purposes so that would be a problem with this swap scheme. The batteries are also wear items that degrade over time, so making the a commodity like this means someone has to pay for the depreciation (apparently the charging station owners who buy the excess battery packs to have them ready for you?). You would also need to standardize all car manufacturers on one form factor for the battery packs, which would be tough since they're all building different vehicles (the pack for a pickup truck hauling gravel would be the same as the one for the tiny 2 seat commuter car?)
None of the kinks are impossible to work out. You could have a system that has a number of smaller individually manageable (30-40lb?) batteries for each car so people could swap their packs by hand without major equipment (but you'll still break out in a good sweat lugging 20 of those batteries out of your car!) and set up some sort of profitable setup with the charging station owners. The logistics are still quite messy though, and I wouldn't expect to see this anytime soon (or ever really, it's probably too late).
Re:Spare the mirror sites, use the torrents
on
Fedora 16 Released
·
· Score: 1
I'm getting 24mbps down and only putting 4mbps up right now. It's not because my connection is asymmetric either, there is just an overabundance of seeders on the 64bit DVD torrent.
Depends if people try to replicate the study. That's what happens in a lot of fields, but obviously it's hard to replicate psychological studies with hundreds or thousands of people that last for years. Sometimes the best you can do is try to poke holes in the methodology. More often what will happen is that someone will think that sounds odd, run some sort of meta study based on whatever data they can scrounge up, and try to see if it matches.
Bad studies can linger for a long time, even after they're discredited, especially if people have a vested interest in the result of the study.
Listen, some people work really hard to put out the best app in the world, but almost everything in every app store is total crap. It shouldn't be a surprise that those shovelware apps aren't huge sellers.
Apple used to do this back before OSX. They required special encoding formats to send files through email, but it was hardly impossible. It was quite messy when someone extracted one of those files on a DOS or Unix machine and ended up with a bunch of garbage looking files and directories in addition to what they wanted.
Apple did do some interesting things with them though. The basic text editor on the system could apply simple formatting (font changes, bold, underline, etc...) to a text document, and if you sent that text document to a DOS or Unix user, they would just see the text without the formatting. Think of it as an early example of separating content from presentation, and just how messy and incompatible Microsoft's solution (RTF) to the same problem was.
The other nice thing is that programs could store all of their assets (Icons, graphics, sounds, executable code, data blobs, etc...) inside of their own resource fork, so you never had to install anything. There were no libraries to mess with, no.pak files, no registry garf, just a big honking executable that you could run from anywhere. Of course in a multiuser system that doesn't work so well, but a 1980s Mac was in no way a multiuser system. Modern OSX actually does pretty much the same thing, but in a slightly messier manner (executables are big zip files and the OS has magic to handle them...from the gui. From the commandline it's a bit messier).
The article is not very well written, but I think the story is that the Chinese firm reverse engineered a DEC Alpha to start making MIPS compatible chips, and then in 2007 went ahead and just bought a license from MIPS so they could actually call themselves MIPS compatible instead of just MIPS like.
The only problem with this is that Alpha is not MIPS. IIRC Alpha was at least partially derived from MIPS, so this isn't entirely improbable however.
So I guess the timeline is: 2001, Chinese firm buys a DEC Alpha, reverse engineers it. In 2002 they form a company that mass produces the knockoffs. In 2007 they buy a license from MIPS for marketing/sales purposes (maybe getting some ISA modernization as well?). 2011 they have a ton of chips installed in China's first supercomputer.
The only question left in my head is: Why Alpha? In 2001 DEC was already killing Alpha off. In 2011 terms that chip has got to be quite a few generations behind. The low power consumption might reflect a relatively low IPC. It's possible this supercomputer is built with 8,704 ARM-level cores, except that they'll probably have full up FPUs since this is a supercomputer.
Because rolling back the country to 1787 standards is insane? By modern standards the US was a third world country back then. Plus, I'm not seeing where my state and local legislators are that much better than the Feds, especially since so many problems are interconnected now. How would a statist deal with Acid Rain (which is generated by pollution in one state, but falls on other states)? If there's no EPA, then you're left with the messy and untenable solution of states suing other states with no higher authority to step in and resolve the disputes, and of course there are 49 individual disputes for each and every issue...
The Federal government is far from perfect, but it's a way better solution than what Ron Paul wants.
I also can't believe that someone can watch what is happening in the Euro zone right now and say that they want that model for the US (unified currency, but each state sets its own monetary policy, with no Fed). The level of cognitive dissonance would cause their brain to explode.
Why wouldn't having Microsoft be the only browser player in town (allowing them to charge for it!), cause people to basically start the Firefox project? Probably people would have just started with the Mosaic codebase instead and worked from there. Back in 1994 you didn't have to do that much to have a fully featured web browser. Those were the days before Javascript, before frames, before tables, back when inline images were a big deal. That offer would have been around the Netscape 1.0 timeframe, back when Netscape was a commercial product you were supposed to buy.
And there's one thing that's clear: There was a need for browsers that operated on platforms other than Windows.
That's a really cool coating, but will it be destroyed the first time you have to wipe off dust/fingerprints/etc...? I've had this problem with anti-reflective coatings in the past, especially when they get wet for some reason.
The reason the fold flat seats cost an arm and a leg is that they take up a lot of floorspace for a single passenger, so you're basically paying for three seats to get one. Stacked sleepers would avoid that problem and let regular people (not flying on some outrageously generous business account) get a comfortable flight.
Loading and unloading would be awkward for sure, but it's not like people aren't terrible at it anyway. Depending on how the space works out, you might even be able to squeeze in space for double wide aisles on some planes with this configuration. Maybe install it in widebody jets like the 767, where you would have all of the sleepers in the middle and regular seats on the outside.
I wish it were possible (FAA Regs would be a serious problem) to have the slide in beds like in the Fifth Element for red-eye flights. I can never sleep worth a damn when sitting bolt upright with no head support (and those stupid neck pillows don't work) and it makes the whole flight a chore. If I could lay down for the flight I would be much happier.
I am not the biggest apphound in the world, but thus far I've managed to not break anything with iOS upgrades. I do tend to wait a few days for app developers to catch up if they have to, but it doesn't appear to be especially required. Apple isn't big on removing APIs yet and they reject apps that use undocumented ones that are subject to change, so it's not especially hard for them to keep compatibility across releases.
I imagine the situation is largely the same on the Android side, and that it's mostly carrier laziness that is preventing them from issuing updates/support on their phones, not fear of app breakage.
Slashdot Mirror
I would assume that if someone got the 4k file and decrypted it they would re-encode it before sharing.
Did you hear that Verizon? Your "next generation optical network" is now behind the clunky old cable modem guys on this issue. Where is your update? Hmmmm?
Those Revolutionary-War era GPS systems were just too bulky to properly hide on the horse drawn carriages of the day. It never would have worked.
4) Get ticketed for destruction of US Government property.
If the form factor is "square around 1'x1'x1' that has a standardized (and rugged!) connector on the bottom. Battery pack includes a chip that handles all of the maintenance and reports levels back to the car's computer using a standardized protocol" then it might not be impossible, but it would be quite the engineering challenge to manage, especially as people end up mixing and matching different battery techs and vintages. You would need very careful power management in the car.
The advantage of a scheme like this is you could replace some cells with fuel cells or other future tech without having to make any changes at all to the cars themselves. The disadvantage is that getting the standard right on the first try is almost impossible, and having a bunch of different standards is even worse. Maybe if someone started now and spent some years working the kinks out before the system got too large they could make it work, but it would be a small miracle.
Anything is possible if you're willing to leave the car in the shop for a few days. Doesn't mean there are any plans for it on their roadmap.
Total download time was 17:30. Still only uploading at ~2.4mbps despite having plenty of bandwidth available. Looks to me like the torrent is pretty well seeded at this point.
It would be, except that the battery packs are 750lb and quite large. An access port to get at them would have to be fairly big (a quarter panel popping up perhaps), and there would have to be machinery to move the batteries, because a person could not do it themselves. Plus, the battery is considered part of the car for warranty purposes so that would be a problem with this swap scheme. The batteries are also wear items that degrade over time, so making the a commodity like this means someone has to pay for the depreciation (apparently the charging station owners who buy the excess battery packs to have them ready for you?). You would also need to standardize all car manufacturers on one form factor for the battery packs, which would be tough since they're all building different vehicles (the pack for a pickup truck hauling gravel would be the same as the one for the tiny 2 seat commuter car?)
None of the kinks are impossible to work out. You could have a system that has a number of smaller individually manageable (30-40lb?) batteries for each car so people could swap their packs by hand without major equipment (but you'll still break out in a good sweat lugging 20 of those batteries out of your car!) and set up some sort of profitable setup with the charging station owners. The logistics are still quite messy though, and I wouldn't expect to see this anytime soon (or ever really, it's probably too late).
I'm getting 24mbps down and only putting 4mbps up right now. It's not because my connection is asymmetric either, there is just an overabundance of seeders on the 64bit DVD torrent.
Depends if people try to replicate the study. That's what happens in a lot of fields, but obviously it's hard to replicate psychological studies with hundreds or thousands of people that last for years. Sometimes the best you can do is try to poke holes in the methodology. More often what will happen is that someone will think that sounds odd, run some sort of meta study based on whatever data they can scrounge up, and try to see if it matches.
Bad studies can linger for a long time, even after they're discredited, especially if people have a vested interest in the result of the study.
Listen, some people work really hard to put out the best app in the world, but almost everything in every app store is total crap. It shouldn't be a surprise that those shovelware apps aren't huge sellers.
Apple used to do this back before OSX. They required special encoding formats to send files through email, but it was hardly impossible. It was quite messy when someone extracted one of those files on a DOS or Unix machine and ended up with a bunch of garbage looking files and directories in addition to what they wanted.
.pak files, no registry garf, just a big honking executable that you could run from anywhere. Of course in a multiuser system that doesn't work so well, but a 1980s Mac was in no way a multiuser system. Modern OSX actually does pretty much the same thing, but in a slightly messier manner (executables are big zip files and the OS has magic to handle them...from the gui. From the commandline it's a bit messier).
Apple did do some interesting things with them though. The basic text editor on the system could apply simple formatting (font changes, bold, underline, etc...) to a text document, and if you sent that text document to a DOS or Unix user, they would just see the text without the formatting. Think of it as an early example of separating content from presentation, and just how messy and incompatible Microsoft's solution (RTF) to the same problem was.
The other nice thing is that programs could store all of their assets (Icons, graphics, sounds, executable code, data blobs, etc...) inside of their own resource fork, so you never had to install anything. There were no libraries to mess with, no
You had a Mac?
I think the biggest user of those forks is viruses trying to hide their data.
The article is not very well written, but I think the story is that the Chinese firm reverse engineered a DEC Alpha to start making MIPS compatible chips, and then in 2007 went ahead and just bought a license from MIPS so they could actually call themselves MIPS compatible instead of just MIPS like.
The only problem with this is that Alpha is not MIPS. IIRC Alpha was at least partially derived from MIPS, so this isn't entirely improbable however.
So I guess the timeline is: 2001, Chinese firm buys a DEC Alpha, reverse engineers it. In 2002 they form a company that mass produces the knockoffs. In 2007 they buy a license from MIPS for marketing/sales purposes (maybe getting some ISA modernization as well?). 2011 they have a ton of chips installed in China's first supercomputer.
The only question left in my head is: Why Alpha? In 2001 DEC was already killing Alpha off. In 2011 terms that chip has got to be quite a few generations behind. The low power consumption might reflect a relatively low IPC. It's possible this supercomputer is built with 8,704 ARM-level cores, except that they'll probably have full up FPUs since this is a supercomputer.
Because rolling back the country to 1787 standards is insane? By modern standards the US was a third world country back then. Plus, I'm not seeing where my state and local legislators are that much better than the Feds, especially since so many problems are interconnected now. How would a statist deal with Acid Rain (which is generated by pollution in one state, but falls on other states)? If there's no EPA, then you're left with the messy and untenable solution of states suing other states with no higher authority to step in and resolve the disputes, and of course there are 49 individual disputes for each and every issue...
The Federal government is far from perfect, but it's a way better solution than what Ron Paul wants.
I also can't believe that someone can watch what is happening in the Euro zone right now and say that they want that model for the US (unified currency, but each state sets its own monetary policy, with no Fed). The level of cognitive dissonance would cause their brain to explode.
Why wouldn't having Microsoft be the only browser player in town (allowing them to charge for it!), cause people to basically start the Firefox project? Probably people would have just started with the Mosaic codebase instead and worked from there. Back in 1994 you didn't have to do that much to have a fully featured web browser. Those were the days before Javascript, before frames, before tables, back when inline images were a big deal. That offer would have been around the Netscape 1.0 timeframe, back when Netscape was a commercial product you were supposed to buy.
And there's one thing that's clear: There was a need for browsers that operated on platforms other than Windows.
If only his sane ideas weren't counterbalanced by his crazy ones...
You won't be laughing when a terrorist hijacks a train and crashes it into the White House.
Or smashes a Ferry into Mt. Rushmore.
That's a really cool coating, but will it be destroyed the first time you have to wipe off dust/fingerprints/etc...? I've had this problem with anti-reflective coatings in the past, especially when they get wet for some reason.
The reason the fold flat seats cost an arm and a leg is that they take up a lot of floorspace for a single passenger, so you're basically paying for three seats to get one. Stacked sleepers would avoid that problem and let regular people (not flying on some outrageously generous business account) get a comfortable flight.
Loading and unloading would be awkward for sure, but it's not like people aren't terrible at it anyway. Depending on how the space works out, you might even be able to squeeze in space for double wide aisles on some planes with this configuration. Maybe install it in widebody jets like the 767, where you would have all of the sleepers in the middle and regular seats on the outside.
That also avoids the cheap ticket "problem" though, so it's a bit of a wash.
I wish it were possible (FAA Regs would be a serious problem) to have the slide in beds like in the Fifth Element for red-eye flights. I can never sleep worth a damn when sitting bolt upright with no head support (and those stupid neck pillows don't work) and it makes the whole flight a chore. If I could lay down for the flight I would be much happier.
I am not the biggest apphound in the world, but thus far I've managed to not break anything with iOS upgrades. I do tend to wait a few days for app developers to catch up if they have to, but it doesn't appear to be especially required. Apple isn't big on removing APIs yet and they reject apps that use undocumented ones that are subject to change, so it's not especially hard for them to keep compatibility across releases.
I imagine the situation is largely the same on the Android side, and that it's mostly carrier laziness that is preventing them from issuing updates/support on their phones, not fear of app breakage.
How many of their competitors do any manufacturing themselves anymore? Certainly nobody in the computer industry or cell phone industry.