Wait, did you mean that you don't have Internet kiosks anymore since it's not the Middle Ages and everyone is walking around with a WiFi or WWAN laptop?
Or that you DO have Internet kiosks because you have the Internet? I am now entirely confused.
It's funny that you mention this in the context of Pittsburgh -- Richard Florida wrote a book called 'The Rise of the Creative Class' about that theory -- that having college students gives way to an educated population and a class of creative professionals, from high tech to high finance, that builds prosperity. But Florida's research started when he noticed that he was surrounded by smart, capable young students at CMU, none of whom would be there a year or two after their graduation. His book (with methodology that's easy to critique) tries to show that it's more than just colleges that you need to retain college graduates. You can dispute Florida's findings -- that you need things like bike paths to keep college grads, but his inspiration, that college students leave Pittsburgh, is generally pretty true.
Finding out how to keep college students would go a long way towards solving Pittsburgh's problems -- and kicking them in the pants when they're poor students probably isn't a good way to do that. As a side note: poor college students can frequently get almost fully funded between grants and loans -- including a fair living stipend. If they can't get such financing for the $400 tax, then that's a real burden for the already less-advantaged college studnets trying to make a future for themselves.
I've been a Mac user for 6 years now, and have loved every machine I've purchased. Having said that, I'm a certain kind of user who matches the machines that Apple sells. I want mid- to mid-high range hardware, capable of pretty extensive multitasking (which, in my experience, works better under OS X than Windows), and the ability to do graphics design and layout (I admit, this was much more hardware-constrained in 2003 than it is now). Macs are a pretty good fit for the featureset that I want, and are price-competitive with Windows boxes.
HOWEVER in the ad, Lauren wants a machine with a certain amount of raw horsepower, a keyboard she likes (which, with Apple, is either entirely true or entirely not) and a 17" screen. That could mean a wide variety of machines -- processor architectures, memory, integrated or discreet graphics -- but Apple, when you want a 17" laptop, assumes you're a higher-end user, that wants a very well engineered battery, a lot of horsepower, a fast dual-core CPU, etc. etc.
Lauren doesn't. She doesn't want a lot of those things. She just wants a computer with a 17" screen. Apple doesn't sell the machine she wants -- but because there's at least 3 or 4 PC brands at any Best Buy, she can walk in and get what she wants for a fraction of what Apple sells it for.
It's a question of mapping: the goal isn't to take an APPLE to start with then compare it to the price of a similar PC; instead, it's to take a PC you want, and asking if there EVEN IS a similar Mac -- in a lot of cases, there just won't be.
Yes, I get your point, and I think that its valid; Boeing and Airbus face similar problems with designing new commercial airliners, which in at least some ways are orders of magnitude easier than designing spacecraft.
I think, though, that what's troubling about this is that we're dealing with a large, and possibly growing gap between the shuttle's retirement and the introduction of a replacement, and what we're getting is a craft that doesn't introduce a lot of new capabilities past from what we'd already had. Its the double hit that makes the problem seem significant, especially in light of the news that engineers inside NASA (possibly or probably some on the Ares program) saying that the fundamental design of the Ares is both problem prone and inefficient.
Still, yes, I get your point; any new piece of hardware (even building a house) will have unforeseen overruns and that's part of the game. What's torubling isn't that we're hearing this; its that there might be a lot more that we might not be hearing.
That's all well and good, but we DID that already. 40 years ago. That was the first time that anyone'd ever tried a spacecraft designed solely for space; we're talking about a crew capsule here. The we've made them for nearly 50 years now, the Russians a bit longer, even China's Shenzhou is basically a decade old. the point is, most of the 'creative thinking' on making a spacecraft at the right weight (if not in-budget) has been done already, this should be easier.
I, for one, am hoping SpaceX's Dragon and the related Falcon 9 it sits on will enter service successfully, as scheduled. In that case, we'll have a roughly as-capable manned craft developed in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the budget - and we won't be repeat our dubious distinction of being the first country in human history to lose spaceflight capability (as we did just before the Space Shuttle entered service).
I've thought of this, too, but then I realized: Part of the problem is where that heat lies. Your average home - even a relatively well-insulated one - has a lot of heat 'wasted' as it goes to the outside, etc. When you've got a lightbulb, chances are you're doing a really good job heating the 6" around it, and not a very good job heating anything else. You're probably heating your ceiling, wall or lampshade pretty well - but the heat in these areas probably isn't carried to the rest of the house very effecitvely before simply dissipating.
Your heating system, on the other hand, is at least somewhat designed to circulate warm air to the parts of the house where you're likely to be - not at the top of an 11' ceiling or near a window.
This seems to be even more of a pointed issue considering the number of MacBooks that may still have problems with waking up from sleep when the MacBook is still closed.
I don't know how many people that have MacBooks still have this issue, but I really suspect that I'm not the only one. I've got an earlier MacBook, but bought it form an Apple Store in August of last year, so its really not one of the 1st ones off the assembly line.
Periodically, the MB will wake up and stay on while closed and in say, my bag or out on the desk, etc. etc. - enough that, based on battery drain, its got to be awake at least 1/2 the time that the MB is closed. Needless to say, this makes the MB (and everything around it) hot. I can easily see how if the MB is in a backpack or other carrying device, it could easily overheat - and thus make any battery fire issues that much more likely.
Issues like this one - and inadequate airflow, heat dissipation issues - etc. aren't just nuisances or cosmetic given these battery issues.
You could probably get a bit of mileage out of this, but remember: the wind turbine is basically generating resistance, making air push against it and turn. So what you're doing, in effect, is making a car move so that you can make the car slow down, making drag - you're just translating the power. And you'd also have to redesign a car in a non-aerodynamic form (by the very definition of aerodynamic) so that wind would go through wherever you put the turbine, meaning you'd get gas mileage.
In real life practical applications, however, you may end up with a bit of a positive power upset off of this because of wind and other 'free' energy (not generated from the car's engine propelling it forward) will also power the turbine.
Speaking REALLY practically, on the other hand, I think that the added cost and complexity of the turbine would just add cost to a car for not much performance benefit. If you had an electric car, the same amount of space that the turbine uses could almost certainly be used more effectively to just increase the space devoted to batteries, or to make the car more aerodynamic, or use the extra space for regenerative breaks, etc.
The problem with this is that it means that mobile users will be less likely to restart their computers - or power them up, for that matter - in meetings, etc., where you don't want to draw attention to yourself with an annoying startup sound. Now, I'm not sure if there's still an option for turning ALL windows alert sounds off, including the start up sound, which might mitigate this a bit. But on some computers, especially many laptops with softkeys for volume, you've got to ALREADY BE IN WINDOWS to turn the sound off. So say you were using your computer with sound on, say, gaming, turn it off, and boot up 2 hours later in a meeting - you'd have NO CHANCE of disabling a loud and annoying sound that draws the kind of attention to yourself that you REALLY don't want drawn to you.
It all just begs the question "why?" was the code that they have to turn off the start up sound now SO BADLY WRITTEN that they decided not to migrate it? C'mon guys. And also:
They've been working on this project as the "#1" priority in their group (past updates, etc.) for over half a decade now. I'd REALLY like to think that they'd have most of this kind of stuff decided already. Did somebody buy everyone in the Windows dev team an Xbox and then an XBox 360? Is that why its taken them 60 months to put together about as much of a feature upgrade as the OS X dev team usually puts together every 18 months? What have they been waiting for? Are they tailor-making Vista technologies to run Duke Nukem Forever? Is that the reason for the delay? Because I really can't find much of a better rationale anywhere else... other than maybe they've cut so many features of Vista in the past few years that no one left working on the project has any idea what code they're actually supposed to be writing.
so it looks like Apple's Mac Pro and the new XServe are relatively powerful, etc., etc., but....
who fired their design team? I mean, Apple hasn't released a new form factor since the Mac mini... two years ago now, nearly? And I understand that there are technical challenges with making the transition to Intel, and that the Mac Pro is all new on the inside even if its little different on the outside.... but... Apple's products used to be items to be lusted over because of their looks alone.
The only new look from the Intel transition is the MacBook (not Pro) and... its almost uninspiring. Its like they took an iBook and flattened it a little... and while it is a pretty sexy form factor, its not like the days of yore when the PowerBooks were new and beautiful (and now you can get the SAME enclosure, almost unaltered, in a MacBook Pro, 3 years later), the iMac went from cute to beautiful, etc.
And I don't buy that Apple's worried about scaring away people with new form factors with the Intel transition - I mean, would anybody REALLY be that surprised by a new physical enclosure? I mean, really?
Sure, there are issues to be sorted out - MacBooks yellowing, MBPs burning at corona-like temperatures... but I feel like these are start up issues that would be the same whether Apple played it safe with new form factors or not.
So it looks like OS X is less about the new shiny than before, and their hardware's less about the shiny than before. Before, OS X and Apple's hardware were both technically advanced AND beautiful - why is Apple just saying "job's done, lets move on" with the beauty aspect?
The Mighty Mouse HAS a second button - and many more, in fact. They're just not divided up into obvious, externally visible buttons. But click on the right part of the mouse, and it'll function like a control-click, if you have the mouse configured that way. There are also 'buttons' on the sides of the mouse, etc.
I've always wondered if the Mighty Mouse doesn't violate a lot of Apple's user design principles. I don't mean with the one-button vs. multi-button design, per se... one of Apple's reasons for having a default of one-button (Macs have supported multi-button mice, and programs for graphic designers, etc.) is to ensure that software designers didn't hide functionality behind right-clicks, etc. Everything should be visible, and accessible through menus at the top of the screen or icons on the screen.
So Apple has this principle of visibility... then they HIDE the buttons on the mouse? This may be excusable when you only have one button - people just get used to pressing the top of the mouse, and it clicks - but when there are multiple buttons that you can't see on the top of the mouse? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, even experienced computer users (Mac users) who weren't familiar with the mighty mouse could end up right-clicking without realizing that they COULD right click.
Now, it IS just a mouse, and so you do get used to it very quickly... it would have been cool, though, if Apple could, say, have had small LEDs for each button. They could be activated (or de-activated if activated by default) to emit a small light for each button. You could even make them multi-coloured and it'd be an easy way to explain operation of a computer - or for that matter, you could code icons/menus so that to use function X in photoshop, highlighted in red, you press the red button.
I always love articles like this when they compare the price of MAKING something with the price of SELLING something. Titanium's sold on a market sort of like oil... prices fluctuate based on demand more than they do based on the cost of production.... if the price of titanium is $40 this year, and was half as much last year... last year it was $20, and I'm SURE that people were making a profit selling that, so it was produced for probably a maximum of $15, probably more like $10/lb.
So yes, this saves money... but it needs to be done in a large scale, 1st. I don't know how they come up with a cost/lb estimate that they consider to be more than VERY ball park estimate... $3 could be $6.
Its substantial savings, but its not like we're going to be able to start planning our houses with titanium frames in a few years or anything. And that's assuming that demand doesn't keep skyrocketing above supply... in which case we could have the same price (or more!) regardless of how much it costs to produce titanium.
Well, it looks like its still very possible to port other games to the Revolution without many modifications - EA's point is that you can't have a top-selling title like that on the Revolution. Its a big sign of support for what Nintendo's trying to push here - a new gaming experience. Nintendo's greatest hope, I think, is that EA and other publishers would produce innovative titles for the Revolution exclusively that do things that just can't be done on other platforms. Nintendo's greatest fear is that the Revolution would just receive the occaisional port of games like Madden, etc., which would certainly relegate it to the 'also ran' position in the upcoming console wars. Whether the strategy will pay off - that is to say, whether people will think that the innovative titles from Nintendo, EA ando thers make the Revolution the console of choice - is still to be seen, but its a good step for Nintendo that EA's doing this.
I've always thought that it was interesting that people expect privacy when they're litterally broadcasting something in every direction - I don't expect privacy when I'm yelling out something on a crowded city street. Why does changing the medium from audible sound to EM waves give you an expectation of privacy?
Not that I don't want privacy when I'm talking on a cell phone - in fact, I'd pay more for say, some reasonable level of encryption on my cell phone.... I just don't think its some sovereign right of mine to have privacy when I'm sending signals of any kind out in every direction.
You might think I'm wrong about this but consider satellite TV signals - DMCA concerns (which most of us don't agree with anyways) aside, I've always just thought.... you want me to pay for satellite service, fine. But to say that I can't interpret the signals YOU are beaming in to MY house in any way I want (by using a decoder, etc.) is ludicrous - if you don't want me to do something with them, DON'T BEAM THEM INTO MY HOUSE. Or try and use proprietary technology, encryption algorithms, etc. to prevent me from reading them - but its your job to make sure I can't.
You say this, but I'm not entirely sure that 'the spirit of the device' is necessarily the right idea long term - the 'spirit of the computer' used to be financial records and calculations, THEN personal computers became a better typewriter, THEN a communications device (and there were also other uses - games, etc., which were never the biggest reason most people bought a computer (PC)), and the reason is that computers became technically capable of these things, THEN someone figured out the right interface, THEN it became popular.
So I'd be very, VERY surprised if 20 years from now people carried around a separate music device and video device (if these become mainstream, I'm not necessarily sold on this one), and communications (phone/txt/whatever) device. The problem is now that a PDA FEELS bulky, a iPod doesn't, and a cell phone doesn't.
People would rather carry 2 easy-to-use devices that don't feel bulky than one device that's a bit clunky to use and a bit bigger, EVEN if its smaller than both devices combined (the real constraints of pockets, etc.) BUT I think that the technical similarities of the devices, combined with the fact that they both have a certain amount of bulk (and aren't worn - this is why most people won't have watch PDAs in the near future - they want the classic look.)
BUT in 10, 20 years, when its technically possible to make a small device with iPod + Phone + video functionality, and given some time for someone smart to come up with a good UI, I think that we'lll have a unified device.
I can seem to remember Skype selling phones (one corded, one cordless) that would work with a PC via Windows and USB - but I think the cordless one wasn't available in North America.
Still, although WAY to expensive for me to pay for a handset, I might actually consider buying one - especially as Skype adds more countries for SkypeIn. Two things, though:
1) how hard would it be to make drivers for Linux and Mac OS X? 2) Isn't this a problem just WAITING for Bluetooth? I mean, couldn't you make a Bluetooth handset? It wouldn't be very different from a bluetooth hands-free device, all you'd really need to add would be some kind of communication for the caller display and the dial pad. And then you wouldn't need the USB dongle - saves a USB port, makes it more practical for laptop users, etc.
The obvious limit of this is the highly limited range of Bluetooth - much less than a 2.4GHz cordless phone.
While not grabbing the headlines the way the X-Prize and specifically, Burt Rutan and later Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic did (and do), SpaceX has started to very quietly put togehter what looks like the first credible competition to the entrenched commercial space industry as it now stands.
Even though they have suffered setbacks of late and therefore, haven't launched a rocket to space yet, it looks like they've got all the technology there to do so. They've also got Pentagon contracts, which means that they've got the backing to cut through the red tape.
If SpaceX is successful, it will force Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Arienespace (and to an extent, Russian rocket mfgs) to really rethink their development and pricing strategy.
"So what, they're not manned?" I get your point. But if they can REALLY LAUNCH 25,000kg to space for $78m dollars by the end of the decade, it will mean that suddenly, we'll have a price-competitive launch industry. I'm talking companies undercutting each other price wise, speeding up development of better, bigger rockets, and actually, maybe, being innovative with rocket and satellite development. It could even spark the kind of rapid progress we saw in aviation in the 1910's.
Suddenly, there's competition in space for the first time since the US and Russia in the 1960's.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for passenger spaceflight, but SpaceX is putting together interesting technology at good prices that could spark the kind of 'rapid evolution' that the industry needs, filling an existing market with a much cheaper product. It'll be exciting to see where they go with this new design, and if they can actually pull it off in just a couple years.
The first computer I built was almost exactly the same : it may have been a 133+ 6x86MX, but it was a S3 ViRGE, a 2GB hard drive made by some company in India... I forget their name but the drive was black and fully encased in what seemed like a rubbery material, years before anyone had been making hard drives enclosed like that. 2GB was decent for the time (1997), it was a steal, price wise. ANYWAYS.
The problem with the Cyrix wasn't its general performance - in fact, general performance wise they were a steal for their price. The problem was, their floating performance really blew... I knew this at the time, I mean, FPU performance was what you paid for when you went with Cyrix (or, to a lesser degree, AMD at that time.) Also, the chips, despite their lower-than-advertised clock rating (the PR system which AMD later adopted in a modified form), ran HOT. They said, I believe, HEATSINK + FAN REQUIRED on the chips themselves... and they meant it, at at time when you could probably run a Pentium without a heatsink and you could definitely run one without a fan.
The difference between PEI and Mars is that Mars might someday support the life of more than one human.
But its an interesting point.... they're 'pretty pictures,' but yeah, if these were B&W, a lot of people would had a had time knowing if this was a desert somewhere or another planet.
Science fiction, I think is to blame; always trying to make the fantastic (another planet with the possibility of LIFE that evolved totally separately from our own?) seem more fantastic (weird, semi-gravity defying spirey things on palnets that are all purple and green). I can remember a story from Arthur C. Clark that he wrote before we had any detailed up-close observations of Mars that centred around Mars not having hills or mountains... in a way, that'd almost be more alien.
But there is something to be said about the extraordinary (being able to see another planet IS extraordinary) looking ordinary to our eyes.... its proof we live in an amazing time despite all of our times limitations and problems.
Yes, and there's a good chance it will stay this way. Its probably the best way to make sure that spammers don't start getting gmail accounts.
Its a method of 'verifying' users by having other users verify them (by making the service invite-only.) Its more secure than say, having to enter the text from some obscured image (which can be done en masse by paying somebody probably something small.)
So yes, at this point, anybody who really wants a gmail account has one, but spammers have largely been shut out.
Alright, I've got a question that I haven't seen addressed, at all, anywhere.
We've spent God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make the shuttle safe enough for human spaceflight. Maybe that just isn't going to happen. Not with the shuttle, not with the fact that we're looking at band-aids and not limb replacement solutions here.
So, what would it take to make the shuttle run on autopilot? Rockets fly to space all the time, Russian Progress vehicles even dock with the space station, although I'm not sure if they do it alone or via teleoperation.
Either way, why not invest a certain amount of money in an autopilot (or teleoperation) system so the shuttle could fly up, dock with the station, and then could be entered by ISS crew who could use the shuttle's robotic arm, etc., to set up the next component of the station. If manpower's an issue (and with 2 on board the station, it probably is) you could do it when there was a crew change and there were more people at the station, or you could really, really hurry with the CEV and wait until you could have enough people at the station to do the job.
Or, for that matter, you could just HOLD on station construction until the CEV was ready and you could squeeze enough people into the station to make this work.
This would solve the main issue: that the shuttle isn't safe for humans due primarily to reentry problems. In the future, you could even have the CEV dock with an in-space, unmanned shuttle and complete shuttle missions, such as a Hubble servicing mission, then undock, let the shuttle make its way home (or, in an unfortunate, but no longer life-threatening event, crash) and the CEV, with crew, would return to earth safely (as I can't recall a SINGLE EVENT where a capsule has burned up and people have died in reentry.)
Anybody know why this hasn't been suggested, at all? I think it may be cheaper and faster, certainly if we'd done this after the Columbia disaster, but even fi its not, it allows us to keep on using the shuttle for YEARS relatively cheaply.
So a piece of foam that was like the one that hit Columbia fell off - the key difference being, that this one DIDN'T hit the shuttle.
On one hand, I can understand NASA's safety concerns - but, at the same time, it seems that they didn't do a lot to change the external fuel tank - its construction, etc. In fact, you could even say that this is why the shuttle was grounded from a July 13 launch - the sensor that was faulty was built in 1989.... they considered it to be in 'good condition', but, I mean, if it's a 16 year old piece of equipment, how good of condition is that? (I'm not exactly sure how this could be true - external tanks aren't reused, and so unless NASA stockpiled them in the late 80's, the tank would be newer; did the article just mean that it was a 1989 design?)
On the other hand - we know that pieces of foam have fallen off twice in the past 2 launches - once with devastating effects, and once without. I don't know if anyone at NASA saw fit to review old launch tapes and look for falling insulation à la the stuff that struck Columbia, but it seems possible that, given the construction of the external tank, it might be relatively common - and thus, nothing THAT BIG to worry about since its only been a problem 1/115 times. (Its still an inherent design flaw).
So, now the shuttle fleet is grounded again - will it be another 2 1/2 years? Making it early 2008 before the shuttle flies again? I mean, if it seems like foam just flies off of external tanks, the only way to REALLY solve this problem would be either encasing existing tanks in a new (heavy, expensive) "exo-tank," or just designing new tanks, right? I mean, this isn't some minor design consideration.
All this makes me think... with NASA already pressing for a new manned vehicle by 2010, are the powers that be in NASA just saying, "We don't want to fly the shuttle anymore, its a $2bn death trap, doesn't get us cool places and is damned inefficient at lifting cargo" and asking instead to concentrate on a new vehicle, just forgetting about the shuttle? I mean, if NASA spends $500m and 30 months modifying the shuttle fleet just to retire it 24 months after that, that seems dumb, right? Even by government standards?
This is especially true in today's world.... think about it. First of all, I think the MPAA faces stiffer than usual competition from indie movie makers, as they've been using digital production techniques to milk more and more out of a small budget. There are plenty of good, relatively unknown actors out there, and a small budget gets you higher quality editing abilities, etc., than ever before.
And, the MPAA isn't competing just with movies, they're competing with anything that could be on TV. Think about it: major league soccer, lacrosse, any number or other growing sports in the US would bend over backwards, re-arrange schedules, etc., to get any kind of network TV exposure. And people would watch, instead of seeing Attack of the Clones for the 50th time in 5 years on TV.
There's all the stuff that TV networks can produce - sitcoms and the like, but reality TV looks like it is (unfortunately) here to stay - that it wasn't a passing fad as I'd guessed.
If the MPAA doesn't want to show movies on TV - fine, most people that I know rent movies they want to see - when a movies on TV, it tends to be edited for content, frequently shortened, and just a hassle to watch. Also, frequently I get the impression that with relatively recent movies, broadcasting is timed with the studio trying to make more money (example: episode 3 is about to come out? lets broadcast ep. 2. DVD special edition? Lets put on the movie, hype it up, get networks to expose people to the title some more.)
The MPAA can't win this one - they just can't - they risk loosing more than they can gain - but at the same time, I don't see them as betting a lot either way. I mean, I don't think broadcast revenues are a big deal to them compared to say, DVD and box office sales.... and I would have to say, if the networks stopped showing movies a year and a half after they were on DVD, and replaced it with other programming, I wouldn't miss it.
Its funny you'd make that point... like China, Canada is a really big nation with a very densely populated area and an area that's not at all densely populated, although the difference between the two regions is obviously greater.
Its easy to wire major metropolitan areas in Canada for broadband, they're relatively large and not too spaced out. the region from Québec City, through Montréal, Ottawa and heading to Toronto is the population equivalent of the US's northeast, the centre for industry and most of the population. whereas the Northeastern US is really just a fraction of the population, this part of central Canada could easily encompass 1/2 the Canadian population... throw in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, and youv'e got the vast majority of the Canadian population living in major urban centres that are ideal for broadband.
Compare to the US where you have entire regions where you have smaller cities (like say, North Dakota heading south to Oklahoma City, maybe even Texas), making it harder to get broadband access to people who live there.
The Canadian population is slightly (ever so slightly) more urbanized than the US population, facilitating broadband access.
I started using Skype late last year - the Mac OS X version came out behind the Windows, and possibly the Linux version. But its just so convenient to use. If I do have a bone to pick with it, its lack of integration with other programs - I know skype has a built-in IM client, but does anybody SERIOUSLY expect me to WANT another one of those? What I'd like to see is a way of just clicking on an online contact in other IM programs and asking to skype through that - or, baring that, a way of giving an online contact something like a URL that I could just send them to say "hey, skype me, skype://whateverwhatver"
Past that, though, its an awesome program. It works very wel, and the SkypeOut feature has got me to stop buying calling cards for making international calls - I don't spend $25 a month, so getting VoIP from Vonage or one of those providers doesn't make sense, and I think Skype's quality is actually better than the VoIP service at my mom's house.
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Wait, did you mean that you don't have Internet kiosks anymore since it's not the Middle Ages and everyone is walking around with a WiFi or WWAN laptop?
Or that you DO have Internet kiosks because you have the Internet? I am now entirely confused.
It's funny that you mention this in the context of Pittsburgh -- Richard Florida wrote a book called 'The Rise of the Creative Class' about that theory -- that having college students gives way to an educated population and a class of creative professionals, from high tech to high finance, that builds prosperity. But Florida's research started when he noticed that he was surrounded by smart, capable young students at CMU, none of whom would be there a year or two after their graduation. His book (with methodology that's easy to critique) tries to show that it's more than just colleges that you need to retain college graduates. You can dispute Florida's findings -- that you need things like bike paths to keep college grads, but his inspiration, that college students leave Pittsburgh, is generally pretty true.
Finding out how to keep college students would go a long way towards solving Pittsburgh's problems -- and kicking them in the pants when they're poor students probably isn't a good way to do that. As a side note: poor college students can frequently get almost fully funded between grants and loans -- including a fair living stipend. If they can't get such financing for the $400 tax, then that's a real burden for the already less-advantaged college studnets trying to make a future for themselves.
I've been a Mac user for 6 years now, and have loved every machine I've purchased. Having said that, I'm a certain kind of user who matches the machines that Apple sells. I want mid- to mid-high range hardware, capable of pretty extensive multitasking (which, in my experience, works better under OS X than Windows), and the ability to do graphics design and layout (I admit, this was much more hardware-constrained in 2003 than it is now). Macs are a pretty good fit for the featureset that I want, and are price-competitive with Windows boxes.
HOWEVER in the ad, Lauren wants a machine with a certain amount of raw horsepower, a keyboard she likes (which, with Apple, is either entirely true or entirely not) and a 17" screen. That could mean a wide variety of machines -- processor architectures, memory, integrated or discreet graphics -- but Apple, when you want a 17" laptop, assumes you're a higher-end user, that wants a very well engineered battery, a lot of horsepower, a fast dual-core CPU, etc. etc.
Lauren doesn't. She doesn't want a lot of those things. She just wants a computer with a 17" screen. Apple doesn't sell the machine she wants -- but because there's at least 3 or 4 PC brands at any Best Buy, she can walk in and get what she wants for a fraction of what Apple sells it for.
It's a question of mapping: the goal isn't to take an APPLE to start with then compare it to the price of a similar PC; instead, it's to take a PC you want, and asking if there EVEN IS a similar Mac -- in a lot of cases, there just won't be.
Yes, I get your point, and I think that its valid; Boeing and Airbus face similar problems with designing new commercial airliners, which in at least some ways are orders of magnitude easier than designing spacecraft.
I think, though, that what's troubling about this is that we're dealing with a large, and possibly growing gap between the shuttle's retirement and the introduction of a replacement, and what we're getting is a craft that doesn't introduce a lot of new capabilities past from what we'd already had. Its the double hit that makes the problem seem significant, especially in light of the news that engineers inside NASA (possibly or probably some on the Ares program) saying that the fundamental design of the Ares is both problem prone and inefficient.
Still, yes, I get your point; any new piece of hardware (even building a house) will have unforeseen overruns and that's part of the game. What's torubling isn't that we're hearing this; its that there might be a lot more that we might not be hearing.
That's all well and good, but we DID that already. 40 years ago. That was the first time that anyone'd ever tried a spacecraft designed solely for space; we're talking about a crew capsule here. The we've made them for nearly 50 years now, the Russians a bit longer, even China's Shenzhou is basically a decade old. the point is, most of the 'creative thinking' on making a spacecraft at the right weight (if not in-budget) has been done already, this should be easier.
I, for one, am hoping SpaceX's Dragon and the related Falcon 9 it sits on will enter service successfully, as scheduled. In that case, we'll have a roughly as-capable manned craft developed in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the budget - and we won't be repeat our dubious distinction of being the first country in human history to lose spaceflight capability (as we did just before the Space Shuttle entered service).
Tim
I've thought of this, too, but then I realized: Part of the problem is where that heat lies. Your average home - even a relatively well-insulated one - has a lot of heat 'wasted' as it goes to the outside, etc. When you've got a lightbulb, chances are you're doing a really good job heating the 6" around it, and not a very good job heating anything else. You're probably heating your ceiling, wall or lampshade pretty well - but the heat in these areas probably isn't carried to the rest of the house very effecitvely before simply dissipating.
Your heating system, on the other hand, is at least somewhat designed to circulate warm air to the parts of the house where you're likely to be - not at the top of an 11' ceiling or near a window.
Tim
This seems to be even more of a pointed issue considering the number of MacBooks that may still have problems with waking up from sleep when the MacBook is still closed.
I don't know how many people that have MacBooks still have this issue, but I really suspect that I'm not the only one. I've got an earlier MacBook, but bought it form an Apple Store in August of last year, so its really not one of the 1st ones off the assembly line.
Periodically, the MB will wake up and stay on while closed and in say, my bag or out on the desk, etc. etc. - enough that, based on battery drain, its got to be awake at least 1/2 the time that the MB is closed. Needless to say, this makes the MB (and everything around it) hot. I can easily see how if the MB is in a backpack or other carrying device, it could easily overheat - and thus make any battery fire issues that much more likely.
Issues like this one - and inadequate airflow, heat dissipation issues - etc. aren't just nuisances or cosmetic given these battery issues.
Tim
You could probably get a bit of mileage out of this, but remember: the wind turbine is basically generating resistance, making air push against it and turn. So what you're doing, in effect, is making a car move so that you can make the car slow down, making drag - you're just translating the power. And you'd also have to redesign a car in a non-aerodynamic form (by the very definition of aerodynamic) so that wind would go through wherever you put the turbine, meaning you'd get gas mileage.
In real life practical applications, however, you may end up with a bit of a positive power upset off of this because of wind and other 'free' energy (not generated from the car's engine propelling it forward) will also power the turbine.
Speaking REALLY practically, on the other hand, I think that the added cost and complexity of the turbine would just add cost to a car for not much performance benefit. If you had an electric car, the same amount of space that the turbine uses could almost certainly be used more effectively to just increase the space devoted to batteries, or to make the car more aerodynamic, or use the extra space for regenerative breaks, etc.
Tim
The problem with this is that it means that mobile users will be less likely to restart their computers - or power them up, for that matter - in meetings, etc., where you don't want to draw attention to yourself with an annoying startup sound. Now, I'm not sure if there's still an option for turning ALL windows alert sounds off, including the start up sound, which might mitigate this a bit. But on some computers, especially many laptops with softkeys for volume, you've got to ALREADY BE IN WINDOWS to turn the sound off. So say you were using your computer with sound on, say, gaming, turn it off, and boot up 2 hours later in a meeting - you'd have NO CHANCE of disabling a loud and annoying sound that draws the kind of attention to yourself that you REALLY don't want drawn to you.
It all just begs the question "why?" was the code that they have to turn off the start up sound now SO BADLY WRITTEN that they decided not to migrate it? C'mon guys. And also:
They've been working on this project as the "#1" priority in their group (past updates, etc.) for over half a decade now. I'd REALLY like to think that they'd have most of this kind of stuff decided already. Did somebody buy everyone in the Windows dev team an Xbox and then an XBox 360? Is that why its taken them 60 months to put together about as much of a feature upgrade as the OS X dev team usually puts together every 18 months? What have they been waiting for? Are they tailor-making Vista technologies to run Duke Nukem Forever? Is that the reason for the delay? Because I really can't find much of a better rationale anywhere else... other than maybe they've cut so many features of Vista in the past few years that no one left working on the project has any idea what code they're actually supposed to be writing.
Oy.
Tim
so it looks like Apple's Mac Pro and the new XServe are relatively powerful, etc., etc., but....
who fired their design team? I mean, Apple hasn't released a new form factor since the Mac mini... two years ago now, nearly? And I understand that there are technical challenges with making the transition to Intel, and that the Mac Pro is all new on the inside even if its little different on the outside.... but... Apple's products used to be items to be lusted over because of their looks alone.
The only new look from the Intel transition is the MacBook (not Pro) and... its almost uninspiring. Its like they took an iBook and flattened it a little... and while it is a pretty sexy form factor, its not like the days of yore when the PowerBooks were new and beautiful (and now you can get the SAME enclosure, almost unaltered, in a MacBook Pro, 3 years later), the iMac went from cute to beautiful, etc.
And I don't buy that Apple's worried about scaring away people with new form factors with the Intel transition - I mean, would anybody REALLY be that surprised by a new physical enclosure? I mean, really?
Sure, there are issues to be sorted out - MacBooks yellowing, MBPs burning at corona-like temperatures... but I feel like these are start up issues that would be the same whether Apple played it safe with new form factors or not.
So it looks like OS X is less about the new shiny than before, and their hardware's less about the shiny than before. Before, OS X and Apple's hardware were both technically advanced AND beautiful - why is Apple just saying "job's done, lets move on" with the beauty aspect?
Tim
The Mighty Mouse HAS a second button - and many more, in fact. They're just not divided up into obvious, externally visible buttons. But click on the right part of the mouse, and it'll function like a control-click, if you have the mouse configured that way. There are also 'buttons' on the sides of the mouse, etc.
I've always wondered if the Mighty Mouse doesn't violate a lot of Apple's user design principles. I don't mean with the one-button vs. multi-button design, per se... one of Apple's reasons for having a default of one-button (Macs have supported multi-button mice, and programs for graphic designers, etc.) is to ensure that software designers didn't hide functionality behind right-clicks, etc. Everything should be visible, and accessible through menus at the top of the screen or icons on the screen.
So Apple has this principle of visibility... then they HIDE the buttons on the mouse? This may be excusable when you only have one button - people just get used to pressing the top of the mouse, and it clicks - but when there are multiple buttons that you can't see on the top of the mouse? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, even experienced computer users (Mac users) who weren't familiar with the mighty mouse could end up right-clicking without realizing that they COULD right click.
Now, it IS just a mouse, and so you do get used to it very quickly... it would have been cool, though, if Apple could, say, have had small LEDs for each button. They could be activated (or de-activated if activated by default) to emit a small light for each button. You could even make them multi-coloured and it'd be an easy way to explain operation of a computer - or for that matter, you could code icons/menus so that to use function X in photoshop, highlighted in red, you press the red button.
But alas, Apple doesn't seem to think so.
Tim
I always love articles like this when they compare the price of MAKING something with the price of SELLING something. Titanium's sold on a market sort of like oil... prices fluctuate based on demand more than they do based on the cost of production.... if the price of titanium is $40 this year, and was half as much last year... last year it was $20, and I'm SURE that people were making a profit selling that, so it was produced for probably a maximum of $15, probably more like $10/lb.
So yes, this saves money... but it needs to be done in a large scale, 1st. I don't know how they come up with a cost/lb estimate that they consider to be more than VERY ball park estimate... $3 could be $6.
Its substantial savings, but its not like we're going to be able to start planning our houses with titanium frames in a few years or anything. And that's assuming that demand doesn't keep skyrocketing above supply... in which case we could have the same price (or more!) regardless of how much it costs to produce titanium.
Tim
Well, it looks like its still very possible to port other games to the Revolution without many modifications - EA's point is that you can't have a top-selling title like that on the Revolution. Its a big sign of support for what Nintendo's trying to push here - a new gaming experience. Nintendo's greatest hope, I think, is that EA and other publishers would produce innovative titles for the Revolution exclusively that do things that just can't be done on other platforms. Nintendo's greatest fear is that the Revolution would just receive the occaisional port of games like Madden, etc., which would certainly relegate it to the 'also ran' position in the upcoming console wars. Whether the strategy will pay off - that is to say, whether people will think that the innovative titles from Nintendo, EA ando thers make the Revolution the console of choice - is still to be seen, but its a good step for Nintendo that EA's doing this.
Tim
I've always thought that it was interesting that people expect privacy when they're litterally broadcasting something in every direction - I don't expect privacy when I'm yelling out something on a crowded city street. Why does changing the medium from audible sound to EM waves give you an expectation of privacy?
Not that I don't want privacy when I'm talking on a cell phone - in fact, I'd pay more for say, some reasonable level of encryption on my cell phone.... I just don't think its some sovereign right of mine to have privacy when I'm sending signals of any kind out in every direction.
You might think I'm wrong about this but consider satellite TV signals - DMCA concerns (which most of us don't agree with anyways) aside, I've always just thought.... you want me to pay for satellite service, fine. But to say that I can't interpret the signals YOU are beaming in to MY house in any way I want (by using a decoder, etc.) is ludicrous - if you don't want me to do something with them, DON'T BEAM THEM INTO MY HOUSE. Or try and use proprietary technology, encryption algorithms, etc. to prevent me from reading them - but its your job to make sure I can't.
What do people think?
Tim
You say this, but I'm not entirely sure that 'the spirit of the device' is necessarily the right idea long term - the 'spirit of the computer' used to be financial records and calculations, THEN personal computers became a better typewriter, THEN a communications device (and there were also other uses - games, etc., which were never the biggest reason most people bought a computer (PC)), and the reason is that computers became technically capable of these things, THEN someone figured out the right interface, THEN it became popular.
So I'd be very, VERY surprised if 20 years from now people carried around a separate music device and video device (if these become mainstream, I'm not necessarily sold on this one), and communications (phone/txt/whatever) device. The problem is now that a PDA FEELS bulky, a iPod doesn't, and a cell phone doesn't.
People would rather carry 2 easy-to-use devices that don't feel bulky than one device that's a bit clunky to use and a bit bigger, EVEN if its smaller than both devices combined (the real constraints of pockets, etc.) BUT I think that the technical similarities of the devices, combined with the fact that they both have a certain amount of bulk (and aren't worn - this is why most people won't have watch PDAs in the near future - they want the classic look.)
BUT in 10, 20 years, when its technically possible to make a small device with iPod + Phone + video functionality, and given some time for someone smart to come up with a good UI, I think that we'lll have a unified device.
Tim
I can seem to remember Skype selling phones (one corded, one cordless) that would work with a PC via Windows and USB - but I think the cordless one wasn't available in North America.
Still, although WAY to expensive for me to pay for a handset, I might actually consider buying one - especially as Skype adds more countries for SkypeIn. Two things, though:
1) how hard would it be to make drivers for Linux and Mac OS X?
2) Isn't this a problem just WAITING for Bluetooth? I mean, couldn't you make a Bluetooth handset? It wouldn't be very different from a bluetooth hands-free device, all you'd really need to add would be some kind of communication for the caller display and the dial pad. And then you wouldn't need the USB dongle - saves a USB port, makes it more practical for laptop users, etc.
The obvious limit of this is the highly limited range of Bluetooth - much less than a 2.4GHz cordless phone.
Tim
... in a very boring way.
While not grabbing the headlines the way the X-Prize and specifically, Burt Rutan and later Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic did (and do), SpaceX has started to very quietly put togehter what looks like the first credible competition to the entrenched commercial space industry as it now stands.
Even though they have suffered setbacks of late and therefore, haven't launched a rocket to space yet, it looks like they've got all the technology there to do so. They've also got Pentagon contracts, which means that they've got the backing to cut through the red tape.
If SpaceX is successful, it will force Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Arienespace (and to an extent, Russian rocket mfgs) to really rethink their development and pricing strategy.
"So what, they're not manned?" I get your point. But if they can REALLY LAUNCH 25,000kg to space for $78m dollars by the end of the decade, it will mean that suddenly, we'll have a price-competitive launch industry. I'm talking companies undercutting each other price wise, speeding up development of better, bigger rockets, and actually, maybe, being innovative with rocket and satellite development. It could even spark the kind of rapid progress we saw in aviation in the 1910's.
Suddenly, there's competition in space for the first time since the US and Russia in the 1960's.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for passenger spaceflight, but SpaceX is putting together interesting technology at good prices that could spark the kind of 'rapid evolution' that the industry needs, filling an existing market with a much cheaper product. It'll be exciting to see where they go with this new design, and if they can actually pull it off in just a couple years.
Tim
The first computer I built was almost exactly the same : it may have been a 133+ 6x86MX, but it was a S3 ViRGE, a 2GB hard drive made by some company in India... I forget their name but the drive was black and fully encased in what seemed like a rubbery material, years before anyone had been making hard drives enclosed like that. 2GB was decent for the time (1997), it was a steal, price wise. ANYWAYS.
The problem with the Cyrix wasn't its general performance - in fact, general performance wise they were a steal for their price. The problem was, their floating performance really blew... I knew this at the time, I mean, FPU performance was what you paid for when you went with Cyrix (or, to a lesser degree, AMD at that time.) Also, the chips, despite their lower-than-advertised clock rating (the PR system which AMD later adopted in a modified form), ran HOT. They said, I believe, HEATSINK + FAN REQUIRED on the chips themselves... and they meant it, at at time when you could probably run a Pentium without a heatsink and you could definitely run one without a fan.
Tim
The difference between PEI and Mars is that Mars might someday support the life of more than one human.
But its an interesting point.... they're 'pretty pictures,' but yeah, if these were B&W, a lot of people would had a had time knowing if this was a desert somewhere or another planet.
Science fiction, I think is to blame; always trying to make the fantastic (another planet with the possibility of LIFE that evolved totally separately from our own?) seem more fantastic (weird, semi-gravity defying spirey things on palnets that are all purple and green). I can remember a story from Arthur C. Clark that he wrote before we had any detailed up-close observations of Mars that centred around Mars not having hills or mountains... in a way, that'd almost be more alien.
But there is something to be said about the extraordinary (being able to see another planet IS extraordinary) looking ordinary to our eyes.... its proof we live in an amazing time despite all of our times limitations and problems.
Tim
Yes, and there's a good chance it will stay this way. Its probably the best way to make sure that spammers don't start getting gmail accounts.
Its a method of 'verifying' users by having other users verify them (by making the service invite-only.) Its more secure than say, having to enter the text from some obscured image (which can be done en masse by paying somebody probably something small.)
So yes, at this point, anybody who really wants a gmail account has one, but spammers have largely been shut out.
Alright, I've got a question that I haven't seen addressed, at all, anywhere.
We've spent God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make the shuttle safe enough for human spaceflight. Maybe that just isn't going to happen. Not with the shuttle, not with the fact that we're looking at band-aids and not limb replacement solutions here.
So, what would it take to make the shuttle run on autopilot? Rockets fly to space all the time, Russian Progress vehicles even dock with the space station, although I'm not sure if they do it alone or via teleoperation.
Either way, why not invest a certain amount of money in an autopilot (or teleoperation) system so the shuttle could fly up, dock with the station, and then could be entered by ISS crew who could use the shuttle's robotic arm, etc., to set up the next component of the station. If manpower's an issue (and with 2 on board the station, it probably is) you could do it when there was a crew change and there were more people at the station, or you could really, really hurry with the CEV and wait until you could have enough people at the station to do the job.
Or, for that matter, you could just HOLD on station construction until the CEV was ready and you could squeeze enough people into the station to make this work.
This would solve the main issue: that the shuttle isn't safe for humans due primarily to reentry problems. In the future, you could even have the CEV dock with an in-space, unmanned shuttle and complete shuttle missions, such as a Hubble servicing mission, then undock, let the shuttle make its way home (or, in an unfortunate, but no longer life-threatening event, crash) and the CEV, with crew, would return to earth safely (as I can't recall a SINGLE EVENT where a capsule has burned up and people have died in reentry.)
Anybody know why this hasn't been suggested, at all? I think it may be cheaper and faster, certainly if we'd done this after the Columbia disaster, but even fi its not, it allows us to keep on using the shuttle for YEARS relatively cheaply.
Tim
So a piece of foam that was like the one that hit Columbia fell off - the key difference being, that this one DIDN'T hit the shuttle.
On one hand, I can understand NASA's safety concerns - but, at the same time, it seems that they didn't do a lot to change the external fuel tank - its construction, etc. In fact, you could even say that this is why the shuttle was grounded from a July 13 launch - the sensor that was faulty was built in 1989.... they considered it to be in 'good condition', but, I mean, if it's a 16 year old piece of equipment, how good of condition is that? (I'm not exactly sure how this could be true - external tanks aren't reused, and so unless NASA stockpiled them in the late 80's, the tank would be newer; did the article just mean that it was a 1989 design?)
On the other hand - we know that pieces of foam have fallen off twice in the past 2 launches - once with devastating effects, and once without. I don't know if anyone at NASA saw fit to review old launch tapes and look for falling insulation à la the stuff that struck Columbia, but it seems possible that, given the construction of the external tank, it might be relatively common - and thus, nothing THAT BIG to worry about since its only been a problem 1/115 times. (Its still an inherent design flaw).
So, now the shuttle fleet is grounded again - will it be another 2 1/2 years? Making it early 2008 before the shuttle flies again? I mean, if it seems like foam just flies off of external tanks, the only way to REALLY solve this problem would be either encasing existing tanks in a new (heavy, expensive) "exo-tank," or just designing new tanks, right? I mean, this isn't some minor design consideration.
All this makes me think... with NASA already pressing for a new manned vehicle by 2010, are the powers that be in NASA just saying, "We don't want to fly the shuttle anymore, its a $2bn death trap, doesn't get us cool places and is damned inefficient at lifting cargo" and asking instead to concentrate on a new vehicle, just forgetting about the shuttle? I mean, if NASA spends $500m and 30 months modifying the shuttle fleet just to retire it 24 months after that, that seems dumb, right? Even by government standards?
Anyone?
Tim
This is especially true in today's world.... think about it. First of all, I think the MPAA faces stiffer than usual competition from indie movie makers, as they've been using digital production techniques to milk more and more out of a small budget. There are plenty of good, relatively unknown actors out there, and a small budget gets you higher quality editing abilities, etc., than ever before.
And, the MPAA isn't competing just with movies, they're competing with anything that could be on TV. Think about it: major league soccer, lacrosse, any number or other growing sports in the US would bend over backwards, re-arrange schedules, etc., to get any kind of network TV exposure. And people would watch, instead of seeing Attack of the Clones for the 50th time in 5 years on TV.
There's all the stuff that TV networks can produce - sitcoms and the like, but reality TV looks like it is (unfortunately) here to stay - that it wasn't a passing fad as I'd guessed.
If the MPAA doesn't want to show movies on TV - fine, most people that I know rent movies they want to see - when a movies on TV, it tends to be edited for content, frequently shortened, and just a hassle to watch. Also, frequently I get the impression that with relatively recent movies, broadcasting is timed with the studio trying to make more money (example: episode 3 is about to come out? lets broadcast ep. 2. DVD special edition? Lets put on the movie, hype it up, get networks to expose people to the title some more.)
The MPAA can't win this one - they just can't - they risk loosing more than they can gain - but at the same time, I don't see them as betting a lot either way. I mean, I don't think broadcast revenues are a big deal to them compared to say, DVD and box office sales.... and I would have to say, if the networks stopped showing movies a year and a half after they were on DVD, and replaced it with other programming, I wouldn't miss it.
Tim
Its funny you'd make that point... like China, Canada is a really big nation with a very densely populated area and an area that's not at all densely populated, although the difference between the two regions is obviously greater.
Its easy to wire major metropolitan areas in Canada for broadband, they're relatively large and not too spaced out. the region from Québec City, through Montréal, Ottawa and heading to Toronto is the population equivalent of the US's northeast, the centre for industry and most of the population. whereas the Northeastern US is really just a fraction of the population, this part of central Canada could easily encompass 1/2 the Canadian population... throw in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, and youv'e got the vast majority of the Canadian population living in major urban centres that are ideal for broadband.
Compare to the US where you have entire regions where you have smaller cities (like say, North Dakota heading south to Oklahoma City, maybe even Texas), making it harder to get broadband access to people who live there.
The Canadian population is slightly (ever so slightly) more urbanized than the US population, facilitating broadband access.
Tim
But here I am.... agreeing with him.
I started using Skype late last year - the Mac OS X version came out behind the Windows, and possibly the Linux version. But its just so convenient to use. If I do have a bone to pick with it, its lack of integration with other programs - I know skype has a built-in IM client, but does anybody SERIOUSLY expect me to WANT another one of those? What I'd like to see is a way of just clicking on an online contact in other IM programs and asking to skype through that - or, baring that, a way of giving an online contact something like a URL that I could just send them to say "hey, skype me, skype://whateverwhatver"
Past that, though, its an awesome program. It works very wel, and the SkypeOut feature has got me to stop buying calling cards for making international calls - I don't spend $25 a month, so getting VoIP from Vonage or one of those providers doesn't make sense, and I think Skype's quality is actually better than the VoIP service at my mom's house.
Tim