Us consumers: should be rejoicing. This is good for us and good for the industry.
Is it? The point of the article is that a number of markets is collapsing, so pretty soon you won't be able to get affordable standalone cameras, MP3-players, PDAs etc. anymore, you'll be stuck buying a phone+kitchen sink compromise.
You'll either get a brick, which makes it a pain to lug around, or a small phone with a useless UI, a crappy camera lens and no battery life.
With a book, I can finish a page, switch to the next, turn the page, repeat, while ebooks generally need to be scrolled downwards, (or pageDown) which results in a slight delay while I find my place again.
This is just a matter of implementation. PgDn should result in a *new page*, not one where the last few lines from the previous page are still visible. With a real eBook, you'd be reading full-screen anyway, so fewer distractions from window title bars etc.
I'd love to be able to rent eBooks. - The library would be able to stock lots more books, not being limited to what they can cram in the physical space they have. No more need for an interlibrary lending system (with its associated fees, delays etc.). Finally, a library that can cater to everyone's tastes. - eBook content should be cheaper to buy (since you don't need to print it), and won't need to be replaced every few years due to wear, lowering the cost of running the library. - The library could become internet-accessible, so you're not limited to opening hours anymore, and you won't have to spend time driving to the library building. - DRM would be acceptable in this case. I can currently only use the books I get for four weeks anyway, so having a time limit on the eBook would be no worse than it is now.
You'd probably want to have more than one eBook, with various screen sizes (small for mobile use, larger for at home) and an easy way to share content between them.
YMMV. Having to handle pages (e.g. keeping the book from closing while you're reading it, especialy when you're holding the book more or less upright and/or you're outside) annoys me, some books are just plain unwieldy (the LotR three-parts-in-one-volume, 1200 page, 2 kg behemoth comes to mind), books deteriorate (I've got loads of paperbacks that are on the verge of falling apart), and books take up lots of space (making taking them on holiday a drag).
Yes, this looks like flamebait, but I'm actually surprised that it's taking MS this long, considering the resources they can throw at any given problem.
So create an installer where "the kitchen sink" is a number of installation options. ISTR old Netscape versions that had this. As it is now, there are some weird differences, with Firefox missing some options that Mozilla has (e.g. "loop animations once") which make me use Mozilla even though I don't need the kitchen sink. IANAP (=Programmer), but the current situation could easily lead to duplicated effort.
I'm all for choice in the browser market, but why bother fielding 3 browsers, all based on the same code? AFAI can see, the functionality of all three could be achieved with a basic browser plus plugins/extensions/installation options. What's the reasoning behind The Way Things Are?
Uh, I hate to disappoint you, but that's been done before. On computers like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, this was the standard way to store data. I think the ATRAC encoding would play havoc with your data, and even if it didn't, unless you used some funky encoding scheme (e.g. QAM) you'd end up with at most 20 kbit/s.
No. It's always a matter of trying to make the theory fit your observations. Adding stuff to the theory, and then trying to prove or measure that addition is a perfectly valid way of working. Yes, sometimes a paradigm shift is needed. But that doesn't make the work done before it invalid. In fact, tracking the consequences of your current theory until you've painted yourself into a corner is a good way to find out if a paradigm shift is needed. Of course, human nature makes adding stuff to a theory you already have a lot easier than coming up with a completely new idea. Also, an entirely new theory will have to account for quite a lot. In this case, things like the components of an atom, the wave/particle duality, E=MC^2, etc, all of which took a century of work by the entire scientific community to figure out, will have to be explained by your new theory.
But Concorde promised faster travel (albeit only Mach 2), and it failed (commercially, that is). IIRC most countries wouldn't certify it for continental flights because of the sonic boom issue, which limited Concorde to only a few routes, which limited sales to ~17 planes, keeping cost high. How much of an issue would this be with the Rutan concept?
It lists two reasons people are moving to Linux/OpenOffice, but doesn't address either of them.
Quote: In November, 2003, the government of Brazil ordered its agencies to use Linux and other open-source software as much as possible. A month later, Israel's Commerce Ministry announced a decision to migrate to OpenOffice, an open-source desktop suite that runs on Linux and Apple's (AAPL ) OS X system, as well as on Windows. The city governments of Paris and Munich both announced their intention to switch to Linux and open-source applications. In Peru, a state legislature nearly passed a law banning the use of proprietary software by government agencies. And the governments of China, Korea, and Japan have announced an alliance to promote open-source software. All of these organisations are switching because they don't want to use proprietary software. Providing a Linux version of MS Office won't solve this, as there's no chance in hell MS will release it as OSS.
So that's one of the concerns the article mentions, but leaves unaddressed.
Second is the price. Why would MS offer Office for Linux for a low price, when it can just offer existing products (Windows XP plus Office) for a low price, ensuring a lock-in that wouldn't occur with Office/Linux?
Why is an output of 10^9 W (it's about 1.4 GW, actually) ridiculous? Conventional oil/gas/coal and nuclear plants routinely produce that much power (or a bit more).
The transport casks linked to in another reply seem pretty solid. It would be interesting to see how they would react to having an RPG fired into them. As for thieves making off with the radioactive material: The Type B cask weighs 82 tons, so an operation to steal radioactive material would require some rather big and obvious equipment. Surround the transport with a few armored personnel carriers or even tanks, and you're pretty safe.
Am I the only one who thinks a screen that displays only 9 buttons is a bit too small? The one thing I like about my current setup (5 remotes side by side) is that every function is available instantly, without hunting through menus or using three-fingered salutes.
WDYM 'overrated'? 65% of the $1 Apple asks per song goes to the record company (in a deal negotiated by the big 5 record companies, united in the RIAA), of which only 7% ends up with the artist. That means 35% is left for covering operating expenses. Apple can't lower the price very much without making a loss on the iTMS. Loss leaders aren't a business model Apple's into.
An omnidirectional mirror will not magically reflect the light in the direction you need (ie where the solar cells are), so you still need move the mirror during the day. These omnidirectional mirrors wouldn't be an improvement over current technology.
While 12V is a popular choice for low-voltage inputs, it's by no means the only one. Your cell phone (or whatever gadgets you want to power) is just as likely to require a 6V or 9V input. How are you going to handle that?
KH-12 satellites are reported to have a 3 cm resolution for objects on earth. That would translate to a 30 m resolution for objects on the moon (1000x the distance, remember?), so even a KH-12 wouldn't be able to see a LEM.
And even if they could, do you think the "space program is a hoax" morons would believe the CIA?
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Us consumers: should be rejoicing. This is good for us and good for the industry.
Is it? The point of the article is that a number of markets is collapsing, so pretty soon you won't be able to get affordable standalone cameras, MP3-players, PDAs etc. anymore, you'll be stuck buying a phone+kitchen sink compromise.
You'll either get a brick, which makes it a pain to lug around, or a small phone with a useless UI, a crappy camera lens and no battery life.
Why would flipping through a DT book be easier than doing PgUp or scrolling through an eBook? And with an eBook, you can use a search.
With a book, I can finish a page, switch to the next, turn the page, repeat, while ebooks generally need to be scrolled downwards, (or pageDown) which results in a slight delay while I find my place again.
This is just a matter of implementation. PgDn should result in a *new page*, not one where the last few lines from the previous page are still visible. With a real eBook, you'd be reading full-screen anyway, so fewer distractions from window title bars etc.
it's so much easier to just flip to where I was
That's what bookmarks are for.
I'd love to be able to rent eBooks.
- The library would be able to stock lots more books, not being limited to what they can cram in the physical space they have. No more need for an interlibrary lending system (with its associated fees, delays etc.). Finally, a library that can cater to everyone's tastes.
- eBook content should be cheaper to buy (since you don't need to print it), and won't need to be replaced every few years due to wear, lowering the cost of running the library.
- The library could become internet-accessible, so you're not limited to opening hours anymore, and you won't have to spend time driving to the library building.
- DRM would be acceptable in this case. I can currently only use the books I get for four weeks anyway, so having a time limit on the eBook would be no worse than it is now.
You'd probably want to have more than one eBook, with various screen sizes (small for mobile use, larger for at home) and an easy way to share content between them.
YMMV. Having to handle pages (e.g. keeping the book from closing while you're reading it, especialy when you're holding the book more or less upright and/or you're outside) annoys me, some books are just plain unwieldy (the LotR three-parts-in-one-volume, 1200 page, 2 kg behemoth comes to mind), books deteriorate (I've got loads of paperbacks that are on the verge of falling apart), and books take up lots of space (making taking them on holiday a drag).
Yes, this looks like flamebait, but I'm actually surprised that it's taking MS this long, considering the resources they can throw at any given problem.
You'd have to wire the entire store to receive those (short-range, remember?) distress signals.
So create an installer where "the kitchen sink" is a number of installation options. ISTR old Netscape versions that had this.
As it is now, there are some weird differences, with Firefox missing some options that Mozilla has (e.g. "loop animations once") which make me use Mozilla even though I don't need the kitchen sink. IANAP (=Programmer), but the current situation could easily lead to duplicated effort.
I'm all for choice in the browser market, but why bother fielding 3 browsers, all based on the same code? AFAI can see, the functionality of all three could be achieved with a basic browser plus plugins/extensions/installation options. What's the reasoning behind The Way Things Are?
Uh, I hate to disappoint you, but that's been done before. On computers like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, this was the standard way to store data.
I think the ATRAC encoding would play havoc with your data, and even if it didn't, unless you used some funky encoding scheme (e.g. QAM) you'd end up with at most 20 kbit/s.
No. It's always a matter of trying to make the theory fit your observations. Adding stuff to the theory, and then trying to prove or measure that addition is a perfectly valid way of working.
Yes, sometimes a paradigm shift is needed. But that doesn't make the work done before it invalid. In fact, tracking the consequences of your current theory until you've painted yourself into a corner is a good way to find out if a paradigm shift is needed.
Of course, human nature makes adding stuff to a theory you already have a lot easier than coming up with a completely new idea.
Also, an entirely new theory will have to account for quite a lot. In this case, things like the components of an atom, the wave/particle duality, E=MC^2, etc, all of which took a century of work by the entire scientific community to figure out, will have to be explained by your new theory.
The article now reads 1977 instead of 1997.
But Concorde promised faster travel (albeit only Mach 2), and it failed (commercially, that is). IIRC most countries wouldn't certify it for continental flights because of the sonic boom issue, which limited Concorde to only a few routes, which limited sales to ~17 planes, keeping cost high.
How much of an issue would this be with the Rutan concept?
It lists two reasons people are moving to Linux/OpenOffice, but doesn't address either of them.
Quote: In November, 2003, the government of Brazil ordered its agencies to use Linux and other open-source software as much as possible. A month later, Israel's Commerce Ministry announced a decision to migrate to OpenOffice, an open-source desktop suite that runs on Linux and Apple's (AAPL ) OS X system, as well as on Windows. The city governments of Paris and Munich both announced their intention to switch to Linux and open-source applications. In Peru, a state legislature nearly passed a law banning the use of proprietary software by government agencies. And the governments of China, Korea, and Japan have announced an alliance to promote open-source software.
All of these organisations are switching because they don't want to use proprietary software. Providing a Linux version of MS Office won't solve this, as there's no chance in hell MS will release it as OSS.
So that's one of the concerns the article mentions, but leaves unaddressed.
Second is the price. Why would MS offer Office for Linux for a low price, when it can just offer existing products (Windows XP plus Office) for a low price, ensuring a lock-in that wouldn't occur with Office/Linux?
Why is an output of 10^9 W (it's about 1.4 GW, actually) ridiculous? Conventional oil/gas/coal and nuclear plants routinely produce that much power (or a bit more).
The transport casks linked to in another reply seem pretty solid. It would be interesting to see how they would react to having an RPG fired into them.
As for thieves making off with the radioactive material: The Type B cask weighs 82 tons, so an operation to steal radioactive material would require some rather big and obvious equipment. Surround the transport with a few armored personnel carriers or even tanks, and you're pretty safe.
Am I the only one who thinks a screen that displays only 9 buttons is a bit too small? The one thing I like about my current setup (5 remotes side by side) is that every function is available instantly, without hunting through menus or using three-fingered salutes.
WDYM 'overrated'? 65% of the $1 Apple asks per song goes to the record company (in a deal negotiated by the big 5 record companies, united in the RIAA), of which only 7% ends up with the artist. That means 35% is left for covering operating expenses. Apple can't lower the price very much without making a loss on the iTMS. Loss leaders aren't a business model Apple's into.
The weight is irrelevant, as long as every rider carries the same weight.
A price war? When most of the price of a song is dictated by the RIAA?
An omnidirectional mirror will not magically reflect the light in the direction you need (ie where the solar cells are), so you still need move the mirror during the day. These omnidirectional mirrors wouldn't be an improvement over current technology.
While 12V is a popular choice for low-voltage inputs, it's by no means the only one. Your cell phone (or whatever gadgets you want to power) is just as likely to require a 6V or 9V input. How are you going to handle that?
KH-12 satellites are reported to have a 3 cm resolution for objects on earth. That would translate to a 30 m resolution for objects on the moon (1000x the distance, remember?), so even a KH-12 wouldn't be able to see a LEM.
And even if they could, do you think the "space program is a hoax" morons would believe the CIA?