Tablets pose no threat whatsoever to the desktop PC. Tablets may displace some of the entertainment and Internet content consumption tasks, but people who actually work for a living will continue to use a PC to do it.
Mapquest web used to automatically route you around the ghetto. They were sued, and lost, and had to turn off that functionality. Now MS has a Patent on it?
Seriously, our patent system is royally hosed. When one company can take a technology that has already been invented, tried, and sued out of existence, and claim ownership of it, something is seriously wrong.
The USPTO takes the bottom 25% of engineering graduates fresh out of college with no experience and pays them $80K/year to examine technology they don't even slightly understand, and expects quality results (or maybe they don't). That is known as an utterly broken system.
It doesn't have anything to do with greed. It has to do with the absolute fact that defined benefit entitlement programs are only viable with forever-increasing membership. This is because they are just ponzi schemes that are doomed to fail with any kind of fluctuation in the market.
If you're selling $K/month, you should have moved away from Paypal long ago. Several $K/mo will make a traditional card processor well worth your while.
There aren't many real engineers out there anymore, and certainly very very few under the age of about 50. The new generation are not engineers, but rather process-followers that play connect the dots.
The new way they teach engineering in college today is that, for any given problem, if you put this set of data into this process, you will get a reasonable result. This new engineering paradigm is the reason the consumer has become the beta tester - because all engineers do is blindly follow the process, then worry about the details later.
In 1984, I bought a Tandy 1000 computer. It came with DOS, and Deskmate. And, guess what. It worked. I never had to upgrade the firmware. I never had to upgrade to a new version of software. This is because that computer was truly engineered. It wasn't "slap this set of chips together and ship it."
PC hardware today requires constant firmware hacks (I won't say upgrades), and each new hack fixes a known issue, and creates several other unknown issues. A case in point here is OCZ SSDs. They're pitiful. There is a new "urgent" firmware release about every week for them. The motherboard in my PC is on firmware J (10th!).
As far as the political leanings of engineers, they're just like everyone else. There are democrats, republicans, libertarians, and kooky fringe lunatics. The job does not predispose anyone to a particular political belief system.
... they come blank, and you can install your O/S yourself, with YOUR choice of features enabled, and have complete control over all of the hardware, just like a PC - without having to jump through a million hoops.
I just went through this process on my phone just so I could get OpenVPN installed and working. What a pain.
"Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics and the current state of the art in photovoltaics can figure out on the back of a napkin that 5 square inches of silicon can't generate enough electricity to run a phone, without having to spend a million taxpayer dollars to travel to the worlds most exotic lands to try it."
"Judges said that although no evidence directly linked Messrs. Landis and Baker to the hacking of the antidoping lab, both men benefited from the illegal intrusion."
So, basically, anyone who benefits from a crime is somehow culpable whether or not they actually had anything to do with it.
The Geek Squad (Best Buy's version of computer technicians) charges $120 _per device_ to install a home network. Obviously, it must require advanced knowledge!
The definition of "bug" is "an error in the code that causes undesired or unintentional behavior of the system."
I'm talking about the software case where the system does NOT do what it is supposed to do, like the toyota software bug that caused unintentional acceleration in their vehicles equipped with throttle-by-wire.
If there is a servo connected to the steering wheel that can cause it to move, there is potential for a bug in the software to cause that servo to move when it is not supposed to. Uncommanded movement of the steering wheel is very bad.
The infiniti system uses only the brakes, which can also cause change in direction, but not as quickly and significantly as turning the steering wheel. Turning the steering wheel a small amount causes a large departure from intended direction, and very quickly, probably before many drivers could react to it (especially elderly drivers with poor reflxes).
You mean proper sized engine blocks like the 2.0L twin turbo that makes more torque at lower engine speed, and more power than most of the other engines in the lineup, and providing better fuel economy to boot?
How long will it be before someone dies because a bug in the software caused their car to steer unexpectedly into something, or causing the driver to overcompensate (telling the computer "NO!"), causing a crash?
Make no mistake, the protesters themselves are not doing any of the work to build the site.
What is really happening is that the wealthy, politically-connected financial backers of occupy (you know, Occupy, INC), are paying to have it developed.
Which is why we buy these expensive, unsound, unnecessary gadgets... it's congress idiots bringing money home to local defense contractors.
The DoD budget should be written by DoD administrative staff based on actual, military need, not by a bunch of congressional staffers trying to appease big donors.
I have the distinct feeling that if Ron Paul were to just start vetoing everything under the Sun (and I think he would, given his voting record and his claim to consistency - he has voted against bills because there is one sentence in them he does not agree 100% with), Congress would have no problem mustering a 2/3rds majority to override him at every turn.
He is not known for his willingness to cooperate, or his ability to lead and to raise support for his efforts. If you look at his record, he has sponsored literally hundreds of bills for which he has been unable to muster even a handful of cosponsors. That's a worrisome lack of leadership, and makes me think he sponsors legislation just to be able to say "I sponsored legislation to do X," but where he really didn't have the intent to follow through on it.
See, there's another thing. The US Government exists for only a few reasons, and one of those reasons is to protect us from foreign and domestic aggressors. I believe Ron Paul would abdicate that responsibility in the name of his isolationist views.
He is in denial that there are bad people out there plotting to kill Americans on American soil, and just because they don't fly a flag and there is no State to declare War against, doesn't mean we shouldn't defend ourselves against them.
Slashdot Mirror
Tablets pose no threat whatsoever to the desktop PC. Tablets may displace some of the entertainment and Internet content consumption tasks, but people who actually work for a living will continue to use a PC to do it.
Mapquest web used to automatically route you around the ghetto. They were sued, and lost, and had to turn off that functionality. Now MS has a Patent on it?
Seriously, our patent system is royally hosed. When one company can take a technology that has already been invented, tried, and sued out of existence, and claim ownership of it, something is seriously wrong.
The USPTO takes the bottom 25% of engineering graduates fresh out of college with no experience and pays them $80K/year to examine technology they don't even slightly understand, and expects quality results (or maybe they don't). That is known as an utterly broken system.
It doesn't have anything to do with greed. It has to do with the absolute fact that defined benefit entitlement programs are only viable with forever-increasing membership. This is because they are just ponzi schemes that are doomed to fail with any kind of fluctuation in the market.
If you're selling $K/month, you should have moved away from Paypal long ago. Several $K/mo will make a traditional card processor well worth your while.
There aren't many real engineers out there anymore, and certainly very very few under the age of about 50. The new generation are not engineers, but rather process-followers that play connect the dots.
The new way they teach engineering in college today is that, for any given problem, if you put this set of data into this process, you will get a reasonable result. This new engineering paradigm is the reason the consumer has become the beta tester - because all engineers do is blindly follow the process, then worry about the details later.
In 1984, I bought a Tandy 1000 computer. It came with DOS, and Deskmate. And, guess what. It worked. I never had to upgrade the firmware. I never had to upgrade to a new version of software. This is because that computer was truly engineered. It wasn't "slap this set of chips together and ship it."
PC hardware today requires constant firmware hacks (I won't say upgrades), and each new hack fixes a known issue, and creates several other unknown issues. A case in point here is OCZ SSDs. They're pitiful. There is a new "urgent" firmware release about every week for them. The motherboard in my PC is on firmware J (10th!).
As far as the political leanings of engineers, they're just like everyone else. There are democrats, republicans, libertarians, and kooky fringe lunatics. The job does not predispose anyone to a particular political belief system.
... they come blank, and you can install your O/S yourself, with YOUR choice of features enabled, and have complete control over all of the hardware, just like a PC - without having to jump through a million hoops.
I just went through this process on my phone just so I could get OpenVPN installed and working. What a pain.
I would put it differently. I would say:
"Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics and the current state of the art in photovoltaics can figure out on the back of a napkin that 5 square inches of silicon can't generate enough electricity to run a phone, without having to spend a million taxpayer dollars to travel to the worlds most exotic lands to try it."
The proposal fails by inspection.
Don't worry. The money came from a government green energy research grant, paid for by the taxpayers.
You'll be competing with a whole lot of college students willing to work for next to nothing, that's for sure.
"Judges said that although no evidence directly linked Messrs. Landis and Baker to the hacking of the antidoping lab, both men benefited from the illegal intrusion."
So, basically, anyone who benefits from a crime is somehow culpable whether or not they actually had anything to do with it.
Gotta love that French "justice" system...
The Geek Squad (Best Buy's version of computer technicians) charges $120 _per device_ to install a home network. Obviously, it must require advanced knowledge!
The definition of "bug" is "an error in the code that causes undesired or unintentional behavior of the system."
I'm talking about the software case where the system does NOT do what it is supposed to do, like the toyota software bug that caused unintentional acceleration in their vehicles equipped with throttle-by-wire.
If there is a servo connected to the steering wheel that can cause it to move, there is potential for a bug in the software to cause that servo to move when it is not supposed to. Uncommanded movement of the steering wheel is very bad.
The infiniti system uses only the brakes, which can also cause change in direction, but not as quickly and significantly as turning the steering wheel. Turning the steering wheel a small amount causes a large departure from intended direction, and very quickly, probably before many drivers could react to it (especially elderly drivers with poor reflxes).
I guess the Guards need to have their access to Facebook and Angry Birds.
Why exactly are prison door control systems connected to the Internet anyway?
You mean proper sized engine blocks like the 2.0L twin turbo that makes more torque at lower engine speed, and more power than most of the other engines in the lineup, and providing better fuel economy to boot?
How long will it be before someone dies because a bug in the software caused their car to steer unexpectedly into something, or causing the driver to overcompensate (telling the computer "NO!"), causing a crash?
This has disaster written all over it.
Microsoft is going to steal Android, slap a Windows-like GUI on it, and call it a super phone.
It'll be awful, just like everything else Microsoft has ever made...
... about this long...
*holding fingers really close together*
How long, you ask? Well, how long does it take a cruise missile to get from one of our destroyers to one of their ships? About that long.
They'll just rename it something else that sounds vaguely government-ish and charge everyone now.
"National Gross receipts collection services fee"
Or something...
A "centrist, outside the beltway" political movement started and managed by career, inside-the-beltway politicians.
Make no mistake, the protesters themselves are not doing any of the work to build the site.
What is really happening is that the wealthy, politically-connected financial backers of occupy (you know, Occupy, INC), are paying to have it developed.
My thoughts too. If someone thinks they could stand a chance of winning, they might actually try.
Being hopelessly unbalanced is a near-guarantee of lasting peace.
Which is why we buy these expensive, unsound, unnecessary gadgets... it's congress idiots bringing money home to local defense contractors.
The DoD budget should be written by DoD administrative staff based on actual, military need, not by a bunch of congressional staffers trying to appease big donors.
I have the distinct feeling that if Ron Paul were to just start vetoing everything under the Sun (and I think he would, given his voting record and his claim to consistency - he has voted against bills because there is one sentence in them he does not agree 100% with), Congress would have no problem mustering a 2/3rds majority to override him at every turn.
He is not known for his willingness to cooperate, or his ability to lead and to raise support for his efforts. If you look at his record, he has sponsored literally hundreds of bills for which he has been unable to muster even a handful of cosponsors. That's a worrisome lack of leadership, and makes me think he sponsors legislation just to be able to say "I sponsored legislation to do X," but where he really didn't have the intent to follow through on it.
See, there's another thing. The US Government exists for only a few reasons, and one of those reasons is to protect us from foreign and domestic aggressors. I believe Ron Paul would abdicate that responsibility in the name of his isolationist views.
He is in denial that there are bad people out there plotting to kill Americans on American soil, and just because they don't fly a flag and there is no State to declare War against, doesn't mean we shouldn't defend ourselves against them.