Maybe because being born with some severe sensory limitations impacts quality of life.
Since we are presently discussing the right of deaf people to select deaf embryos while discarding healthy ones, I feel free to point these parents are robbing their offspring the right to experience, at least, music. Music has accompanied mankind since its very beginning and has always played an important role in most social settings.
I admit those parents may appreciate the silence they live in, but it's selfish and narcissistic to create children to their image.
Mankind is on the verge of taking control over its own genetic heritage. If it is to survive, it must do so wisely.
"Make this something that appeals to kids and teenagers"
I know that, but this thread was about corporate acceptance and, AFAIK, most companies that employ child labor won't give them a corporate smartphone;-). In my job I don't use Exchange at all so, I am good to go with Google-calendar syncing and IMAP e-mail. Unfortunately, there are far too many companies that can't get free of the Exchange shackles without a major struggle.
- Providing a responsive GUI with more-or-less adequate (if unstable) multi-tasking environment on hardware that would grind to a halt under Unix and X (even 1988's Unix and X). Nobody would expect a 286 to run Unix and X adequately with 4 megs of memory. I developed software with Actor (a Smalltalk-ish programming environment) under Windows on that kind of hardware and was quite happy with it. And not everyone could buy a Mac.
- Introducing peer-to-peer networking fully integrated with Windows 3.11 in a way people would be able to share printers and files without the kind of hassle Netware would require.
- Making Windows (and GUI) development easy with VB (with all its defects, VB - 2 and 3 - allowed companies to abandon DOS and character interfaces for internally developed applications.
None of these technologies was revolutionary, not even original, and had their fair share of shortcomings but, for their time, they were pretty cool.
Apple does not need to care much. People who buy iPhones do not buy them for the functionality or openness - they buy iPhones because they are cool gadgets. iPods are not more functional than generic music players - they are just simple enough most people would be able to use them without worrying too much. I would not buy an iPod touch because it's holds more music or allows me to download software - I would buy it because it's cool.
Actually, it's not such a huge endeavor. It's more like grabbing the hardware that's in production now running Windows Mobile and flash Android over it. Not much hardware certification, as the hardware is the same as other versions and I assume software changes do not require such steps. Most probably there must be a fast-track process for these modifications (or one would never be able to download a firmware update and flash it on their phones themselves - just imagine re-certifying everything for every bug-fix).
One thing most slashpeople tend to forget is that Exchange is much more than an e-mail server - its calendar server integration with Outlook is very complete and functional and is a core asset for many companies that rely on it for planning everything from meetings to training sessions to tracking resources such as projectors and flip-charts. Its workflow and forms functionality is less used but, still, companies that went with it now pretty much depend on it and will never migrate from it without a fight. Exchange is a very important tool for Microsoft to keep their vendor lock-in.
And, of course, Microsoft will never even consider making it easy for anyone to migrate away from their tools.
- Consider how many poorly managed Windows boxes (this is not Windows bashing - it's fun but it gets old very quickly) are connected via high-speed (DSL, cable) links to the internet - Consider how many of those are left running unattended downloading music or movies - Consider how many of them got infected by some spam malware during the lifetime of their installs - Consider they can be used to send spam and to infect other poorly managed Windows boxes for the full time they are connected to the internet
I would be surprised if those owners really knew how their computers use he net 90% of the time.
If 90% of all e-mail is spam, I am sure it's only a matter of time until 90% of all traffic is automated spam/malware propagation. From what I see, this can only go up.
One of the key mistakes made almost every time computers are introduced to kids is to try to introduce them to computers.
XOs are not tools to teach "computer skills". They are tools to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science _and_ some basic computer skills. They are much more than most people see. Think of them as an infinite number of books distributed for free to any kid in the country in real time and you start grasping the idea.
Well... From what I see in my cable, I find CNN quite pale when compared to, say, BBC. I know it's a lousy example, but it kind of shows an important data point.
Solar is not viable in high latitudes as the same winter that makes more difficult to have hydro (because water freezes) or thermo-electric (because you have to haul the fuel from somewhere) generation also makes the daylight last few hours.
Low-service nuclear is the way to go in these cases.
If I had to live off-grid, I would rather have solar or solar-thermal where I live (a mile south from the Tropic of Capricorn), but nuclear also seems a nice option for "power-anywhere problems".
If you bury the thing any soil movements will exert enormous forces on its outer shell and it would probably crack. The thing would be safer on the surface where the only nasty thing that can happen on a earthquake is something heavy falling on it.
Never before in my life it became so obvious excessive exercise and high-performance sports damage the brain.
they may run faster and throw stuff farther than any other human beings, but it's clear their brains became overly specialized in coordinating body movements.
The heavy lifter looks remarkably like ARES V. The light lifter seems a lot more expensive than the ARES I - there is a lot more expendable stuff.
It's interesting. It would be wonderful if NASA could explore both approaches, plus a third, expendable cargo lifter to be piggybacked shuttle-style to a standard shuttle external fuel tank.
Unfortunately, such budget decisions are not my responsibility;-)
While I agree with you that both have about a 2% chance of ending in tears (or flames) per flight, both failures of Soyuz craft happened very early in the vehicle history as opposed to shuttle failures that were recent and caused the grounding of the fleet while the causes were not discovered and repaired. All in all, we can consider the Soyuz security record as improving. The same cannot be said about the shuttles and that makes me say Soyuz looks safer than the shuttles.
There are other factors involved:
- Soyuz are much simpler machines and this makes them easier to understand and remove design flaws.
- Soyuz spacecraft share many components with the Progress family and both systems end up helping work out the bugs from each other.
- Soyuz are expendable. Any damage suffered in one trip ends with it.
- Shuttles, on the other hand, are devilishly complex machines. The fact the two fatal failures happened late in the life of the vehicles and both resulted from the underestimation of poorly understood risks can be explained by the sheer complexity of the system. Far too many things can go wrong. And twice they did.
- Both vehicles have suffered numerous failures. One can only wonder how many times the thermal insulation of the shuttles suffered nearly fatal damage that was repaired and the machine flown (successfully) again.
- Shuttles accumulate damage during their lifetimes, much of it is poorly understood and may lead to unpredicted failure modes in the future.
- I find it astonishing that not a single EVA, on more than 100 flights, was conducted to inspect vehicle damage (from ice, birds or whatever other unpredictable factors) after launch. This is simply bad science. The shuttle is not a commercial, mature technology - it's pretty much an experimental vehicle - and a valuable one. The priority should be on learning how it behaves, not on hauling cargo. A Saturn V could do that a lot better than a shuttle. I think a Saturn 1-B could haul cargo better than a shuttle.
I don't think expendable craft like the Soyuz are what will turn us into an interplanetary civilization, but we need to understand reusable craft a whole lot better before we can call them safe.
SSTO on a reusable vehicle is next to impossible with chemical rockets, but not with nuclear-thermal designs. But good luck proposing them to the tree-hugging crowd...
There are a great many possible designs, ranging from NERVA and ROVER-style to nuclear-lightbulb style engines. It's a lot of promise.
"Soyuz has also had two fatal accidents in roughly the same number of flights"
I find it unlikely Soyuz had the same number of flights as the shuttles. they have flown since about 68, from the original models to the TMA variant currently in use. I am not sure exactly how many flights were done, but I am quite sure that, being in service for about a decade longer than the shuttle makes it quite sure it had flown more missions. Also, the last failure with loss of crew (during re-entry) happened long ago, a couple design iterations back. I think it's safe to assume Soyouz-class vehicles are a very mature design and, quite probably, safer that shuttles.
There is no dishonor in having a less safe space vehicle. The shuttle is an incredible achievement. It's only unfortunate it was too ambitious.
BTW, since they are expendable, one could argument every mission ends in partial failure, with the loss of the vehicle;-)
Until it is capable of reading PDF files in a decent way (the test being able to read an issue of SDTimes or a full-page newspaper without conversion), it is less than perfect.
the perfect one would have auto-searching and indexing and full support for PDFs, Office and OpenOffice files and would behave both as a printer (close to zero config) and as USB disk drive.
When that comes, I will be happy. Until then... Just a maybe. It's a cool gadget, but no revolution. Not just yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe because being born with some severe sensory limitations impacts quality of life.
Since we are presently discussing the right of deaf people to select deaf embryos while discarding healthy ones, I feel free to point these parents are robbing their offspring the right to experience, at least, music. Music has accompanied mankind since its very beginning and has always played an important role in most social settings.
I admit those parents may appreciate the silence they live in, but it's selfish and narcissistic to create children to their image.
Mankind is on the verge of taking control over its own genetic heritage. If it is to survive, it must do so wisely.
I don't believe anyone could sneak Sodium in any useful (read "dangerous") form into a plane.
The very way you have to pack it necessarily looks suspicious.
"...or *sedate* them..."
That would give a whole new meaning to flying your destination.
"Make this something that appeals to kids and teenagers"
;-). In my job I don't use Exchange at all so, I am good to go with Google-calendar syncing and IMAP e-mail. Unfortunately, there are far too many companies that can't get free of the Exchange shackles without a major struggle.
I know that, but this thread was about corporate acceptance and, AFAIK, most companies that employ child labor won't give them a corporate smartphone
Cool as in:
- Providing a responsive GUI with more-or-less adequate (if unstable) multi-tasking environment on hardware that would grind to a halt under Unix and X (even 1988's Unix and X). Nobody would expect a 286 to run Unix and X adequately with 4 megs of memory. I developed software with Actor (a Smalltalk-ish programming environment) under Windows on that kind of hardware and was quite happy with it. And not everyone could buy a Mac.
- Introducing peer-to-peer networking fully integrated with Windows 3.11 in a way people would be able to share printers and files without the kind of hassle Netware would require.
- Making Windows (and GUI) development easy with VB (with all its defects, VB - 2 and 3 - allowed companies to abandon DOS and character interfaces for internally developed applications.
None of these technologies was revolutionary, not even original, and had their fair share of shortcomings but, for their time, they were pretty cool.
Apple does not need to care much. People who buy iPhones do not buy them for the functionality or openness - they buy iPhones because they are cool gadgets. iPods are not more functional than generic music players - they are just simple enough most people would be able to use them without worrying too much. I would not buy an iPod touch because it's holds more music or allows me to download software - I would buy it because it's cool.
Actually, it's not such a huge endeavor. It's more like grabbing the hardware that's in production now running Windows Mobile and flash Android over it. Not much hardware certification, as the hardware is the same as other versions and I assume software changes do not require such steps. Most probably there must be a fast-track process for these modifications (or one would never be able to download a firmware update and flash it on their phones themselves - just imagine re-certifying everything for every bug-fix).
One thing most slashpeople tend to forget is that Exchange is much more than an e-mail server - its calendar server integration with Outlook is very complete and functional and is a core asset for many companies that rely on it for planning everything from meetings to training sessions to tracking resources such as projectors and flip-charts. Its workflow and forms functionality is less used but, still, companies that went with it now pretty much depend on it and will never migrate from it without a fight. Exchange is a very important tool for Microsoft to keep their vendor lock-in.
And, of course, Microsoft will never even consider making it easy for anyone to migrate away from their tools.
- Consider how many poorly managed Windows boxes (this is not Windows bashing - it's fun but it gets old very quickly) are connected via high-speed (DSL, cable) links to the internet
- Consider how many of those are left running unattended downloading music or movies
- Consider how many of them got infected by some spam malware during the lifetime of their installs
- Consider they can be used to send spam and to infect other poorly managed Windows boxes for the full time they are connected to the internet
I would be surprised if those owners really knew how their computers use he net 90% of the time.
If 90% of all e-mail is spam, I am sure it's only a matter of time until 90% of all traffic is automated spam/malware propagation. From what I see, this can only go up.
"They don't need computer skills or the internet"
One of the key mistakes made almost every time computers are introduced to kids is to try to introduce them to computers.
XOs are not tools to teach "computer skills". They are tools to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science _and_ some basic computer skills. They are much more than most people see. Think of them as an infinite number of books distributed for free to any kid in the country in real time and you start grasping the idea.
By creating that opportunity, we could remove any genetic tendency for it from future generations. Would be wonderful.
Well... From what I see in my cable, I find CNN quite pale when compared to, say, BBC. I know it's a lousy example, but it kind of shows an important data point.
Wouldn't that product be a great one?
Great.
Supported Platforms
Windows 2000/XP with Internet Explorer 5.0 or above
Solar is not viable in high latitudes as the same winter that makes more difficult to have hydro (because water freezes) or thermo-electric (because you have to haul the fuel from somewhere) generation also makes the daylight last few hours.
Low-service nuclear is the way to go in these cases.
If I had to live off-grid, I would rather have solar or solar-thermal where I live (a mile south from the Tropic of Capricorn), but nuclear also seems a nice option for "power-anywhere problems".
If you bury the thing any soil movements will exert enormous forces on its outer shell and it would probably crack. The thing would be safer on the surface where the only nasty thing that can happen on a earthquake is something heavy falling on it.
Never before in my life it became so obvious excessive exercise and high-performance sports damage the brain.
they may run faster and throw stuff farther than any other human beings, but it's clear their brains became overly specialized in coordinating body movements.
The heavy lifter looks remarkably like ARES V. The light lifter seems a lot more expensive than the ARES I - there is a lot more expendable stuff.
;-)
It's interesting. It would be wonderful if NASA could explore both approaches, plus a third, expendable cargo lifter to be piggybacked shuttle-style to a standard shuttle external fuel tank.
Unfortunately, such budget decisions are not my responsibility
It's funny how one makes requirements, the project bears the burden of being able to do that and that use never really materializes...
A family of vehicles, some reusable, others expendable would function much better.
While I agree with you that both have about a 2% chance of ending in tears (or flames) per flight, both failures of Soyuz craft happened very early in the vehicle history as opposed to shuttle failures that were recent and caused the grounding of the fleet while the causes were not discovered and repaired. All in all, we can consider the Soyuz security record as improving. The same cannot be said about the shuttles and that makes me say Soyuz looks safer than the shuttles.
There are other factors involved:
- Soyuz are much simpler machines and this makes them easier to understand and remove design flaws.
- Soyuz spacecraft share many components with the Progress family and both systems end up helping work out the bugs from each other.
- Soyuz are expendable. Any damage suffered in one trip ends with it.
- Shuttles, on the other hand, are devilishly complex machines. The fact the two fatal failures happened late in the life of the vehicles and both resulted from the underestimation of poorly understood risks can be explained by the sheer complexity of the system. Far too many things can go wrong. And twice they did.
- Both vehicles have suffered numerous failures. One can only wonder how many times the thermal insulation of the shuttles suffered nearly fatal damage that was repaired and the machine flown (successfully) again.
- Shuttles accumulate damage during their lifetimes, much of it is poorly understood and may lead to unpredicted failure modes in the future.
- I find it astonishing that not a single EVA, on more than 100 flights, was conducted to inspect vehicle damage (from ice, birds or whatever other unpredictable factors) after launch. This is simply bad science. The shuttle is not a commercial, mature technology - it's pretty much an experimental vehicle - and a valuable one. The priority should be on learning how it behaves, not on hauling cargo. A Saturn V could do that a lot better than a shuttle. I think a Saturn 1-B could haul cargo better than a shuttle.
I don't think expendable craft like the Soyuz are what will turn us into an interplanetary civilization, but we need to understand reusable craft a whole lot better before we can call them safe.
It's a fact it is too ambitious. What isn't clear is whose ambition caused the design to bloat beyond control
SSTO on a reusable vehicle is next to impossible with chemical rockets, but not with nuclear-thermal designs. But good luck proposing them to the tree-hugging crowd...
There are a great many possible designs, ranging from NERVA and ROVER-style to nuclear-lightbulb style engines. It's a lot of promise.
"Soyuz has also had two fatal accidents in roughly the same number of flights"
;-)
I find it unlikely Soyuz had the same number of flights as the shuttles. they have flown since about 68, from the original models to the TMA variant currently in use. I am not sure exactly how many flights were done, but I am quite sure that, being in service for about a decade longer than the shuttle makes it quite sure it had flown more missions. Also, the last failure with loss of crew (during re-entry) happened long ago, a couple design iterations back. I think it's safe to assume Soyouz-class vehicles are a very mature design and, quite probably, safer that shuttles.
There is no dishonor in having a less safe space vehicle. The shuttle is an incredible achievement. It's only unfortunate it was too ambitious.
BTW, since they are expendable, one could argument every mission ends in partial failure, with the loss of the vehicle
"BTW, the Gen3 supports PDF as well, so that should make you happy"
I can manage to read an issue of SDTimes on it, I will buy it.
It's mostly a GUI and software problem, so, I expect it fixed some day.
It seems as expensive as Sony's reader.
Until it is capable of reading PDF files in a decent way (the test being able to read an issue of SDTimes or a full-page newspaper without conversion), it is less than perfect.
the perfect one would have auto-searching and indexing and full support for PDFs, Office and OpenOffice files and would behave both as a printer (close to zero config) and as USB disk drive.
When that comes, I will be happy. Until then... Just a maybe. It's a cool gadget, but no revolution. Not just yet.