You've got a lot of unnecessarily complicated words in there, but I think what you're saying is that RAM is too expensive to make a large cache for a hard disk and flash, being cheaper, would let you make a larger cache. I agree. I think I implied something similar in my post.
My point is that hard drive accesses are already cached, primarily by RAM but also by actual DRAM caches on the drive, etc. Sure, flash can help, but it's not the no-cache vs. cache situation the OP suggested. Usually the addition of an L2 or L3 cache won't make as big a difference as the addition of an L1 cache, for example.
We do this now. Your RAM is effectively cache for your hard drive. Storage speed complaints are entirely directed at RAM misses - starting an app, for example. Adding an extra layer of cache isn't nearly as effective as the first layer, although it can still help. Seagate has just the hybrid drive you suggest, but it doesn't get particularly good reviews. We simply don't do enough reading and writing of the same data to disk, over and over. If you're going to do that, you just keep that stuff in RAM in the first place.
A reasonable college will let you challenge courses. I did intro to computers (this is a CPU, this is a monitor) at the end of my BSc in computer science in about twenty minutes by just writing the final. Half my class did the same.
Although as far as the warranty goes, Apple doesn't care what you did to the software on your iPhone or iPod Touch - they'll honor the warranty regardless. My jailbroken iPod Touch stopped working and I went in and it was replaced, no comment.
Do you suppose an entire plane full of passengers praying for mercy counters what I say when I get on a plane: "hey god, you've been waiting for a long time, now's your chance - take your best shot?"
Many people will be doing those things going ahead: all forms of machine learning. The obvious example is natural language processing for your web page.
Interesting. I got exactly the opposite impression from the indie giveaway. If you make a quality product available at a reasonable price MOST people will pay for it, even if there is no advantage to them for doing so. They made over a million dollars, far beyond their expectations, giving away their product and asking for donations.
Church, jingles on TV, the radio. All music has a profound effect. Why do you think people listen to it?
In particular, music in church can make you feel happy or afraid, and when everybody is singing it together it gets you to say something and hear everyone else saying it, without thinking too critically about the words.
In that case you're either engaging in extreme hyperbole or have a seriously biased worldview - lots of electronic systems function perfectly reliably for much longer than five years.
Your typewriter isn't going to work very well unless you maintain it (oil, tighten screws, etc.). Same for electronic systems.
In general a well designed electronic system with fewer moving parts will work more reliably and longer than the corresponding mechanical system.
The mistake you're making is in comparing a well maintained mechanical system with an unmaintained electronic system. In most of your comparisons you're also comparing a given mechanical system with an electronic system that has vastly different capabilities as well.
You must be pretty young if you've never seen an electronic system last longer than five years. My father has a garage full of computers that have been sitting around for twenty years yet most would probably work fine if he plugged them in. A mechanical typewriter sitting in a garage for twenty years would not work without some maintenance.
I grew up in a rural area. Cars are a poor example since the mechanical parts of older cars that are comparable to new cars are likely mechanical on the new cars as well. One example I can think of is the ignition system. I had a car with a distributor. Besides replacing the spark plugs frequently you also had to replace the spark plug wires and whole distributor when it wore out, and it did, because a distributor has a little rotor and brush in it. My current car doesn't have a distributor, nor spark plug wires to wear out. The ignition coils might wear out some day, but nowhere near as often as the distributor, and they're a mechanical system anyway. The ignition control computer (the actual electronic component that replaced the distributor) will last a very long time.
Oh, and that car with the distributor would frequently refuse to start when it was wet. The need to route high voltage from central coils to each spark plug can be a problem in wet conditions. Since the electronic timing system lets you put a coil right on top of each individual spark plug, that problem is pretty much eliminated.
You'll have to provide a citation for that one. Your observation of your mechanic's shop is likely due to there being more computerized cars on the road than fully mechanical ones. His own complaint may be due to the difficultly of tracking down faults in computerized systems, not due to their rate of occurrence.
Anyway, I countered the original poster's anecdote with one of my own. I have seen several cars with fully mechanical accelerators suffer from non-driver error unintended acceleration but I have never witnessed such a thing with an electronically controlled throttle.
I've never been able to figure out exactly why it makes a difference, but it does. The instructor made us try stopping both ways, and you can feel the difference. Note that this is for threshold braking, not ABS.
Some theories:
1) It's easier to threshold brake when you don't have to also compensate for possibly changing force of the engine on the wheels
2) Having the engine in neutral ensures that there won't be any engine braking, which could lock the wheels and cause you to lose steering
3) If you decide to stop braking and use all your grip for steering, the car will not try to accelerate, or spin the tires.
In a normal automatic (here at least - I've never driven an automatic outside North America) the engine always powers the wheels unless the transmission is in neutral or park. The automatic transmission doesn't put itself in neutral when you're braking or when you slow down or stop.
Toyota did not issue a statement saying it was driver error. That was the US highway safety administration.
There was a problem with the floor mats which could cause the accelerator to stick. Rarely, this could cause an accident. There were a couple of accidents probably related to this problem, where the driver also screwed up royally by not braking aggressively or putting the car in neutral. Toyota recalled the floor mats, fixing the problem, then there were THOUSANDS of spurious reports of unintended acceleration due to the media hype.
It's not surprising at all that the reports have dropped off. Rather, if there was a real problem then the number of reports would NOT have dropped off. If the problem is due to driver error we tend not to hear about most incidents since most people normally have the decency not to loudly announce their incompetence to drive to the rest of the world.
The summary is horribly written, but it does mention that the vault masses 200 kg (is that including contents?) then later that one wall (?) is 18 kg, which doesn't add up either.
Supposing the 200 kg is correct and we're talking about a cube, then each 1 m^2 wall masses 200 / 6 = 33 1/3 kg, or 3.33 g/cm^3. That's close enough to the density of titanium that I suspect the 200 kg figure is correct and the box just isn't a cube.
Giving away your location by posting your GPS coordinates is slightly different than giving away your location by having someone analyze your IP and a picture of you.
Cars have multiple kill switches. Neutral gear and turning the key off come immediately to mind. All automatics are specifically designed so that if you jam the shifter forward it will come out of drive and stop in neutral. I was trained to do exactly this to put the car in neutral to aid braking control on ice.
I know several people who had cars in which the accelerator cable would stick with the throttle open when it got cold. Mechanical systems fail all the time.
Toyota got nailed because they use a drive by wire system and it's a lot easier for the ignorant to claim "the computer is broken not me!" as opposed to "the mechanical accelerator system is broken, not me!"
Which is ironic, because I suspect the mechanical system is probably more failure prone than the electronic one. I know at least two people who had cars where the mechanical throttle would tend to stick in the open position when it got sufficiently cold.
I think I remember Toyota pointing that out, when the first incidents started being reported. They were basically shouted down and since then everyone who's ever hit the wrong pedal, who would normally be too embarrassed at their incompetence to speak up, has been shouting it all over any media that would listen.
It's also quite likely that the floor mats really were a problem (it was demonstrated by Toyota themselves). Toyota did recall those.
If you want to type on the thing, you need to have a case with a wedge so it sits at an angle. Or you can stick something under it. there's a tape measure sitting on my coffee table right now that looks like it would work pretty well. Of you can just hook up a keyboard.
It seems to be MOST useful when it's not sitting on something though. Look at how most people use a computer. They look at web pages or video and read articles, forums and e-mail. Sure, a tablet isn't an ideal platform for writing the essay-emails my mother sometimes sends out, but most of the time it's exactly what you want - something small and light enough to use on the couch, where you definitely do not want to have to set the thing down on something. For typing in the odd Google search you can hunt and peck. You can't use a netbook or notebook that way, at all.
You named them. Reader and web browser. To the average person the Internet IS the web, e-mail and IM, probably in that order. The iPad excels at the first two and is decent at the third. It's convenient to use on the couch (where most people want to use the web, e-mail and IM), it runs cool and is lighter than a notebook.
As for an reading, colour tablets are going to soon be pretty much required for students and people who need to have a lot of technical documentation around.
And if, for some reason, you really need a keyboard, hook one up. It's not hard.
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You've got a lot of unnecessarily complicated words in there, but I think what you're saying is that RAM is too expensive to make a large cache for a hard disk and flash, being cheaper, would let you make a larger cache. I agree. I think I implied something similar in my post.
My point is that hard drive accesses are already cached, primarily by RAM but also by actual DRAM caches on the drive, etc. Sure, flash can help, but it's not the no-cache vs. cache situation the OP suggested. Usually the addition of an L2 or L3 cache won't make as big a difference as the addition of an L1 cache, for example.
We do this now. Your RAM is effectively cache for your hard drive. Storage speed complaints are entirely directed at RAM misses - starting an app, for example. Adding an extra layer of cache isn't nearly as effective as the first layer, although it can still help. Seagate has just the hybrid drive you suggest, but it doesn't get particularly good reviews. We simply don't do enough reading and writing of the same data to disk, over and over. If you're going to do that, you just keep that stuff in RAM in the first place.
A reasonable college will let you challenge courses. I did intro to computers (this is a CPU, this is a monitor) at the end of my BSc in computer science in about twenty minutes by just writing the final. Half my class did the same.
Unsupported software can damage hardware.
Although as far as the warranty goes, Apple doesn't care what you did to the software on your iPhone or iPod Touch - they'll honor the warranty regardless. My jailbroken iPod Touch stopped working and I went in and it was replaced, no comment.
Do you suppose an entire plane full of passengers praying for mercy counters what I say when I get on a plane: "hey god, you've been waiting for a long time, now's your chance - take your best shot?"
Not that I've ever flown Southwest.
Many people will be doing those things going ahead: all forms of machine learning. The obvious example is natural language processing for your web page.
Interesting. I got exactly the opposite impression from the indie giveaway. If you make a quality product available at a reasonable price MOST people will pay for it, even if there is no advantage to them for doing so. They made over a million dollars, far beyond their expectations, giving away their product and asking for donations.
Church, jingles on TV, the radio. All music has a profound effect. Why do you think people listen to it?
In particular, music in church can make you feel happy or afraid, and when everybody is singing it together it gets you to say something and hear everyone else saying it, without thinking too critically about the words.
In that case you're either engaging in extreme hyperbole or have a seriously biased worldview - lots of electronic systems function perfectly reliably for much longer than five years.
Your typewriter isn't going to work very well unless you maintain it (oil, tighten screws, etc.). Same for electronic systems.
In general a well designed electronic system with fewer moving parts will work more reliably and longer than the corresponding mechanical system.
The mistake you're making is in comparing a well maintained mechanical system with an unmaintained electronic system. In most of your comparisons you're also comparing a given mechanical system with an electronic system that has vastly different capabilities as well.
You must be pretty young if you've never seen an electronic system last longer than five years. My father has a garage full of computers that have been sitting around for twenty years yet most would probably work fine if he plugged them in. A mechanical typewriter sitting in a garage for twenty years would not work without some maintenance.
I grew up in a rural area. Cars are a poor example since the mechanical parts of older cars that are comparable to new cars are likely mechanical on the new cars as well. One example I can think of is the ignition system. I had a car with a distributor. Besides replacing the spark plugs frequently you also had to replace the spark plug wires and whole distributor when it wore out, and it did, because a distributor has a little rotor and brush in it. My current car doesn't have a distributor, nor spark plug wires to wear out. The ignition coils might wear out some day, but nowhere near as often as the distributor, and they're a mechanical system anyway. The ignition control computer (the actual electronic component that replaced the distributor) will last a very long time.
Oh, and that car with the distributor would frequently refuse to start when it was wet. The need to route high voltage from central coils to each spark plug can be a problem in wet conditions. Since the electronic timing system lets you put a coil right on top of each individual spark plug, that problem is pretty much eliminated.
"Also, on average they fail less often."
You'll have to provide a citation for that one. Your observation of your mechanic's shop is likely due to there being more computerized cars on the road than fully mechanical ones. His own complaint may be due to the difficultly of tracking down faults in computerized systems, not due to their rate of occurrence.
Anyway, I countered the original poster's anecdote with one of my own. I have seen several cars with fully mechanical accelerators suffer from non-driver error unintended acceleration but I have never witnessed such a thing with an electronically controlled throttle.
I've never been able to figure out exactly why it makes a difference, but it does. The instructor made us try stopping both ways, and you can feel the difference. Note that this is for threshold braking, not ABS.
Some theories:
1) It's easier to threshold brake when you don't have to also compensate for possibly changing force of the engine on the wheels
2) Having the engine in neutral ensures that there won't be any engine braking, which could lock the wheels and cause you to lose steering
3) If you decide to stop braking and use all your grip for steering, the car will not try to accelerate, or spin the tires.
In a normal automatic (here at least - I've never driven an automatic outside North America) the engine always powers the wheels unless the transmission is in neutral or park. The automatic transmission doesn't put itself in neutral when you're braking or when you slow down or stop.
Toyota did not issue a statement saying it was driver error. That was the US highway safety administration.
There was a problem with the floor mats which could cause the accelerator to stick. Rarely, this could cause an accident. There were a couple of accidents probably related to this problem, where the driver also screwed up royally by not braking aggressively or putting the car in neutral. Toyota recalled the floor mats, fixing the problem, then there were THOUSANDS of spurious reports of unintended acceleration due to the media hype.
It's not surprising at all that the reports have dropped off. Rather, if there was a real problem then the number of reports would NOT have dropped off. If the problem is due to driver error we tend not to hear about most incidents since most people normally have the decency not to loudly announce their incompetence to drive to the rest of the world.
Presumably it also has more than one wall.
The summary is horribly written, but it does mention that the vault masses 200 kg (is that including contents?) then later that one wall (?) is 18 kg, which doesn't add up either.
Supposing the 200 kg is correct and we're talking about a cube, then each 1 m^2 wall masses 200 / 6 = 33 1/3 kg, or 3.33 g/cm^3. That's close enough to the density of titanium that I suspect the 200 kg figure is correct and the box just isn't a cube.
Giving away your location by posting your GPS coordinates is slightly different than giving away your location by having someone analyze your IP and a picture of you.
Cars have multiple kill switches. Neutral gear and turning the key off come immediately to mind. All automatics are specifically designed so that if you jam the shifter forward it will come out of drive and stop in neutral. I was trained to do exactly this to put the car in neutral to aid braking control on ice.
I know several people who had cars in which the accelerator cable would stick with the throttle open when it got cold. Mechanical systems fail all the time.
The original poster should have specified he was talking about automatics.
Sure. Poorly designed floor mats. Which were recalled.
Toyota got nailed because they use a drive by wire system and it's a lot easier for the ignorant to claim "the computer is broken not me!" as opposed to "the mechanical accelerator system is broken, not me!"
Which is ironic, because I suspect the mechanical system is probably more failure prone than the electronic one. I know at least two people who had cars where the mechanical throttle would tend to stick in the open position when it got sufficiently cold.
I think I remember Toyota pointing that out, when the first incidents started being reported. They were basically shouted down and since then everyone who's ever hit the wrong pedal, who would normally be too embarrassed at their incompetence to speak up, has been shouting it all over any media that would listen.
It's also quite likely that the floor mats really were a problem (it was demonstrated by Toyota themselves). Toyota did recall those.
If you want to type on the thing, you need to have a case with a wedge so it sits at an angle. Or you can stick something under it. there's a tape measure sitting on my coffee table right now that looks like it would work pretty well. Of you can just hook up a keyboard.
It seems to be MOST useful when it's not sitting on something though. Look at how most people use a computer. They look at web pages or video and read articles, forums and e-mail. Sure, a tablet isn't an ideal platform for writing the essay-emails my mother sometimes sends out, but most of the time it's exactly what you want - something small and light enough to use on the couch, where you definitely do not want to have to set the thing down on something. For typing in the odd Google search you can hunt and peck. You can't use a netbook or notebook that way, at all.
I suppose you can use a netbook or notebook with both hands without laying it down on something? Or even with just one hand? Good luck with that.
I doubt very much you've actually tried an iPad or iPad-like tablet. Or observed how the average person uses a computer at home, for that matter.
You named them. Reader and web browser. To the average person the Internet IS the web, e-mail and IM, probably in that order. The iPad excels at the first two and is decent at the third. It's convenient to use on the couch (where most people want to use the web, e-mail and IM), it runs cool and is lighter than a notebook.
As for an reading, colour tablets are going to soon be pretty much required for students and people who need to have a lot of technical documentation around.
And if, for some reason, you really need a keyboard, hook one up. It's not hard.
Most people didn't buy five or six of them either.