I've always assumed it was because the school boards got kickbacks from the manufacturers. My HS had 200 new Compaq desktops purchased by the board in 1998 - enough to outfit two large labs and put three desktops in the corner of each classroom. They were also on a two-year upgrade plan, and I know that at least happened in 2000 (I kept in touch with my chemistry and bio teachers, and joined in the bitching about waste), and probably beyond.
WHY would you need three in the corner of each classroom? To have three students working on that instead of listening to the teacher? I could understand one for the teacher (who DIDN'T get one), and I wouldn't argue about one, though I'd call it futile, but three is not enough to have even a single HS group working (typically 4 to 6 in our 35-student classrooms), not to mention only having room for three students back there anyway.
This was a district where waste was so prevalent that it's had its own watchdog group for over a decade (at least, that's how long I've been following it). A district that cut buses for both high schools, and ALL the non-sports programs cut because there wasn't enough funding. And yet they were able to dump half a million dollars on PCs (our sister school was twice the size of ours, and presumably had the same program) every two years? Corruption was certainly a problem in that district, but I still have trouble believing the board agreed to that without money changing hands, which we KNOW happened at least twice when they were caught.
Actually, the authors call it a battery in their paper. And it is.
Here's the salient part of the paper:
In this work, we demonstrate a novel electrochemical cell named a “mixing entropy battery”, which extracts energy from the difference in concentration of two solutions and stores it as chemical energy inside the electrode material’s bulk crystal structure. This approach allows us to overcome the challenges of supercapacitor electrodes based on activated carbon. This device consists of a reversible electrochemical system where the salts in the electrolyte are the reactants and the electrode stores ions. We employed two different electrodes: an anionic electrode, which interacts with Cl ions selectively; and a cationic electrode, which interacts with Na+ ions selectively. These electrodes are initially submerged in a low ionic strength solution (river water) in their discharged states, when the electrode materials contain the respective ions incorporated in their structures. In this dilute solution, the battery is charged by removing the Na+ and Cl ions from the respective electrodes (Figure 1a, step 1). Successively, the dilute electrolyte is exchanged for a concentrated solution (seawater), which is accompanied by an increase in the potential difference between the electrodes (Figure 1a, step 2). At this higher potential difference, the battery is discharged, as the anions and cations are reincorporated into their respective electrodes (Figure 1a, step 3). The concentrated solution is then removed and substituted by the dilute electrolyte (river water), which results in a decrease in potential difference between the electrodes (Figure 1a, step 4). We note that the exchange of solution could also be carried out via a flow process, which could be attractive for large scale energy extraction.
. . . now that the science departments are being supported externally, the Japs can continue to follow the traditions of Western schools - to gut the science departments' funding to build fancy new stadiums and buy more football uniforms!
Laptops are pretty much the only computer-related item I refuse to purchase online. Keyboards change between model revisions (as Dell did for the XPS L501/L502), as do vent and port placement, and screens - and those are all very important to the discerning geek. And if I go into a store to handle something I decide to purchase, such as a laptop, mouse, or speakers, I will almost always buy it there, since they provided me with useful information (though if it's more than a few bucks difference I will try to get a price match to Newegg or Amazon or wherever I saw it cheaper).
Really? Slashdot is going to argue over whether the military can figure out how to charge an iPad on a C-17? Really?
Yes, really. This is Slashdot, after all, and that's exactly the kind of pointless thing us nerds argue about when there isn't a running series of Star Trek. You want cool people arguing, head to US Magazine and argue about who is the father of the ugliest Kardashian (I hear it's the mom's hairdresser).
I believe Apple and other companies do as much as can reasonably be done as foreign private entities. ..
Besides, of course, moving somewhere else. Any country would be thrilled to have a Foxconn-sized plant open up, and would bend over backwards with tax subsidies, etc. Apple could open a fab plant in New Mexico and probably crib half of Intel's people right off the bat. A two- or three-month iPad shortage while the kinks are worked out of the assembly line, and Apple's back in business, in a first-class, first-world facility.
But that's exactly why people WOULDN'T switch. Logical people would be buying phones based on functionality. When you buy a phone based on style, you can't be expected to make other decisions based on logic
I was in a Waffle House this morning, listening to my server talk smartphones to another customer, about how she needed to stop losing and breaking her phones because she couldn't afford to keep paying $500 or $600 every three months. And how she refused to buy some $800 phone (HTC Desire? I know it came up in the conversation) because that was "just ridiculous."
Most people are idiots, regardless of brand loyalty, so don't overestimate the general populace.
If Apple were to cut the carriers out, and only sell the iPhone unlocked, what would stop the carriers from removing support for iPhones from their networks?
Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else.
No, it's a euphemism for things like CAPTCHA boxes, UBB shortcut windows, and lots of login scripts on sites that have comment systems, possibly even the one you're using now. I just stick with AdBlock and Flashblock, and I'm perfectly happy with my experience.
I'm still confused - why don't we want Muslims to modernize? Africa and Asia I understand, because we get cheap sneakers and cell phones, but labor costs in the Middle East are completely detached from what we pay for oil.
Scotland Yard, maybe not. But the FBI, yes, at least since NYE, when Obama signed the 2012 NDAA into law, allowing indefinite detention of American citizens without trial.
The actuarial value of a human life is around $100k per remaining healthy year. Let's take the average age of Super Bowl attendees to be 40 years. The life expectancy of a 40 year old American male is 78 years, which puts their worth at $3.8M. If a hypothetical Super Bowl bombing kills 10k people, it's negative value is $38B.
Isn't actuarial value the amount that life insurance companies pay out? So why are you multiplying that by life expectancy? Shouldn't it just be $100K * 10K people, i.e. $1B? And if I'm misunderstanding, if you mean something along the lines of annual profit produced, your number still has an RIAA-level of inflation. 10,000 people gone, sure, but there are 20 million people in this country that are unemployed, with a current production value of 0, just waiting to fill those jobs. In six months, there would be almost 100% job placement in those empty positions.
(OTOH, studies have shown that a good portion of the atmosphere's CO2 - and about 1/3 of the methane - comes from termites. So try to keep the little critters out of your local wooden artifacts, OK?;-)
Actually, studies have shown that 0.1-1.5% of methane comes from termites (depending on the paper). And those meat factories that all the vegetarians like to blame do about 3%.
In any event, I find this discussion disheartening; I don't believe violence is an acceptable solution to poverty and income disparity, even if that violence is deployed by the ignorant action of a would-be criminal.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always assumed it was because the school boards got kickbacks from the manufacturers. My HS had 200 new Compaq desktops purchased by the board in 1998 - enough to outfit two large labs and put three desktops in the corner of each classroom. They were also on a two-year upgrade plan, and I know that at least happened in 2000 (I kept in touch with my chemistry and bio teachers, and joined in the bitching about waste), and probably beyond.
WHY would you need three in the corner of each classroom? To have three students working on that instead of listening to the teacher? I could understand one for the teacher (who DIDN'T get one), and I wouldn't argue about one, though I'd call it futile, but three is not enough to have even a single HS group working (typically 4 to 6 in our 35-student classrooms), not to mention only having room for three students back there anyway.
This was a district where waste was so prevalent that it's had its own watchdog group for over a decade (at least, that's how long I've been following it). A district that cut buses for both high schools, and ALL the non-sports programs cut because there wasn't enough funding. And yet they were able to dump half a million dollars on PCs (our sister school was twice the size of ours, and presumably had the same program) every two years? Corruption was certainly a problem in that district, but I still have trouble believing the board agreed to that without money changing hands, which we KNOW happened at least twice when they were caught.
If web developers all hate IE, how come I have to keep IE installed on my machines because so many sites are incompatible with Firefox and Chrome?
Actually, the authors call it a battery in their paper. And it is.
Here's the salient part of the paper:
In this work, we demonstrate a novel electrochemical cell named a “mixing entropy battery”, which extracts energy from the difference in concentration of two solutions and stores it as chemical energy inside the electrode material’s bulk crystal structure. This approach allows us to overcome the challenges of supercapacitor electrodes based on activated carbon. This device consists of a reversible electrochemical system where the salts in the electrolyte are the reactants and the electrode stores ions. We employed two different electrodes: an anionic electrode, which interacts with Cl ions selectively; and a cationic electrode, which interacts with Na+ ions selectively. These electrodes are initially submerged in a low ionic strength solution (river water) in their discharged states, when the electrode materials contain the respective ions incorporated in their structures. In this dilute solution, the battery is charged by removing the Na+ and Cl ions from the respective electrodes (Figure 1a, step 1). Successively, the dilute electrolyte is exchanged for a concentrated solution (seawater), which is accompanied by an increase in the potential difference between the electrodes (Figure 1a, step 2). At this higher potential difference, the battery is discharged, as the anions and cations are reincorporated into their respective electrodes (Figure 1a, step 3). The concentrated solution is then removed and substituted by the dilute electrolyte (river water), which results in a decrease in potential difference between the electrodes (Figure 1a, step 4). We note that the exchange of solution could also be carried out via a flow process, which could be attractive for large scale energy extraction.
. . . now that the science departments are being supported externally, the Japs can continue to follow the traditions of Western schools - to gut the science departments' funding to build fancy new stadiums and buy more football uniforms!
Laptops are pretty much the only computer-related item I refuse to purchase online. Keyboards change between model revisions (as Dell did for the XPS L501/L502), as do vent and port placement, and screens - and those are all very important to the discerning geek. And if I go into a store to handle something I decide to purchase, such as a laptop, mouse, or speakers, I will almost always buy it there, since they provided me with useful information (though if it's more than a few bucks difference I will try to get a price match to Newegg or Amazon or wherever I saw it cheaper).
Really? Slashdot is going to argue over whether the military can figure out how to charge an iPad on a C-17? Really?
Yes, really. This is Slashdot, after all, and that's exactly the kind of pointless thing us nerds argue about when there isn't a running series of Star Trek. You want cool people arguing, head to US Magazine and argue about who is the father of the ugliest Kardashian (I hear it's the mom's hairdresser).
I believe Apple and other companies do as much as can reasonably be done as foreign private entities. . .
Besides, of course, moving somewhere else. Any country would be thrilled to have a Foxconn-sized plant open up, and would bend over backwards with tax subsidies, etc. Apple could open a fab plant in New Mexico and probably crib half of Intel's people right off the bat. A two- or three-month iPad shortage while the kinks are worked out of the assembly line, and Apple's back in business, in a first-class, first-world facility.
That was my thought, too - what about the (usually) well-executed powerslides into my company parking lot I do every night?
But that's exactly why people WOULDN'T switch. Logical people would be buying phones based on functionality. When you buy a phone based on style, you can't be expected to make other decisions based on logic
I was in a Waffle House this morning, listening to my server talk smartphones to another customer, about how she needed to stop losing and breaking her phones because she couldn't afford to keep paying $500 or $600 every three months. And how she refused to buy some $800 phone (HTC Desire? I know it came up in the conversation) because that was "just ridiculous."
Most people are idiots, regardless of brand loyalty, so don't overestimate the general populace.
If Apple were to cut the carriers out, and only sell the iPhone unlocked, what would stop the carriers from removing support for iPhones from their networks?
So that's why Charles was on April's ass in the TMNT movie! The chief was holding that over his head! That's bugged me for twenty years!
Hey, iPads flex! Once, at least.
Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else.
What about press passes, then?
No, it's a euphemism for things like CAPTCHA boxes, UBB shortcut windows, and lots of login scripts on sites that have comment systems, possibly even the one you're using now. I just stick with AdBlock and Flashblock, and I'm perfectly happy with my experience.
I'm still confused - why don't we want Muslims to modernize? Africa and Asia I understand, because we get cheap sneakers and cell phones, but labor costs in the Middle East are completely detached from what we pay for oil.
By "hacking Steam DRM," do you mean "enabling offline mode?" Because yes, it is that simple to play Steam games without a 'net connection.
Scotland Yard, maybe not. But the FBI, yes, at least since NYE, when Obama signed the 2012 NDAA into law, allowing indefinite detention of American citizens without trial.
Well, American GDP is 14.58 trillion. Figuring 400M Americans, at a 60% employment rate, you're looking at about $61K.
You expect those people to show up to work Monday?
The actuarial value of a human life is around $100k per remaining healthy year. Let's take the average age of Super Bowl attendees to be 40 years. The life expectancy of a 40 year old American male is 78 years, which puts their worth at $3.8M. If a hypothetical Super Bowl bombing kills 10k people, it's negative value is $38B.
Isn't actuarial value the amount that life insurance companies pay out? So why are you multiplying that by life expectancy? Shouldn't it just be $100K * 10K people, i.e. $1B? And if I'm misunderstanding, if you mean something along the lines of annual profit produced, your number still has an RIAA-level of inflation. 10,000 people gone, sure, but there are 20 million people in this country that are unemployed, with a current production value of 0, just waiting to fill those jobs. In six months, there would be almost 100% job placement in those empty positions.
Yes, I am a heartless Darwinist.
Oh no, we just lost 100,000 football fans! Whatever will our gene pool do!
(OTOH, studies have shown that a good portion of the atmosphere's CO2 - and about 1/3 of the methane - comes from termites. So try to keep the little critters out of your local wooden artifacts, OK? ;-)
Actually, studies have shown that 0.1-1.5% of methane comes from termites (depending on the paper). And those meat factories that all the vegetarians like to blame do about 3%.
I bet the parent post is going to be one of the most-often-modded posts in /. history.
Better than getting a flogging, which is what the slow ones got!
In any event, I find this discussion disheartening; I don't believe violence is an acceptable solution to poverty and income disparity, even if that violence is deployed by the ignorant action of a would-be criminal.
So you're saying only poor people commit crimes?