Well, if it's actually nutritious, cheaper than other foods, and palatable, then I don't see any problem with this. We don't all have the time to prepare good meals for every meal. Sometimes we just want something healthy that we can prepare quickly. If it's healthier, cheaper, and tastes as good as instant oatmeal, it could be a good breakfast option. That doesn't mean I'd never want to eat prime rib ever again, but maybe I could afford to eat it more often if I could cover my basic nutrition with something like this. Currently, the only options are preparing a good tasting healthy meal, which often takes time, or eating pre-processed microwave dinners which aren't very healthy at all.
How easy is it to set up a fake tower? Could somebody set one up at home and intercept all their neighbors telephone calls? Could a company set one up in an office building and monitor all their employees telephone calls?
That works great until you start thinking about the fact that at many work places, people get very few sick days, and many don't get any paid sick days. Unless you can fix that problem, you're going to have a lot of trouble getting people to take sick days when they can still make it into work. If you only get 5 or 6 paid sick days a year, then you're going to want to keep those in case something really nasty comes along, like gastroenteritis (aka, the stomach flu), or if their kid gets sick and they have to stay home with the kid.
Funny, in North America, people get so few vacation/sick days that they feel they have to use up all of both. People will often call in sick when they really just want a vacation day. People think it's their duty to use up all their sick days, whether they are actually sick or not. And then they wonder why the quota for sick days is so low....
I would say that a good developer you can learn any language in about 30 minutes. The standard constructs (loops, conditionals, functions, classes, etc.) can all be explained in about 10 pages. A handy "cheat-sheet" can help you remember the syntax. The hard part about learning a new language is learning the API. And in that respect, Java and.Net are pretty much completely different. A developer could more easily switch between VB.Net and C#, than they could switch between C# and Java, because in the first instance the API is exactly the same. Even though the languages are very different, this matters very little.
Actually, I stated that the iPad having a the biggest app selection is actually "a pretty important marketing point". However, it's worth mentioning that on the Surface, there's a lot of apps you just don't need, because they are built into the OS. You don't need a file manager,or special applications to access shared folders on other machines. The built in video player works well for most people, so you'll see fewer of those around. The browser is quite capable so a lot of those website replacement apps that you see just really aren't necessary. It comes with MS Office, so there's not going to be too many companies developing an office suite for it.
As far as the UI goes, on a tablet, Windows 8 is actually a really nice interface. I much prefer it to iOS. it's much easier to switch back and forth between two apps, and you can even display two apps onscreen at the same time. Frequently used apps can be pinned to the home screen in various sizes so you can get to the apps you use most quite fast, while apps you use infrequently don't clutter up your main start screen. The only thing I have against the UI is when you end up on the desktop. On a tablet the desktop is quite cumbersome to use, and I kind of wish they made an effort to provide a metro interface for Office, or other system utilities like the Control Panel.
The only reason I would think that you wouldn't be able to would be copyright laws. Copyright laws might possibly be construed in such a way that you wouldn't be allowed to post actual text from the letter itself. It wouldn't stop you from paraphrasing what the letter said, but using exact words from the contract could be argued to be copyright infringement. I would assume that this would fall within fair use, but if musicians can be charged royalties for using just a few notes from another song in their own recordings, then anything is possible. You may not lose a court case, but you may need to spend money on a lawyer.
Windows 8 is a very good operating system in terms of stability and speed. It's the UI that throws most people off. And I think that's really because many, or most, of the devices it's being sold on don't have touch. Windows 8.1 is actually a really nice interface if you have a tablet or a notebook with a touch screen. I use it on my old notebook, because I was able to get a cheap license when they first released it. I'll admit it has some problems, almost all relating to the fact that the UI was really designed around touch, and my old laptop has no touch ability. But really it's not that big of a problem, because 95% of the time, I'm just in in desktop mode using a browser or Visual Studio, and I rarely see the start screen. The transition to the start screen is also fast enough that I can hit start, type the name of the program I want to run, and open that program just like I did in Windows 7. It wouldn't really matter what the screen looked like, and there's actually some advantages to using the whole screen to show the possible programs that match my search string.
Just because a product isn't selling well, doesn't mean it's not actually a superior product. I've heard people say that the GameCube actually had comparable if not better graphics compared to XBox, but most people just dismissed it outright, assuming that it couldn't possibly be any good, given it's appearance. Technically, all the numbers on the GameCube were lower, but it was capable of producing graphics that were just as good, because of a completely different architecture. Another example The iPad sells better than any other tablet out there, but it has some serious pitfalls, such as not being able to expand the storage, and not being able to hook up standard USB devices. Compare that to this year's Surface 2, which the only flaws seem to be the small app selection, and some people not liking the UI (which is pretty subjective), yet the Surface 2 isn't something most people consider. They want the iPad because everyone else has an iPad. As far as I see, the iPad is only the best in 1 respect, and that's that it has the most apps. That's a pretty important marketing point, but not the only thing to look at.
Yeah, it's amazing what they did with just polygons back then. People forget that games like Mario 64 and Ocarina were made with almost zero textures. But they were so fun to play that nobody cared. When I think back, all the best games from that generation were on the N64.
To be fair, there was quite a few people in my software engineering program who "weren't interested in these things". Many of them applied because they thought there would be a good job at the end or their parents pressured them to go into something practical. I had many close friends who's parents were from "non-western" countries, and it was quite common for them to take a program of study they had no interest in, because their parents thought it was a good career choice. I saw this in white males as well, but it was way more prevalent in students from other cultures. Perhaps the difference in other countries is that women (and students in general) feel more pressured to get a STEM degree. You don't tend to see a lot of Indian kids taking art-history degrees. It's actually quite frowned upon.
It doesn't matter which operating system is being used. Windows can be perfectly secured if you configure it properly. Linux can be just as easily owned if set up by someone who has no idea what they are doing. A weak root password and bind sash to a remotely accessible address (which seems quite convenient if you don't consider the security aspects) and the machine is trivially rootable. No matter which OS is used, there should be a hardware firewall in front with no open ports. Only way to communicate is over VPN. That, or not even store all those credit card numbers. They probably shouldn't have been storing them in the first place.
Yeah, but for $300 the web interface to control it should be built into the device. Every $30 home router has a web server (and many have telnet access) so you can control the router. There's not cloud access necessary to set up my router, and it has exactly 0 buttons or knobs (ok, it has a reset button, but that's it, there's not even a power switch), and it can easily be controlled from any computer in my house. The Nest should do the same. If I want to control it from the airport, I'll open a port on my router, or have a VPN set up so I can access it my network remotely.
I just had my furnace fixed, and the tech repairing it said the computer board which had to be replaced, was worth about $800. Luckily I was still under full warranty, so I didn't argue about whether it actually needed replacement , or how much it's actually worth. But it seems to me that there's a lot of room for making these things more modular, using off the shelf components, and make them easier to fix. Looking at the components on that board, it seemed like most of the components were big enough to be soldered by hand, by someone with minimum skills.
Historically thermostats were on/off switches for the furnace because they couldn't directly measure temperature as a number, but rather had a mercury switch connected to a coil of metal which uncoiled and recoiled when the temperature changed. Once it coiled to a specific point, the mercury would flow due to gravity, and connect two contacts, causing the furnace to turn on.
Furnaces were built to only have an on and off functionality, because that's what was possible 50 years ago, and nobody has bothered to change it. It should be cheap enough now to actually have multiple thermostats, as well as computer controlled ducts so that individual rooms can be heated and cooled independently. This would probably save people quite a bit on heating bills, and would probably be something much better to shoot for than simply duplicating the functionality already available in "Nest".
To be fair, PayPal was/is the middle man. You could keep your money in PayPal, in which case you couldn't do a whole lot with it, or you could remove your money from PayPal, but that required a service charge. Ideally, I'd be able to securely send money to a retailer, without giving them my credit card number or any other private information, and they could just send me the goods. This is what BitCoin is trying to solve. Giving the ability for the buying party to send money directly to the seller, without having to pay a huge transaction fee to some third party who authorizes the transaction.
I was 6 when this happened, and I still remember it vividly. I wanted to be an astronaut right up until the point I saw that. Being an astronaut seemed like an interesting job. But it had never occurred to me how dangerous it could be.
Would be if people used this for podcasts, Or if they just realized that they don't need to use 320 kbps stereo MP3 for their talking only podcasts. I don't really care about this when I'm at home, but most of the time I download my podcasts directly onto my phone. Using smaller formats means I can download it faster (I usually don't updated until I realize that I want to listen to something), and that I can store more stuff on my phone for listening to it later. It's kind of annoying when podcast creators end up generating a 120 MB file for 60 minutes of audio. I've seen decent quality podcasts use 1/10 of that.
Yeah, adjusted for inflation, that 125k a year isn't going to get you as far in 60 years as it does today. But you should definitely be able to retire on it. Also, just because you're "retired" doesn't mean you don't have an income. Teaching is a very good career to be in, because you can just quit teaching full time, and be a supply teacher. You don't have to go in any day you don't want to. Or you can just teach a class or two a semester at the local community college if you want something more consistent. Depending on what age range you want to work with, it can be harder/easier to find more relaxed working hours. While, you're right that somebody would probably get bored and spend all their money if they didn't have a job, I would say that that they definitely don't have to be "working" after winning that much in the lottery. You could basically do whatever you wanted with your time, for whatever people were willing to pay for that service.
$7.5 million isn't rich, but you can live off it quite comfortably, especially after you've paid off all your debts. If you're 40, and assuming you will live 60 more years, Even if you don't count interest, you could spend $125000 a year and only run out of money at 100. If you don't have a mortgage, then $125k is a lot of money to live off of. You definitely wouldn't have to work ever again. Even if you assume 1% interest, that bumps you up to $166k a year. That's a pretty ridiculous amount of money and anybody should be able to live off that, assuming no debts.
How do we decide what people are worth though? If there are lots of people who want to do a job, for a low amount of money, maybe that's all the job is worth. What does it matter what country the people are from. Especially in this case where the people filling the jobs live in the same country. It's one thing to complain about companies moving jobs overseas, but if there's jobs in your area, and there's people who will do the job cheaper than you, then you need to adjust your expectations. I don't see how hiring H1-Bs is any different from hiring people fresh out of college (or even before they graduate), because they don't have as many financial responsibilities, or may just be more accustomed to living frugally.
What's even more apparent is that residential users use a very small portion of the load, but they are always telling us to use less. We get cheaper rates in the night, on weekends and on holidays, but other than ruining the dishwasher later there's not much we can do to use less. The bigger home users like heating and cooling can't be put off until later. Sure you can turn the thermostat up a few degrees in the summer, but you can't do all your cooling at night. Meanwhile industry is the one putting the real load on the system, and residential users are left paying high rates even though they contribute very little to the high loads.
Actually, I bought the $450 Surface 2, not Surface Pro. And no, it doesn't compare to the $70 Android tablets, but I was more referring to the $500 iPads, $500 Galaxy Note, $400 Galaxy Tab, and other similary priced tablets. For $70 its ok if you all you can do is watch Netflix and play a few games. But for $500, I want to be able to type up a document in a pinch. Plug in my USB devices. Connect to HMDI TV, plug in an SD Card, open a command prompt, Connect to shared folders and do other regular computing tasks.
I got a tablet. Guess which one it was. The Surface. As far as Tablet OSes go, Windows 8 is the best in my opinion. Easily run 2 apps on the same screen. Go to the command line, or powershell if you want easy access to the file system. Native support for connecting to shared folders. Open up MS Work, Outlook or Excel if you want to get some real work done. Switch between apps with a swipe of the finger. Real USB port with support for keyboard, mouse, thumb drives, XBox gamepad, and many other peripherals. I can't believe people are choosing other tablets.
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Well, if it's actually nutritious, cheaper than other foods, and palatable, then I don't see any problem with this. We don't all have the time to prepare good meals for every meal. Sometimes we just want something healthy that we can prepare quickly. If it's healthier, cheaper, and tastes as good as instant oatmeal, it could be a good breakfast option. That doesn't mean I'd never want to eat prime rib ever again, but maybe I could afford to eat it more often if I could cover my basic nutrition with something like this. Currently, the only options are preparing a good tasting healthy meal, which often takes time, or eating pre-processed microwave dinners which aren't very healthy at all.
How sensitive is this filter really? How does it affect the residents of Sussex
Then you get the guy who calls in sick every wednesday.
How easy is it to set up a fake tower? Could somebody set one up at home and intercept all their neighbors telephone calls? Could a company set one up in an office building and monitor all their employees telephone calls?
That works great until you start thinking about the fact that at many work places, people get very few sick days, and many don't get any paid sick days. Unless you can fix that problem, you're going to have a lot of trouble getting people to take sick days when they can still make it into work. If you only get 5 or 6 paid sick days a year, then you're going to want to keep those in case something really nasty comes along, like gastroenteritis (aka, the stomach flu), or if their kid gets sick and they have to stay home with the kid.
Funny, in North America, people get so few vacation/sick days that they feel they have to use up all of both. People will often call in sick when they really just want a vacation day. People think it's their duty to use up all their sick days, whether they are actually sick or not. And then they wonder why the quota for sick days is so low....
I would say that a good developer you can learn any language in about 30 minutes. The standard constructs (loops, conditionals, functions, classes, etc.) can all be explained in about 10 pages. A handy "cheat-sheet" can help you remember the syntax. The hard part about learning a new language is learning the API. And in that respect, Java and .Net are pretty much completely different. A developer could more easily switch between VB.Net and C#, than they could switch between C# and Java, because in the first instance the API is exactly the same. Even though the languages are very different, this matters very little.
Actually, I stated that the iPad having a the biggest app selection is actually "a pretty important marketing point". However, it's worth mentioning that on the Surface, there's a lot of apps you just don't need, because they are built into the OS. You don't need a file manager,or special applications to access shared folders on other machines. The built in video player works well for most people, so you'll see fewer of those around. The browser is quite capable so a lot of those website replacement apps that you see just really aren't necessary. It comes with MS Office, so there's not going to be too many companies developing an office suite for it.
As far as the UI goes, on a tablet, Windows 8 is actually a really nice interface. I much prefer it to iOS. it's much easier to switch back and forth between two apps, and you can even display two apps onscreen at the same time. Frequently used apps can be pinned to the home screen in various sizes so you can get to the apps you use most quite fast, while apps you use infrequently don't clutter up your main start screen. The only thing I have against the UI is when you end up on the desktop. On a tablet the desktop is quite cumbersome to use, and I kind of wish they made an effort to provide a metro interface for Office, or other system utilities like the Control Panel.
The only reason I would think that you wouldn't be able to would be copyright laws. Copyright laws might possibly be construed in such a way that you wouldn't be allowed to post actual text from the letter itself. It wouldn't stop you from paraphrasing what the letter said, but using exact words from the contract could be argued to be copyright infringement. I would assume that this would fall within fair use, but if musicians can be charged royalties for using just a few notes from another song in their own recordings, then anything is possible. You may not lose a court case, but you may need to spend money on a lawyer.
Windows 8 is a very good operating system in terms of stability and speed. It's the UI that throws most people off. And I think that's really because many, or most, of the devices it's being sold on don't have touch. Windows 8.1 is actually a really nice interface if you have a tablet or a notebook with a touch screen. I use it on my old notebook, because I was able to get a cheap license when they first released it. I'll admit it has some problems, almost all relating to the fact that the UI was really designed around touch, and my old laptop has no touch ability. But really it's not that big of a problem, because 95% of the time, I'm just in in desktop mode using a browser or Visual Studio, and I rarely see the start screen. The transition to the start screen is also fast enough that I can hit start, type the name of the program I want to run, and open that program just like I did in Windows 7. It wouldn't really matter what the screen looked like, and there's actually some advantages to using the whole screen to show the possible programs that match my search string.
Just because a product isn't selling well, doesn't mean it's not actually a superior product. I've heard people say that the GameCube actually had comparable if not better graphics compared to XBox, but most people just dismissed it outright, assuming that it couldn't possibly be any good, given it's appearance. Technically, all the numbers on the GameCube were lower, but it was capable of producing graphics that were just as good, because of a completely different architecture. Another example The iPad sells better than any other tablet out there, but it has some serious pitfalls, such as not being able to expand the storage, and not being able to hook up standard USB devices. Compare that to this year's Surface 2, which the only flaws seem to be the small app selection, and some people not liking the UI (which is pretty subjective), yet the Surface 2 isn't something most people consider. They want the iPad because everyone else has an iPad. As far as I see, the iPad is only the best in 1 respect, and that's that it has the most apps. That's a pretty important marketing point, but not the only thing to look at.
Yeah, it's amazing what they did with just polygons back then. People forget that games like Mario 64 and Ocarina were made with almost zero textures. But they were so fun to play that nobody cared. When I think back, all the best games from that generation were on the N64.
To be fair, there was quite a few people in my software engineering program who "weren't interested in these things". Many of them applied because they thought there would be a good job at the end or their parents pressured them to go into something practical. I had many close friends who's parents were from "non-western" countries, and it was quite common for them to take a program of study they had no interest in, because their parents thought it was a good career choice. I saw this in white males as well, but it was way more prevalent in students from other cultures. Perhaps the difference in other countries is that women (and students in general) feel more pressured to get a STEM degree. You don't tend to see a lot of Indian kids taking art-history degrees. It's actually quite frowned upon.
It doesn't matter which operating system is being used. Windows can be perfectly secured if you configure it properly. Linux can be just as easily owned if set up by someone who has no idea what they are doing. A weak root password and bind sash to a remotely accessible address (which seems quite convenient if you don't consider the security aspects) and the machine is trivially rootable. No matter which OS is used, there should be a hardware firewall in front with no open ports. Only way to communicate is over VPN. That, or not even store all those credit card numbers. They probably shouldn't have been storing them in the first place.
Yeah, but for $300 the web interface to control it should be built into the device. Every $30 home router has a web server (and many have telnet access) so you can control the router. There's not cloud access necessary to set up my router, and it has exactly 0 buttons or knobs (ok, it has a reset button, but that's it, there's not even a power switch), and it can easily be controlled from any computer in my house. The Nest should do the same. If I want to control it from the airport, I'll open a port on my router, or have a VPN set up so I can access it my network remotely.
I just had my furnace fixed, and the tech repairing it said the computer board which had to be replaced, was worth about $800. Luckily I was still under full warranty, so I didn't argue about whether it actually needed replacement , or how much it's actually worth. But it seems to me that there's a lot of room for making these things more modular, using off the shelf components, and make them easier to fix. Looking at the components on that board, it seemed like most of the components were big enough to be soldered by hand, by someone with minimum skills.
Historically thermostats were on/off switches for the furnace because they couldn't directly measure temperature as a number, but rather had a mercury switch connected to a coil of metal which uncoiled and recoiled when the temperature changed. Once it coiled to a specific point, the mercury would flow due to gravity, and connect two contacts, causing the furnace to turn on.
Furnaces were built to only have an on and off functionality, because that's what was possible 50 years ago, and nobody has bothered to change it. It should be cheap enough now to actually have multiple thermostats, as well as computer controlled ducts so that individual rooms can be heated and cooled independently. This would probably save people quite a bit on heating bills, and would probably be something much better to shoot for than simply duplicating the functionality already available in "Nest".
To be fair, PayPal was/is the middle man. You could keep your money in PayPal, in which case you couldn't do a whole lot with it, or you could remove your money from PayPal, but that required a service charge. Ideally, I'd be able to securely send money to a retailer, without giving them my credit card number or any other private information, and they could just send me the goods. This is what BitCoin is trying to solve. Giving the ability for the buying party to send money directly to the seller, without having to pay a huge transaction fee to some third party who authorizes the transaction.
I was 6 when this happened, and I still remember it vividly. I wanted to be an astronaut right up until the point I saw that. Being an astronaut seemed like an interesting job. But it had never occurred to me how dangerous it could be.
Would be if people used this for podcasts, Or if they just realized that they don't need to use 320 kbps stereo MP3 for their talking only podcasts. I don't really care about this when I'm at home, but most of the time I download my podcasts directly onto my phone. Using smaller formats means I can download it faster (I usually don't updated until I realize that I want to listen to something), and that I can store more stuff on my phone for listening to it later. It's kind of annoying when podcast creators end up generating a 120 MB file for 60 minutes of audio. I've seen decent quality podcasts use 1/10 of that.
Yeah, adjusted for inflation, that 125k a year isn't going to get you as far in 60 years as it does today. But you should definitely be able to retire on it. Also, just because you're "retired" doesn't mean you don't have an income. Teaching is a very good career to be in, because you can just quit teaching full time, and be a supply teacher. You don't have to go in any day you don't want to. Or you can just teach a class or two a semester at the local community college if you want something more consistent. Depending on what age range you want to work with, it can be harder/easier to find more relaxed working hours. While, you're right that somebody would probably get bored and spend all their money if they didn't have a job, I would say that that they definitely don't have to be "working" after winning that much in the lottery. You could basically do whatever you wanted with your time, for whatever people were willing to pay for that service.
$7.5 million isn't rich, but you can live off it quite comfortably, especially after you've paid off all your debts. If you're 40, and assuming you will live 60 more years, Even if you don't count interest, you could spend $125000 a year and only run out of money at 100. If you don't have a mortgage, then $125k is a lot of money to live off of. You definitely wouldn't have to work ever again. Even if you assume 1% interest, that bumps you up to $166k a year. That's a pretty ridiculous amount of money and anybody should be able to live off that, assuming no debts.
How do we decide what people are worth though? If there are lots of people who want to do a job, for a low amount of money, maybe that's all the job is worth. What does it matter what country the people are from. Especially in this case where the people filling the jobs live in the same country. It's one thing to complain about companies moving jobs overseas, but if there's jobs in your area, and there's people who will do the job cheaper than you, then you need to adjust your expectations. I don't see how hiring H1-Bs is any different from hiring people fresh out of college (or even before they graduate), because they don't have as many financial responsibilities, or may just be more accustomed to living frugally.
What's even more apparent is that residential users use a very small portion of the load, but they are always telling us to use less. We get cheaper rates in the night, on weekends and on holidays, but other than ruining the dishwasher later there's not much we can do to use less. The bigger home users like heating and cooling can't be put off until later. Sure you can turn the thermostat up a few degrees in the summer, but you can't do all your cooling at night. Meanwhile industry is the one putting the real load on the system, and residential users are left paying high rates even though they contribute very little to the high loads.
Actually, I bought the $450 Surface 2, not Surface Pro. And no, it doesn't compare to the $70 Android tablets, but I was more referring to the $500 iPads, $500 Galaxy Note, $400 Galaxy Tab, and other similary priced tablets. For $70 its ok if you all you can do is watch Netflix and play a few games. But for $500, I want to be able to type up a document in a pinch. Plug in my USB devices. Connect to HMDI TV, plug in an SD Card, open a command prompt, Connect to shared folders and do other regular computing tasks.
I got a tablet. Guess which one it was. The Surface. As far as Tablet OSes go, Windows 8 is the best in my opinion. Easily run 2 apps on the same screen. Go to the command line, or powershell if you want easy access to the file system. Native support for connecting to shared folders. Open up MS Work, Outlook or Excel if you want to get some real work done. Switch between apps with a swipe of the finger. Real USB port with support for keyboard, mouse, thumb drives, XBox gamepad, and many other peripherals. I can't believe people are choosing other tablets.