Of course the military and others want to make Joe Sixpack scared. A scared citizen readily hands over funding, privacy etc.
The end of the Cold War was a huge threat to careers and funding in the CIA, military and govt contractors. Need those Iraq wars, terrorists and hackers to keep the whole war machine going.
The military industry is not the only one that works this way. The medical industry is catching on too (bird flu) and now the whole greenwashing industry (global warming etc).
It might be nice to have zero packet cost, but unless there is some way for a provider to profit there is no motivation for that provider to lay on services.
Consider all those folk choking up the internet with video downloads, P2P etc "because it's free" and they've got nothing better to do with their time. They're all choking up the pipes for everyone.
Pay-per-use is one way to get a free market into this and allow people to buy the QoS they want and the market decides the price points. It would also motivate some of the spam botters to clean up their act.
The only way to modify behaviour is to provide some sort of feedback/dis-incentive for excessive use.
Under pay-for-QoS you'd have the choice to wait til 2am and download a video for free or download it immediately for $2.
Embedded space is very different to desktop space. Unless you're a Luddite, your world is full of embedded CPUS: phones, garage door openers, microwave ovens, refridgerators etc etc. People have decided that the price point for a computer is somewhere in the $500-$1500 range and keep trying to sell more and more capability in that price range.
You don't need a very sophisticated CPU to run a washing machine and "enough is enough". An 8-bitter costing less than a buck will do it. As a design engineer I might have the choice to replace the 8-bit micro in the last design with a 32-bitter at the same price, or a new 8-bit part that costs half the price of the old one. Unless we're adding new features that need extra CPU, the 32-bit micro won't make the washing machine work any better so really adds no customer value, so I would choose the cheaper 8-bit micro and the company saves on material costs.
The desk-top software writers might think that Moore's Law will always give them more CPU power, RAM etc and thus efficient coding does not matter. That thinking is OK if you accept that current prices are OK. However Moore's Law can be ridden the other way too: the same resources are getting cheaper and cheaper. We're limited in what solutions we can consider when we have to pay $1 for the micro + battery. But when we can get a micro and battery for 20c or 10c we can suddenly consider using a micro for a whole lot of new applications. To keep riding that wave needs frugal thinking. People who think in gigaHz and gigabytes need not apply.
Not everyone wants faster CPUs. Faster CPUs are only important in some situations.
The same advances that give us faster CPUs also allow us to have the same speed CPUs cheaper and using less power. That allows the CPUs to be used in situations that were not possible a few years back.
You can now buy 32-bit single-chip CPUs for less that $1 (including RAM, flash etc), and 8-bit micros for less than 50c. These won't run Linux, but they can still do a lot of useful work.
Low power is a very important consideration in many applications. Some products will live on a single factory installed coin-sized battery for their whole lifetime (5 years +) without needing a recharge. Achieving this requires very careful and frugal coding and is not something you'd try with Linux etc (well not for a long time), and might not even use C for.
Thus there is still a need for the curmudgeons that can build a system that has only 100 bytes of RAM and a 50kHz CPU and always will be.
I predict a service selling clipart LifeBits to people who have really boring lives. It's called MyLifeStore. You upload a picture of your face and for $25 you can buy a LifeBit of you doing exciting stuff like bungy jumping while saving rain forests in the Amazon. Use it to overwrite that day when you just stayed at home and read the newspaper.
I live in New Zealand. Total population 4 million or so. Cities have good broadband at very good rates. I live rurally where there is no wired broadband option and get a terrestrial wireless service instead. This costs a lot more and is a lot slower.
If you lived in the woods in USA you'd probably also only get limited broadband.
There's no statistical difference between the top ten or so (+- 4%) and the top 25 are all within a +- 10% band.
Given that online surveys are notoriously bad and need wide margins of error, I would not read anything into this except for the obvious: First world countries (EU, USA etc) are ahead of Chad, Zimbabwe etc.
Cost vs size vs battery life vs speed vs storage size.
I considered getting an EEE PC, but it would not do what I wanted. Ended up buying a regular Ubuntu-loaded laptop for the same price (give or take a few $). For me the deal breaker was the lack of storage for app development, oh and screen size.
4 hours a day travelling? Perhaps telecommuting makes your time in the office less effective, but I doubt it. Even if you did, you could just use one or two of those commute hours to compensate.
... studying. Of course kids will pick the fun option.
I don't really care *how* kids learn, so long as they really are learning.
Far too many educational methods (both regular and games) are ineffective as teaching tools. Many so-called educational games just teach nothing (yes, there are many that are effective).
At the end of the day, most shareholders don't have sentimental attachments to their stock (that's the first deadly sin of playing the market). If they get a good price they'll take it.
Some time ago school was a place you went to to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Slowly schools are getting more loaded with stuff that should be taught by parents/community: sex ed, health studies, morals and ethics and now safe browsing.
Soon schools will also have to teach kids to dress: "Now remember class, you can't wear a striped shirt with plaid pants".
It does seem that school is getting to be less about education and more about daycare (so that parents can go and have careers instead of raising kids).
Sure, back in the old days (1970s, 1980s) there was a lot of freeware, crippleware and abandonware but that's true today too. Buy a new Windows PC and it is packed with 30 day trial stuff like anti-virus, winzip etc.
Back in the old days there was quite a bit of OSS too. But what was lacking was an effective mechanism to share the code and keep the changes together. Sure there were BBSs and uucp, but that's a far cry from having cvs servers etc over the internet.
I've done this more times than I can count. We don't like rabbits around here. Reach into rabbit hole. Pull out rabbit. Twist neck. This is particularly productive with baby rabbits (have pulled 9 out of one hole).
I call bullshit that there is something fundamental in behavior.
People modify their behavior, compassion, etc depending on context.
I'll help little old grannies across the road without mugging them, but when I play chess I'm ruthless. I will handle a fish that I've caught (catch and release) with great tenderness, but will wring a rabbit's neck or shoot a person if the situation demands.
One special forces person I knew a while ago shot up some real people, laid some landmines then later that day rolled his car swerving to miss a small animal on the road.
Slashdot Mirror
The congress part does not have a reviews. Instead you can bribe^h^h^h^h lobby the congressmen.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsCBK-fRNRk was essentially destroyed by low frequency sound waves.
The end of the Cold War was a huge threat to careers and funding in the CIA, military and govt contractors. Need those Iraq wars, terrorists and hackers to keep the whole war machine going.
The military industry is not the only one that works this way. The medical industry is catching on too (bird flu) and now the whole greenwashing industry (global warming etc).
Now that's what I'm waiting for!
Consider all those folk choking up the internet with video downloads, P2P etc "because it's free" and they've got nothing better to do with their time. They're all choking up the pipes for everyone.
Pay-per-use is one way to get a free market into this and allow people to buy the QoS they want and the market decides the price points. It would also motivate some of the spam botters to clean up their act.
The only way to modify behaviour is to provide some sort of feedback/dis-incentive for excessive use.
Under pay-for-QoS you'd have the choice to wait til 2am and download a video for free or download it immediately for $2.
Embedded space is very different to desktop space. Unless you're a Luddite, your world is full of embedded CPUS: phones, garage door openers, microwave ovens, refridgerators etc etc. People have decided that the price point for a computer is somewhere in the $500-$1500 range and keep trying to sell more and more capability in that price range.
You don't need a very sophisticated CPU to run a washing machine and "enough is enough". An 8-bitter costing less than a buck will do it. As a design engineer I might have the choice to replace the 8-bit micro in the last design with a 32-bitter at the same price, or a new 8-bit part that costs half the price of the old one. Unless we're adding new features that need extra CPU, the 32-bit micro won't make the washing machine work any better so really adds no customer value, so I would choose the cheaper 8-bit micro and the company saves on material costs.
The desk-top software writers might think that Moore's Law will always give them more CPU power, RAM etc and thus efficient coding does not matter. That thinking is OK if you accept that current prices are OK. However Moore's Law can be ridden the other way too: the same resources are getting cheaper and cheaper. We're limited in what solutions we can consider when we have to pay $1 for the micro + battery. But when we can get a micro and battery for 20c or 10c we can suddenly consider using a micro for a whole lot of new applications. To keep riding that wave needs frugal thinking. People who think in gigaHz and gigabytes need not apply.
The same advances that give us faster CPUs also allow us to have the same speed CPUs cheaper and using less power. That allows the CPUs to be used in situations that were not possible a few years back.
You can now buy 32-bit single-chip CPUs for less that $1 (including RAM, flash etc), and 8-bit micros for less than 50c. These won't run Linux, but they can still do a lot of useful work.
Low power is a very important consideration in many applications. Some products will live on a single factory installed coin-sized battery for their whole lifetime (5 years +) without needing a recharge. Achieving this requires very careful and frugal coding and is not something you'd try with Linux etc (well not for a long time), and might not even use C for.
Thus there is still a need for the curmudgeons that can build a system that has only 100 bytes of RAM and a 50kHz CPU and always will be.
I predict a service selling clipart LifeBits to people who have really boring lives. It's called MyLifeStore. You upload a picture of your face and for $25 you can buy a LifeBit of you doing exciting stuff like bungy jumping while saving rain forests in the Amazon. Use it to overwrite that day when you just stayed at home and read the newspaper.
If you lived in the woods in USA you'd probably also only get limited broadband.
Given that online surveys are notoriously bad and need wide margins of error, I would not read anything into this except for the obvious: First world countries (EU, USA etc) are ahead of Chad, Zimbabwe etc.
Duh!
I run Wine so that I can run Cygwin and have a bash terminal running under Linux!
I considered getting an EEE PC, but it would not do what I wanted. Ended up buying a regular Ubuntu-loaded laptop for the same price (give or take a few $). For me the deal breaker was the lack of storage for app development, oh and screen size.
Everyone has different criteria.
4 hours a day travelling? Perhaps telecommuting makes your time in the office less effective, but I doubt it. Even if you did, you could just use one or two of those commute hours to compensate.
Putting "educational" on the box just helps the kids con their parents into buying the game.
I don't really care *how* kids learn, so long as they really are learning.
Far too many educational methods (both regular and games) are ineffective as teaching tools. Many so-called educational games just teach nothing (yes, there are many that are effective).
At the end of the day, most shareholders don't have sentimental attachments to their stock (that's the first deadly sin of playing the market). If they get a good price they'll take it.
Terrorist digital receivers. Dang they're everywhere!
Soon schools will also have to teach kids to dress: "Now remember class, you can't wear a striped shirt with plaid pants".
It does seem that school is getting to be less about education and more about daycare (so that parents can go and have careers instead of raising kids).
Sure, back in the old days (1970s, 1980s) there was a lot of freeware, crippleware and abandonware but that's true today too. Buy a new Windows PC and it is packed with 30 day trial stuff like anti-virus, winzip etc.
Back in the old days there was quite a bit of OSS too. But what was lacking was an effective mechanism to share the code and keep the changes together. Sure there were BBSs and uucp, but that's a far cry from having cvs servers etc over the internet.
Where did those amino acids come from?
I've done this more times than I can count. We don't like rabbits around here. Reach into rabbit hole. Pull out rabbit. Twist neck. This is particularly productive with baby rabbits (have pulled 9 out of one hole).
People modify their behavior, compassion, etc depending on context.
I'll help little old grannies across the road without mugging them, but when I play chess I'm ruthless. I will handle a fish that I've caught (catch and release) with great tenderness, but will wring a rabbit's neck or shoot a person if the situation demands.
One special forces person I knew a while ago shot up some real people, laid some landmines then later that day rolled his car swerving to miss a small animal on the road.
So why should ruthless behaviour in some game be linked to ruthlessness in life?
I'm typing this lying in bed. My typing dynamics are completely different than when I'm sitting at a desk. The keyboard makes a difference too.
You didn't use Hungarian.