And a lack of understanding is ignorance, which some people wear like a medal of honor. It may make them more socially acceptable... but they're still ignorant.
I would argue that the copies do have value, but their worth relates to the effort it takes to make them.
Their worth (especially in an era where the manufacture of copies is effectively costless) is related to how much the market will pay for them. That may or may not have anything to do with how much was invested in their production. Many popular (and profitable) works were made on minimal budgets, where other much more expensive efforts failed to earn the expected revenue. The buying public is fickle at best.
"The question is not how much support costs. The question is how much is DOWNTIME going to cost the company?"
You say it as if paying Red Hat's support would magically lower DOWNTIME when compared to using CentOS.
Now, is that the case?
Sure it can. Machines fail, applications crash, it's the nature of things. All things being the same, it's not a matter of when it goes down... but how fast it comes back up again. And that's where stellar support can make a huge difference. But you have to weigh the costs of downtime versus the cost of support. And you have to figure both direct and consequential costs.
The end result is that Red Hat pushes money at it because it works for them, CentOS rebrands the software because it works for them, and I as a user have a choice that fits me.
In practice, it's similar to Microsoft's acceptance of illegal copies of Windows. They would rather have the license fees, of course, but in lieu of that they'll accept mindshare. And what CentOS is doing is helping to maintain Red Hat's mindshare. A company might start out with CentOS, eventually experience some growing pains and realize it needs support, and be able to move right into Red Hat's lap.
Don't know if that happens a lot, but it would be another reason that Red Hat tolerates and encourages CentOS.
Don't let the fact that RedHat loves CentOS, supports it, and is happy to have enormous free testing of their flagdhip product interrupt your ALL CAPS EMPHASIS rant.
Well now, to be fair, he wasn't ranting in all-caps. He was ranting in boldface.
Now they are going to claim they invented the sun, and the stupid fucking patent office will grant it to them.
Now, why on Earth would you say something like that? That's just..... insane.:)
He was taking an obviously extreme position in order to make a valid point, I think. Two of them, as I see it: one, that Apple, Inc. has a habit of claiming developments made by others as their own (because, as everyone knows, only Apple is capable of true innovation) and two, that thanks to Congress, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have been turned into corporate whores who will grant pretty much anything to anyone. Okay, so he was more succinct that I was.
If this were Google, they'd be giving away the energy. Well, after they've used it and waited an appropriate amount of time.
Yes, it will be beta juice for years until they get the bugs worked out, at which point everything you plug into it, from your refrigerator to your sump pump, will begin sprouting advertising and will watch your every move.
Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants, and up to 50% for combined-cycle gas-fired plants. Plants designed to achieve peak efficiency while operating at capacity will be less efficient when operating off-design (i.e. temperatures too low.)[3]
Now, vehicular engines are in this range efficiency-wise
Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.
Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[10] and 6.5% in 2007.[10] In general, losses are estimated from the discrepancy between energy produced (as reported by power plants) and energy sold to end customers; the difference between what is produced and what is consumed constitute transmission and distribution losses.
which brings the total efficiency of power generation and distribution to 33 - 6.5 = 26.5%. Not exactly a "vast" difference, and there's still quite a bit of room for improvement in vehicle drive trains. I used the 33% figure because the bulk of power generation comes from coal and oil, not natural gas. Now to be fair, one should also consider the energy used to refine and transport gasoline and diesel fuel. The distribution system there is incredibly complex and I have no idea how to account for it, especially when much of that system (pipelines and refineries in particular) are powered from the grid anyways.
So, from two thirds to three fifths of our fossil fuel energy comes up the stack (or out the pipe) as waste heat. Not very impressive when you get right down to it.
How about a vehicle with electric motors that run off a gas generator? That would do exactly what you ask for and still be much more efficient. Sort of like how diesel electric locomotives work. The electric motors are MUCH more efficient that ICE's, so you use a gas generator to power the electric motors.
It's not that an electric motor is more efficient than an internal combustion engine, because the vehicle you're talking about still has a gas or diesel engine. It is that engine that is transducing chemical energy into mechanical, and that is where the bulk of fuel energy is lost as heat. You can't escape the theoretical limits on Carnot-cycle efficiency.
The gains come from a. eliminating the mechanical transmission, and b. operating the engine in the most efficient part of its output curve. The drive controller and electric motor(s) form what is, in effect, a computer-controlled continuously variable transmission. That allows for a continuous near-ideal impedance match between the engine and the wheels, with a well-designed control algorithm.
Manufacturers have been trying for decades to build a mechanical version of such a transmission: they exist, but they have issues. Replacing the entire transmission with a generator, motor controller, and a shunt-wound DC motor or two makes a lot of sense, especially with modern rare-earth permanent magnets.
Put it this way: a car of a given size and weight travelling at the same constant speed is going to take about as much power regardless of the number of cylinders: rolling resistance and wind drag are what they are. You don't need a V8 to keep any cruising along the highway. What you want those cylinders for is acceleration, which means you've basically sized that engine for the peak operating load, not the average. That's not what you want, because most of the time that engine not operating in its most efficient state. That's why some manufacturers have had engine designs that selectively disable cylinders when not needed.
By having an electric drive train designed to operate at its most efficient while driving at a more or less constant speed, and briefly overloading the electric motor only during high acceleration, you can get the benefit of both high efficiency and high acceleration. You might need a small battery or supercapacitor to provide power during acceleration, but that's a far cry from the heavy packs needed to provide primary power.
Such a vehicle should be practical now, but everybody seems to like the word "hybrid" for some reason.
I'm still all for electrics, because in the end, they *will* use less fuel (big generators are much more efficient than small ones, IC or otherwise)
That's not necessarily true, and you have to account for distribution losses when talking about grid delivery. None of this matters much anyway, the bulk of the U.S. grid won't handle any significant quantity of electric vehicles, not without a substantial buildout of new capacity.
> I'm reminded of the main title sequence for that Babylon 5 spinoff "Excalibur", where the Technomage Galen intones, "Whom do you trust? Whom do you serve?"
Wow... you mangled the quote and added bad grammar.
And just as much I realise the vast majority of (Windows/ OSX) computer users find it out of their league to decide what is safe or unsafe software, a devilish dilemma!
Not really. There's no particular reason that an operating system can't be reasonably safe on the Internet. The only "dilemma" here is whether or not you choose to use the mainstream operating system (Windows) or something else that's more secure. Yes, I know, Microsoft has come a long way with security, but they still have a ways to go, and as long as they're the dominant desktop OS they'll have a bull's eye painted on their backs. If you want security, and don't really need Microsoft compatibility (and in this age of ever more sophisticated Web-based applications, fewer and fewer people do) then skip Windows entirely and stop worrying about being part of a botnet.
This talk of trusted computer is exactly what everyone here is saying it is: a power grab. And they'll play on Windows users' fears in order to rationalize it, just like they've played on our fears of terrorism to do all the other things they've done to us. Mark my words: government officials will play the T-card (and of, of course, the CP-card) when it comes to promoting "trusted computing". Ought to call it "busted computing" since it fundamentally breaks the concept of a "personal computer."
Because the certificate authorities have a really proven track record.
Also, it really helps against buffer overrun exploits which in now way is a common thing...
The usual bollocks, in other words.
Yes, and in fact they're probably the ones who will accidentally subvert the whole thing on a Biblical scale some day, with some drain-bamaged "revenue enhancement" scheme like their ill-fated 404 redirects.
I agree on all counts except for one thing... If you click through to the article (Vinge had it right), she's talking about his idea that it rises slowly without any disaster to get people to go for it. Surely Vinge built on ideas from others, everyone does. But they're specifically talking about how accepting we all are (will be?) toward it. In his Rainbows End, a character specifically says that we traded freedom for safety, implying that it was a willing transition.
I'm reminded of the main title sequence for that Babylon 5 spinoff "Excalibur", where the Technomage Galen intones, "Whom do you trust? Whom do you serve?"
RIght now, I trust my computer systems because I know they serve me, and only me. If that changes, computing will be a very different place, although the bulk of humanity may never realize it.
Technically, pop stars are just easily reproducible. We'd need more advanced cloning technology to actually copy them, and if we do make copies of Britney Spears, I'm leaving the country.
I don't think a robot would be able to pull out a cell phone.
True, but what would happen is that the human operator would receive a message on his screen saying, "operation halted, programmed torque limit exceeded." The operator could then decided to override the limit and see if he can't work it loose. If that doesn't work, then he or she can call up the Car Talk guys.
For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Lego at the same time while looking through a telescope
Sounds like brain surgery to me, not quite rocket science then. Shouldn't be too hard.
The round-trip signal delay might also prove a problem for someone operating a remote gripper or performing some delicate real-time operation. You're going to need some serious AI on-board to handle most things, I think: the human operator would just issue directives and the local intelligence would get the job done. Eventually, as the software develops, you won't need the human.
This isn't exactly a trivial proposition: they'd probably have to spend a good chunk of that $300 billion getting this to work. Of course, having that kind of near-space technology would be absolutely invaluable. The idea of having satellites whose only job is to zip around repairing and/or salvaging other satellites is very appealing, and would make satellite designers begin to think about standardization, or at least make sure that their platforms are built to standards that the robots can handle.
One problem I can foresee is getting enough radiation-hardened processor power in orbit. The top-of-the-line spacegoing CPUs aren't very impressive compared to a desktop machine of ten years ago. The greater your component packing density the greater the odds that a subatomic particle is going to knock a bit loose somewhere. We'll probably just have to accept that the error/failure rate of such equipment is just going to be substantially higher, and build in enough redundancy and error-detection and correction capability to make it workable. Space is not a great environment for microprocessors.
Still, once you have robots that can perform at that level, just ship components up there and have them assemble even larger facilities in orbit. Immensity can be bought very cheaply in space: getting the raw materials up there is the problem. Next step would be to set up robotic mining colonies on the moon, and use a solar-powered mass-driver to ship refined products to Earth orbit. We could have an entire space infrastructure up and running before a human being ever sets foot in it. I remember reading James P. Hogan's "Two Faces of Tomorrow": he offered a remarkable vision of such technology at work. We couldn't do it today (that's why it was science-fiction) but it would certainly be doable.
That is, if we have the vision... personally, I doubt it. We're far too concerned with building another failed welfare state (or another failed fascist state, or both) to be bothered about such things. And that's too bad: maybe if we'd taken a trillion or so of that bailout money and put it into this kind of research we'd have something really worthwhile in a few years.
Sophisticated orbital robotics could kick off a near-space revolution as world-changing as the original Space Race, and with even greater economic return. Try convincing the President of that (or anyone on NASA's appropriations committee for that matter.) It truly boggles my mind (and depresses me, when I think about it) how many people in this country have been thoroughly brainwashed into believing that our space efforts should be shut down because they're a waste of money. Hell, if you just take economic effect of space-based weather prediction alone, our efforts in space have been well-rewarded. Now add in military tech, communications, scientific research... the whole tapestry of sciences and technologies that have been advanced because we took some captured German V2 rockets and started experimenting with them.
Except that Android looked very different until the iOS came out. Google bought it and took it in a new 'iOS' direction. Claiming it isn't so doesn't change the before and after.
Claiming Google didn't borrow liberally from the GUI elements of iOS is stretching it a bit.
Hm. I gather you did virtually no research before you wrote that. Unfortunate: revisionism makes you look very bad when you get caught at it. It's very apparent that you were comparing the iPhone to HTC's Sense custom user interface, which has about as much to do with the stock Android experience as apples do to oranges: other than the fact that they're fruit, and they're round, the resemblance ends. Presumably HTC was attempting to appeal to the well-known iPhone users addiction to gratuitous graphics. In any event, they replaced the entire so-called "home application" (the code the generates the GUI on Android) and the stock widgets with their own. You'd have discovered that in about about three seconds of Google time, but I guess it was more important to demonstrate (however inadequately) that Android is a rip-off of the iPhone. Like the GNU/Linux operating system that it is derived from, multiple user interfaces are readily available from different development teams. So, if you're gong to compare the iPhone to what Google offers, you really have to use the off-the-shelf Android interface or you're just blowing hot air.
In actual fact, Google was involved with Android well before the release of iOS. Maybe you've heard of a guy named Andy Rubin. Well, if you're an Apple fan you probably haven't, but in any event here's something you might want to take a gander at. This will also be enlightening from the Apple side of things. Note that Google acquired Android from Rubin in 2005 (they also acquired Rubin.) Apple released the first iPhone in January of 2007, and while the first Android version come out in November of that year, we're talking two entirely separate development projects. Nobody (and I mean nobody, except maybe an Apple patent lawyer) would have been confused as to which was which. That's still true today.
If you'd actually used Android and iOS in any significant way (not using some third-party Android GUI) you really wouldn't see any unusual similarities, other than, "yeah, they have icons, and the screen, like, scrolls and all." Heck, the first versions of Android didn't even have multitouch, although they did have widgets. They also multitasked, something else that the iPhone couldn't do at the time. I know, I owned one of the first T-Mobile G1s, the very first Google Phone. It had some very nice under-the-hood capabilities, but GUI-wise it was actually pretty lame compared to the iPhone.
I might add that Apple has been liberally borrowing from Android in recent iOS versions (nothing the least bit wrong with that, cross-fertilization benefits everyone.)
Nothing personal against you, but comments like this are so ignorant.
Steve Kondik is just one man in the team that produces Cyanogenmod. Cyanogenmod was never his primary day job. He continues to work on Cyanogenmod even under Samsung employ. Even if he had to remove himself completely from Cyanogenmod, the rest of the team is there.
Seriously, go look at the maintainers list. There's a ton of names there.
True... but the reality is that it was Steve Kondik who led that team to produce the results that it got. I disagree with you that such a team will automatically continue to produce the same results when the original leader leaves. It's his priorities, his vision, that can hold the group together and drive the end result.
It's certainly possible that Steve is no longer necessary for the project... but that's hardly guaranteed. I don't know much about their team dynamics and how they set the project goals to know either way.
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Nah, punch cards.
You nailed it with that one. Kinda makes me want to find a punch card just to keep one folded up in my wallet.
understanding tech is still nerdy
And a lack of understanding is ignorance, which some people wear like a medal of honor. It may make them more socially acceptable ... but they're still ignorant.
I would argue that the copies do have value, but their worth relates to the effort it takes to make them.
Their worth (especially in an era where the manufacture of copies is effectively costless) is related to how much the market will pay for them. That may or may not have anything to do with how much was invested in their production. Many popular (and profitable) works were made on minimal budgets, where other much more expensive efforts failed to earn the expected revenue. The buying public is fickle at best.
"The question is not how much support costs. The question is how much is DOWNTIME going to cost the company?"
You say it as if paying Red Hat's support would magically lower DOWNTIME when compared to using CentOS.
Now, is that the case?
Sure it can. Machines fail, applications crash, it's the nature of things. All things being the same, it's not a matter of when it goes down ... but how fast it comes back up again. And that's where stellar support can make a huge difference. But you have to weigh the costs of downtime versus the cost of support. And you have to figure both direct and consequential costs.
The boss is always right, because he pays you. That means you get to do whatever dumb thing he wants you to do, because it's his ass on the line.
It's your ass too, in many cases. That's why you make sure that his decision is properly documented as not being yours.
The end result is that Red Hat pushes money at it because it works for them, CentOS rebrands the software because it works for them, and I as a user have a choice that fits me.
In practice, it's similar to Microsoft's acceptance of illegal copies of Windows. They would rather have the license fees, of course, but in lieu of that they'll accept mindshare. And what CentOS is doing is helping to maintain Red Hat's mindshare. A company might start out with CentOS, eventually experience some growing pains and realize it needs support, and be able to move right into Red Hat's lap.
Don't know if that happens a lot, but it would be another reason that Red Hat tolerates and encourages CentOS.
Don't let the fact that RedHat loves CentOS, supports it, and is happy to have enormous free testing of their flagdhip product interrupt your ALL CAPS EMPHASIS rant.
Well now, to be fair, he wasn't ranting in all-caps. He was ranting in boldface.
Do you know what an emoticon of a smile could indicate?
Yeah, I do. My bad. I was only halfway through my first cup of coffee.
Now they are going to claim they invented the sun, and the stupid fucking patent office will grant it to them.
Now, why on Earth would you say something like that? That's just..... insane. :)
He was taking an obviously extreme position in order to make a valid point, I think. Two of them, as I see it: one, that Apple, Inc. has a habit of claiming developments made by others as their own (because, as everyone knows, only Apple is capable of true innovation) and two, that thanks to Congress, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have been turned into corporate whores who will grant pretty much anything to anyone. Okay, so he was more succinct that I was.
If this were Google, they'd be giving away the energy. Well, after they've used it and waited an appropriate amount of time.
Yes, it will be beta juice for years until they get the bugs worked out, at which point everything you plug into it, from your refrigerator to your sump pump, will begin sprouting advertising and will watch your every move.
You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Even today's "dirty" central power plants are still vastly more efficient than the what's found in your car or mine.
Let's see, according to our friends at Wikipedia:
Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants, and up to 50% for combined-cycle gas-fired plants. Plants designed to achieve peak efficiency while operating at capacity will be less efficient when operating off-design (i.e. temperatures too low.)[3]
Now, vehicular engines are in this range efficiency-wise
Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.
Of course, one has to account for line losses
Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[10] and 6.5% in 2007.[10] In general, losses are estimated from the discrepancy between energy produced (as reported by power plants) and energy sold to end customers; the difference between what is produced and what is consumed constitute transmission and distribution losses.
which brings the total efficiency of power generation and distribution to 33 - 6.5 = 26.5%. Not exactly a "vast" difference, and there's still quite a bit of room for improvement in vehicle drive trains. I used the 33% figure because the bulk of power generation comes from coal and oil, not natural gas. Now to be fair, one should also consider the energy used to refine and transport gasoline and diesel fuel. The distribution system there is incredibly complex and I have no idea how to account for it, especially when much of that system (pipelines and refineries in particular) are powered from the grid anyways.
So, from two thirds to three fifths of our fossil fuel energy comes up the stack (or out the pipe) as waste heat. Not very impressive when you get right down to it.
How about a vehicle with electric motors that run off a gas generator? That would do exactly what you ask for and still be much more efficient. Sort of like how diesel electric locomotives work. The electric motors are MUCH more efficient that ICE's, so you use a gas generator to power the electric motors.
It's not that an electric motor is more efficient than an internal combustion engine, because the vehicle you're talking about still has a gas or diesel engine. It is that engine that is transducing chemical energy into mechanical, and that is where the bulk of fuel energy is lost as heat. You can't escape the theoretical limits on Carnot-cycle efficiency.
The gains come from a. eliminating the mechanical transmission, and b. operating the engine in the most efficient part of its output curve. The drive controller and electric motor(s) form what is, in effect, a computer-controlled continuously variable transmission. That allows for a continuous near-ideal impedance match between the engine and the wheels, with a well-designed control algorithm.
Manufacturers have been trying for decades to build a mechanical version of such a transmission: they exist, but they have issues. Replacing the entire transmission with a generator, motor controller, and a shunt-wound DC motor or two makes a lot of sense, especially with modern rare-earth permanent magnets.
Put it this way: a car of a given size and weight travelling at the same constant speed is going to take about as much power regardless of the number of cylinders: rolling resistance and wind drag are what they are. You don't need a V8 to keep any cruising along the highway. What you want those cylinders for is acceleration, which means you've basically sized that engine for the peak operating load, not the average. That's not what you want, because most of the time that engine not operating in its most efficient state. That's why some manufacturers have had engine designs that selectively disable cylinders when not needed.
By having an electric drive train designed to operate at its most efficient while driving at a more or less constant speed, and briefly overloading the electric motor only during high acceleration, you can get the benefit of both high efficiency and high acceleration. You might need a small battery or supercapacitor to provide power during acceleration, but that's a far cry from the heavy packs needed to provide primary power.
Such a vehicle should be practical now, but everybody seems to like the word "hybrid" for some reason.
I'm still all for electrics, because in the end, they *will* use less fuel (big generators are much more efficient than small ones, IC or otherwise)
That's not necessarily true, and you have to account for distribution losses when talking about grid delivery. None of this matters much anyway, the bulk of the U.S. grid won't handle any significant quantity of electric vehicles, not without a substantial buildout of new capacity.
Quotes are supposed to be accurate. Half-remembered paraphrased revisions shouldn't be presented as quotes.
{sigh}
> I'm reminded of the main title sequence for that Babylon 5 spinoff "Excalibur", where the Technomage Galen intones, "Whom do you trust? Whom do you serve?"
Wow... you mangled the quote and added bad grammar.
"Who do you serve and who do you trust?"
Choosing to use who and whom
{sigh} Grammar Nazis.
I cut & paste it from somebody else that mangled it.
The article quite clearly states that the government wants *its own* computers to have TPM installed, it doesn't mention anything about home users.
Not yet.
And just as much I realise the vast majority of (Windows/ OSX) computer users find it out of their league to decide what is safe or unsafe software, a devilish dilemma!
Not really. There's no particular reason that an operating system can't be reasonably safe on the Internet. The only "dilemma" here is whether or not you choose to use the mainstream operating system (Windows) or something else that's more secure. Yes, I know, Microsoft has come a long way with security, but they still have a ways to go, and as long as they're the dominant desktop OS they'll have a bull's eye painted on their backs. If you want security, and don't really need Microsoft compatibility (and in this age of ever more sophisticated Web-based applications, fewer and fewer people do) then skip Windows entirely and stop worrying about being part of a botnet.
This talk of trusted computer is exactly what everyone here is saying it is: a power grab. And they'll play on Windows users' fears in order to rationalize it, just like they've played on our fears of terrorism to do all the other things they've done to us. Mark my words: government officials will play the T-card (and of, of course, the CP-card) when it comes to promoting "trusted computing". Ought to call it "busted computing" since it fundamentally breaks the concept of a "personal computer."
We have a saying "Count your fingers after you have shaken hands with a Britisher".
Janis Ian once said something similar: "I always check my wallet when leaving a record company executive's office" or words to that effect.
Because the certificate authorities have a really proven track record.
Also, it really helps against buffer overrun exploits which in now way is a common thing...
The usual bollocks, in other words.
Yes, and in fact they're probably the ones who will accidentally subvert the whole thing on a Biblical scale some day, with some drain-bamaged "revenue enhancement" scheme like their ill-fated 404 redirects.
I agree on all counts except for one thing ... If you click through to the article (Vinge had it right), she's talking about his idea that it rises slowly without any disaster to get people to go for it. Surely Vinge built on ideas from others, everyone does. But they're specifically talking about how accepting we all are (will be?) toward it. In his Rainbows End, a character specifically says that we traded freedom for safety, implying that it was a willing transition.
I'm reminded of the main title sequence for that Babylon 5 spinoff "Excalibur", where the Technomage Galen intones, "Whom do you trust? Whom do you serve?"
RIght now, I trust my computer systems because I know they serve me, and only me. If that changes, computing will be a very different place, although the bulk of humanity may never realize it.
Yes they're called pop stars
Technically, pop stars are just easily reproducible. We'd need more advanced cloning technology to actually copy them, and if we do make copies of Britney Spears, I'm leaving the country.
I don't think a robot would be able to pull out a cell phone.
True, but what would happen is that the human operator would receive a message on his screen saying, "operation halted, programmed torque limit exceeded." The operator could then decided to override the limit and see if he can't work it loose. If that doesn't work, then he or she can call up the Car Talk guys.
For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Lego at the same time while looking through a telescope
Sounds like brain surgery to me, not quite rocket science then. Shouldn't be too hard.
The round-trip signal delay might also prove a problem for someone operating a remote gripper or performing some delicate real-time operation. You're going to need some serious AI on-board to handle most things, I think: the human operator would just issue directives and the local intelligence would get the job done. Eventually, as the software develops, you won't need the human.
... personally, I doubt it. We're far too concerned with building another failed welfare state (or another failed fascist state, or both) to be bothered about such things. And that's too bad: maybe if we'd taken a trillion or so of that bailout money and put it into this kind of research we'd have something really worthwhile in a few years.
... the whole tapestry of sciences and technologies that have been advanced because we took some captured German V2 rockets and started experimenting with them.
This isn't exactly a trivial proposition: they'd probably have to spend a good chunk of that $300 billion getting this to work. Of course, having that kind of near-space technology would be absolutely invaluable. The idea of having satellites whose only job is to zip around repairing and/or salvaging other satellites is very appealing, and would make satellite designers begin to think about standardization, or at least make sure that their platforms are built to standards that the robots can handle.
One problem I can foresee is getting enough radiation-hardened processor power in orbit. The top-of-the-line spacegoing CPUs aren't very impressive compared to a desktop machine of ten years ago. The greater your component packing density the greater the odds that a subatomic particle is going to knock a bit loose somewhere. We'll probably just have to accept that the error/failure rate of such equipment is just going to be substantially higher, and build in enough redundancy and error-detection and correction capability to make it workable. Space is not a great environment for microprocessors.
Still, once you have robots that can perform at that level, just ship components up there and have them assemble even larger facilities in orbit. Immensity can be bought very cheaply in space: getting the raw materials up there is the problem. Next step would be to set up robotic mining colonies on the moon, and use a solar-powered mass-driver to ship refined products to Earth orbit. We could have an entire space infrastructure up and running before a human being ever sets foot in it. I remember reading James P. Hogan's "Two Faces of Tomorrow": he offered a remarkable vision of such technology at work. We couldn't do it today (that's why it was science-fiction) but it would certainly be doable.
That is, if we have the vision
Sophisticated orbital robotics could kick off a near-space revolution as world-changing as the original Space Race, and with even greater economic return. Try convincing the President of that (or anyone on NASA's appropriations committee for that matter.) It truly boggles my mind (and depresses me, when I think about it) how many people in this country have been thoroughly brainwashed into believing that our space efforts should be shut down because they're a waste of money. Hell, if you just take economic effect of space-based weather prediction alone, our efforts in space have been well-rewarded. Now add in military tech, communications, scientific research
Except that Android looked very different until the iOS came out. Google bought it and took it in a new 'iOS' direction. Claiming it isn't so doesn't change the before and after.
http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-like-before-and-after-the-launch-of-iphone/
Claiming Google didn't borrow liberally from the GUI elements of iOS is stretching it a bit.
Hm. I gather you did virtually no research before you wrote that. Unfortunate: revisionism makes you look very bad when you get caught at it. It's very apparent that you were comparing the iPhone to HTC's Sense custom user interface, which has about as much to do with the stock Android experience as apples do to oranges: other than the fact that they're fruit, and they're round, the resemblance ends. Presumably HTC was attempting to appeal to the well-known iPhone users addiction to gratuitous graphics. In any event, they replaced the entire so-called "home application" (the code the generates the GUI on Android) and the stock widgets with their own. You'd have discovered that in about about three seconds of Google time, but I guess it was more important to demonstrate (however inadequately) that Android is a rip-off of the iPhone. Like the GNU/Linux operating system that it is derived from, multiple user interfaces are readily available from different development teams. So, if you're gong to compare the iPhone to what Google offers, you really have to use the off-the-shelf Android interface or you're just blowing hot air.
In actual fact, Google was involved with Android well before the release of iOS. Maybe you've heard of a guy named Andy Rubin. Well, if you're an Apple fan you probably haven't, but in any event here's something you might want to take a gander at. This will also be enlightening from the Apple side of things. Note that Google acquired Android from Rubin in 2005 (they also acquired Rubin.) Apple released the first iPhone in January of 2007, and while the first Android version come out in November of that year, we're talking two entirely separate development projects. Nobody (and I mean nobody, except maybe an Apple patent lawyer) would have been confused as to which was which. That's still true today.
If you'd actually used Android and iOS in any significant way (not using some third-party Android GUI) you really wouldn't see any unusual similarities, other than, "yeah, they have icons, and the screen, like, scrolls and all." Heck, the first versions of Android didn't even have multitouch, although they did have widgets. They also multitasked, something else that the iPhone couldn't do at the time. I know, I owned one of the first T-Mobile G1s, the very first Google Phone. It had some very nice under-the-hood capabilities, but GUI-wise it was actually pretty lame compared to the iPhone.
I might add that Apple has been liberally borrowing from Android in recent iOS versions (nothing the least bit wrong with that, cross-fertilization benefits everyone.)
Now you can go revise your blog.
Nothing personal against you, but comments like this are so ignorant.
Steve Kondik is just one man in the team that produces Cyanogenmod. Cyanogenmod was never his primary day job. He continues to work on Cyanogenmod even under Samsung employ. Even if he had to remove himself completely from Cyanogenmod, the rest of the team is there.
Seriously, go look at the maintainers list. There's a ton of names there.
True ... but the reality is that it was Steve Kondik who led that team to produce the results that it got. I disagree with you that such a team will automatically continue to produce the same results when the original leader leaves. It's his priorities, his vision, that can hold the group together and drive the end result.
... but that's hardly guaranteed. I don't know much about their team dynamics and how they set the project goals to know either way.
It's certainly possible that Steve is no longer necessary for the project