I suggest comparing the financials for Apple and Dell.
For 2008, Dell whomped Apple on revenue ($61B vs. $32.5B). But in actual net income, Apple pulled in almost $5B vs. Dell's $3B.
Right there is a good argument against lowering margin and ramping up production--they don't need to (yet; the crumbling economy obviously isn't reflected in the 2008 numbers).
To meet your hypothetical goal of "massive production and excellent quality" Dell would have to give up the one thing that got them where they are: low prices.
Quantity, quality, low cost. Pick two, everything else is a compromise between the three.
Don't forget c) student's laptop is down for a day or two, or even longer (hit by virus/malware, hardware failure, etc). If the necessary software for all of the student's courses is on that machine, and there's no computer lab for any of them, that student will suddenly fall behind not just on one course, but several.
That's a good point, except that "Quan" is a surname and "Xiaohang" is a given name. It's a pretty safe assumption that this is the case here, much like assuming the name "Stephanie" is given or the name "Miller" is a family name.
(Getting really off-topic, but I can speak to Chinese names with more authority than I can the LHC;-) )
It's easier than that; to a Chinese person just learning western names, they'd have no idea whether "Stephanie" or "Miller" is the surname. Never mind when they run into people with last names that can also be first names, like Peter David;-)
However, most Chinese people have three characters to their names, and each Chinese character has one syllable. Xiaohang has two syllables, and therefore is not the character that represents the surname.
Knowing this, westerners can easily tell whether western writers have written Chinese name with surname first, or surname last (assuming given-name characters are merged into a single word, or connected with a hyphen). In TFA, they went with the latter.
I also doubt the bat made it anywhere near space, but you're not using a good comparison. By opening the car window in the first place you've disrupted the airflow around the car.
Not to say there's no wind whatsoever on the car surface, but there will definitely be areas with higher airflow and turbulence (front-facing surfaces, leading edges, etc).
For that reason, commodore64_love's butterfly, clinging to the windshield, obviously had no chance.
Most browsers these days disallow popups without user intervention, e.g. the old trick of attached a popup script to a page's onLoad or onUnload body attribute. Popups by default are still allowed using "onclick" events.
What some of the LMSes we trialed a few years back did was when you selected a course to launch, it would reload the page and then try opening the popup window. They were auto-populating a form with the selected course info and POST-ing it, to get a URL (specific to that session) to the course from the server.
Obviously those ran headfirst into the popup blockers.
>>>Babylon 5.... because I didn't have cable, I never did see the final 2 seasons
I don't know why you say that? Seasons 1-4 were broadcast on free television (the PTEN network). Only season 5 was limited to cable viewers. So the most you would have missed was one season.
You assume the parent poster was watching in the US. In Canada, for example, the first 3 seasons were on free TV, the last two were not.
What really pissed me off with the original Canadian broadcaster was what they replaced B5 with on their Saturday 5pm slot, and I shit you not: "Homeboys in Outer Space."
I got B5 recorded by friends with cable, and I boycotted that station's programming for two years. Not like they cared, but I got a lot more done because of it.
You should run a virus scanner, just to keep from accidentally forwarding viral crap to other people. Infected files and attachments, etc. And assuming you're safe is equally foolish. I run plenty of security software on my linux boxes.
For my home Mac, I'll very occasionally run an on-demand Clam AV scan, but I'm not going to waste my resources on an always-on scanner.
Any Windows users receiving files via email should already have a more up-to-date virus definition and other malware scanning program than I'd have, whether by the email provider or their company.
In any case, the effectiveness of Symantec AV on Windows is effectively crap--it not only failed to protect against an infection (technically a trojan) that got in via the Adobe Reader vulnerability a few weeks ago, it failed to detect it even with updated definitions five days later, after I manually isolated and archived the files.
It's a paradox of project management--too many stakeholders or dependencies, and you're going to bog down in red tape. Too few means that no one cares what your project is and won't waste their time helping you, and it'll never see the light of day. Finding a balance is difficult at best in any large organization.
The solution to prevent your children from accessing adult content that you don't want them to is to install/enable a filter on your own damned web browser. Why is it so hard for people to understand this?
Except that "solution" is about as effective as banning M-rated video games or 14+ TV shows--they'll just go to their friend's house, whose parents aren't as up to the task of blocking "offensive" material, or don't care.
Hence, the push by the "think of the children!" types to censor or ban the material outright.
Questions to navy/sonar folk... is active sonar used by surface fleets (e.g. carrier groups) every so often, so they don't sail right past subs floating silently in wait?
And are they detailed enough to distinguish between hulls in such close proximity, like the sub under the destroyer hull in the exercise?
If not (to either question), what's to prevent an enemy sub from pulling exactly this trick?
Take a modern smartphone, with physical buttons for every letter. A blind person could feel his way around the buttons to type something, but how often are they going to? Why send SMS back and forth, only to have the phone use text-to-speech to read it out, why not just call the person in the first place?
Someone who's merely visually impaired might actually be better served with a virtual keyboard; the iPhone's keys are not only larger than the Blackberries I've seen, it zooms in on the key you're pressing so you see what's about to be typed (if it's wrong, keep pressing while you move your finger to the correct key).
There are lots of impaired people with great potential, not just the blind, but not everything can be adapted for every impairment. In most places blind people also cannot drive a car. Stephen Hawking will never be able to use an iPhone or other smartphone practically.
IIRC with X-Plane 8 the add-on tools are included with the demo download. I don't know if this remains the case with v9.
It's a double-whammy for MS Flight Sim developers though.
First, the FS division was actually axed (unlike Bungie, which became an independent company again).
Second: they probably won't find work at any companies producing FS add-ons, since they themselves will likely (in the next couple of years) stop making add-ons for a dead product.
So even if they try staying within the FS realm, they'd be stuck producing freeware or shareware add-ons.
I can understand the need for such technology and even how it will help. What I don't understand is the choice of device, if cost is really a factor then a COTS HTC Touch or something similar would be far cheaper, if you were dealing with large enough volumes you could problem mount/design a standard Windows Mobile ARM 9 kit inside your own shell (cutting down weight and giving you exactly what you need).
This is a interesting modification of a consumer device but part of me feels that there would be better and cheaper solutions which wouldn't leave you subject to Apple's DRM'd iPhone. To my knowledge the iPhone only allows web applications, are they really that much easier to program for when compared to the Symbian/Windows Mobile/Embedded Linux platforms?
Your knowledge on the iPhone was correct up to June of 2008, when the second-gen iPhones and iPod Touches were released with native programs, not just web apps. First-gen models have an upgrade to give them this ability too.
That said, it's peculiar that they designed a mounting system for a consumer device, rather than a dedicated module, but I suppose this isn't for actual military use, and it must be a lot cheaper for them to go this route--precisely because iPod Touches and iPhones are shipping in huge volumes, and they're all exactly the same shape+size making a one-size-fits-all mounting possible.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned... does this software use the accelerometers in the iPhone/iPod Touch at all? Is there any benefit to measuring recoil, like comparing it against the profile for that weapon/ammo and offering suggestions to improve distance, etc?
You have a good point in that a wheel shouldn't be invented twice. But if a 'wheel' doesn't exist then by all means invent it, don't try to shoehorn a square block of wood in there. My goal is to find those people who are able invent that wheel and, perhaps just as importantly, know when it needs to be invented. In my personal experience, the "Java mentality" doesn't seem to extend to that second bit.
Is this mentality exclusive to Java? Would.NET (as an example) not see similar problems?
Just wondering why you singled out Java specifically, rather than any number of buzzword-compliant languages.
WARNING: Excessive exposure to warning labels and messages may make you less likely to pay attention to them, and prevent use of brain from exercising common sense and personal responsibility.
My input on an applicant has been requested a number of times, and I also tend to judge based on the formatting of the resume. But, I've tried getting away from that.
First, I've encountered a few resumes which were completely mangled by either the temp agency, or they were hard copies of a job board's web page. IIRC that board only let you type text; no file upload and no WYSIWYG editor, so you had no chance to format it or align text within sections. Completely not the fault of the applicant in these cases.
Second, my closest friend during university was a well-rounded genius; straight A engineering student, and had no problems socializing at all (unlike many geeks including myself). But, he wrote like he spoke--very, very informally. When we reviewed each others' reports and eventually resumes, I'd always suggest many ways to make it more formal, and less a one-way conversation.
He's gotten much better since then in that department, but it never stopped him being hired quickly... granted that had more to do with industry contacts and networking than randomly submitting his resume to places.
How many in the industrialized world know how to grow and maintain sufficient crops to last them all year? Don't forget the Monstanto crops with the terminator genes, so you can't save seeds to plant next year.
Worse, the panicking hordes would beseige crop and animal farms and possibly kill the farmers trying to protect them. Long-term species survival would be sacrificed for short-term individual survival.
If applying to a smaller company that doesn't use software to rank resumes based on pointless buzzwords, an unpolished resume may actually be a benefit.
Why? Because they'll all be screened by an actual human, and it'll stand out. It won't look screened and cleaned, as if it had gone through a PR filter (which in a way, temp agencies and resume services are), and will appear more "honest."
This is the same mentality that people use to justify tossing garbage onto the street when there's a trash can one block further, or leaving your tray at the fast food table even though you'll pass the trash on your way out.
That said, it seems the e-waste getting to China is coming from people who were conscientious enough to not throw it in the garbage. May have even paid out-of-pocket for the recycler to take it.
Sad that an accreditation program has to be implemented, and even more government overhead to manage it. One more mark against the "the free market will take care of it" mantra; no it won't, it only gets it out-of-sight and out-of-mind, ending with the poorest of the poor.
One critical difference: all those features are things (some) drivers want. If they cause an accident, you'll be probably be laughed out of court for filing suit against the makers of these "voluntary" distractions.
Toss the equivalent of spam at them, in a product they paid tens of thousands of dollars for, and people will be much less willing to hold back the lawsuits. The court will be far more sympathetic too.
I think we're talking the same thing, we're just crossing wires on the circumstances.
ABS will give you more control compared to locking brakes, under any situation, at the expense of absolute stopping distance.
But, if braking on extremely slippery surfaces where traction is effectively zero (worst is probably water on top of ice), ABS won't help because the wheels can't get any grip to even change the car's orientation.
I have ABS and winter tires, and still slid through a stop at the bottom of a small, iced-over incline despite approaching at a mere 5 km/h. Thankfully no cars were coming from the sides.
You might improve your chances if your tires have studs or chains, but those are illegal where I live.
I'm not sure you understand the problem he had... on dry surface, ABS does (theoretically) keep you in control to drive around obstacles.
It is useless if sliding on ice, slush, or water (hydroplaning). Turn the wheel hard over, you'll have even less steering control than if your brakes locked up on dry pavement.
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I suggest comparing the financials for Apple and Dell.
For 2008, Dell whomped Apple on revenue ($61B vs. $32.5B). But in actual net income, Apple pulled in almost $5B vs. Dell's $3B.
Right there is a good argument against lowering margin and ramping up production--they don't need to (yet; the crumbling economy obviously isn't reflected in the 2008 numbers).
To meet your hypothetical goal of "massive production and excellent quality" Dell would have to give up the one thing that got them where they are: low prices.
Quantity, quality, low cost. Pick two, everything else is a compromise between the three.
Don't forget c) student's laptop is down for a day or two, or even longer (hit by virus/malware, hardware failure, etc). If the necessary software for all of the student's courses is on that machine, and there's no computer lab for any of them, that student will suddenly fall behind not just on one course, but several.
That's a good point, except that "Quan" is a surname and "Xiaohang" is a given name. It's a pretty safe assumption that this is the case here, much like assuming the name "Stephanie" is given or the name "Miller" is a family name.
(Getting really off-topic, but I can speak to Chinese names with more authority than I can the LHC ;-) )
It's easier than that; to a Chinese person just learning western names, they'd have no idea whether "Stephanie" or "Miller" is the surname. Never mind when they run into people with last names that can also be first names, like Peter David ;-)
However, most Chinese people have three characters to their names, and each Chinese character has one syllable. Xiaohang has two syllables, and therefore is not the character that represents the surname.
Knowing this, westerners can easily tell whether western writers have written Chinese name with surname first, or surname last (assuming given-name characters are merged into a single word, or connected with a hyphen). In TFA, they went with the latter.
I also doubt the bat made it anywhere near space, but you're not using a good comparison. By opening the car window in the first place you've disrupted the airflow around the car.
Not to say there's no wind whatsoever on the car surface, but there will definitely be areas with higher airflow and turbulence (front-facing surfaces, leading edges, etc).
For that reason, commodore64_love's butterfly, clinging to the windshield, obviously had no chance.
How those popups are invoked is key.
Most browsers these days disallow popups without user intervention, e.g. the old trick of attached a popup script to a page's onLoad or onUnload body attribute. Popups by default are still allowed using "onclick" events.
What some of the LMSes we trialed a few years back did was when you selected a course to launch, it would reload the page and then try opening the popup window. They were auto-populating a form with the selected course info and POST-ing it, to get a URL (specific to that session) to the course from the server.
Obviously those ran headfirst into the popup blockers.
>>>Babylon 5 .... because I didn't have cable, I never did see the final 2 seasons
I don't know why you say that? Seasons 1-4 were broadcast on free television (the PTEN network). Only season 5 was limited to cable viewers. So the most you would have missed was one season.
You assume the parent poster was watching in the US. In Canada, for example, the first 3 seasons were on free TV, the last two were not.
What really pissed me off with the original Canadian broadcaster was what they replaced B5 with on their Saturday 5pm slot, and I shit you not: "Homeboys in Outer Space."
I got B5 recorded by friends with cable, and I boycotted that station's programming for two years. Not like they cared, but I got a lot more done because of it.
You should run a virus scanner, just to keep from accidentally forwarding viral crap to other people. Infected files and attachments, etc. And assuming you're safe is equally foolish. I run plenty of security software on my linux boxes.
For my home Mac, I'll very occasionally run an on-demand Clam AV scan, but I'm not going to waste my resources on an always-on scanner.
Any Windows users receiving files via email should already have a more up-to-date virus definition and other malware scanning program than I'd have, whether by the email provider or their company.
In any case, the effectiveness of Symantec AV on Windows is effectively crap--it not only failed to protect against an infection (technically a trojan) that got in via the Adobe Reader vulnerability a few weeks ago, it failed to detect it even with updated definitions five days later, after I manually isolated and archived the files.
Lest people think only government wastes monumental time and effort towards something relatively trivial, Microsoft spent a full year working on a feature one of its developers claims could've been done in a week.
It's a paradox of project management--too many stakeholders or dependencies, and you're going to bog down in red tape. Too few means that no one cares what your project is and won't waste their time helping you, and it'll never see the light of day. Finding a balance is difficult at best in any large organization.
The solution to prevent your children from accessing adult content that you don't want them to is to install/enable a filter on your own damned web browser. Why is it so hard for people to understand this?
Except that "solution" is about as effective as banning M-rated video games or 14+ TV shows--they'll just go to their friend's house, whose parents aren't as up to the task of blocking "offensive" material, or don't care.
Hence, the push by the "think of the children!" types to censor or ban the material outright.
Questions to navy/sonar folk... is active sonar used by surface fleets (e.g. carrier groups) every so often, so they don't sail right past subs floating silently in wait?
And are they detailed enough to distinguish between hulls in such close proximity, like the sub under the destroyer hull in the exercise?
If not (to either question), what's to prevent an enemy sub from pulling exactly this trick?
Take a modern smartphone, with physical buttons for every letter. A blind person could feel his way around the buttons to type something, but how often are they going to? Why send SMS back and forth, only to have the phone use text-to-speech to read it out, why not just call the person in the first place?
Someone who's merely visually impaired might actually be better served with a virtual keyboard; the iPhone's keys are not only larger than the Blackberries I've seen, it zooms in on the key you're pressing so you see what's about to be typed (if it's wrong, keep pressing while you move your finger to the correct key).
There are lots of impaired people with great potential, not just the blind, but not everything can be adapted for every impairment. In most places blind people also cannot drive a car. Stephen Hawking will never be able to use an iPhone or other smartphone practically.
The size limitations of the typical smartphone, never mind the all-visual iPhone, severely hampers their utility to the truly blind. And there are already mobile devices specifically for them
IIRC with X-Plane 8 the add-on tools are included with the demo download. I don't know if this remains the case with v9.
It's a double-whammy for MS Flight Sim developers though.
First, the FS division was actually axed (unlike Bungie, which became an independent company again).
Second: they probably won't find work at any companies producing FS add-ons, since they themselves will likely (in the next couple of years) stop making add-ons for a dead product.
So even if they try staying within the FS realm, they'd be stuck producing freeware or shareware add-ons.
If you're searching Amazon it seems you're only looking for paid or official products, but why? Most X-Plane add-ons are free.
The biggest X-Plane enthusiast site is x-plane.org, which lists over 2500 aircraft and hundreds of scenery/airport packages.
X-Plane also runs on Mac and Linux, not just Windows. A stripped-down version even runs on iPhone.
I can understand the need for such technology and even how it will help. What I don't understand is the choice of device, if cost is really a factor then a COTS HTC Touch or something similar would be far cheaper, if you were dealing with large enough volumes you could problem mount/design a standard Windows Mobile ARM 9 kit inside your own shell (cutting down weight and giving you exactly what you need).
This is a interesting modification of a consumer device but part of me feels that there would be better and cheaper solutions which wouldn't leave you subject to Apple's DRM'd iPhone. To my knowledge the iPhone only allows web applications, are they really that much easier to program for when compared to the Symbian/Windows Mobile/Embedded Linux platforms?
Your knowledge on the iPhone was correct up to June of 2008, when the second-gen iPhones and iPod Touches were released with native programs, not just web apps. First-gen models have an upgrade to give them this ability too.
That said, it's peculiar that they designed a mounting system for a consumer device, rather than a dedicated module, but I suppose this isn't for actual military use, and it must be a lot cheaper for them to go this route--precisely because iPod Touches and iPhones are shipping in huge volumes, and they're all exactly the same shape+size making a one-size-fits-all mounting possible.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned... does this software use the accelerometers in the iPhone/iPod Touch at all? Is there any benefit to measuring recoil, like comparing it against the profile for that weapon/ammo and offering suggestions to improve distance, etc?
You have a good point in that a wheel shouldn't be invented twice. But if a 'wheel' doesn't exist then by all means invent it, don't try to shoehorn a square block of wood in there. My goal is to find those people who are able invent that wheel and, perhaps just as importantly, know when it needs to be invented. In my personal experience, the "Java mentality" doesn't seem to extend to that second bit.
Is this mentality exclusive to Java? Would .NET (as an example) not see similar problems?
Just wondering why you singled out Java specifically, rather than any number of buzzword-compliant languages.
And if you get past third base and reach home plate, being in at least decent shape is crucial if you're a guy (one word: endurance).
WARNING: Excessive exposure to warning labels and messages may make you less likely to pay attention to them, and prevent use of brain from exercising common sense and personal responsibility.
My input on an applicant has been requested a number of times, and I also tend to judge based on the formatting of the resume. But, I've tried getting away from that.
First, I've encountered a few resumes which were completely mangled by either the temp agency, or they were hard copies of a job board's web page. IIRC that board only let you type text; no file upload and no WYSIWYG editor, so you had no chance to format it or align text within sections. Completely not the fault of the applicant in these cases.
Second, my closest friend during university was a well-rounded genius; straight A engineering student, and had no problems socializing at all (unlike many geeks including myself). But, he wrote like he spoke--very, very informally. When we reviewed each others' reports and eventually resumes, I'd always suggest many ways to make it more formal, and less a one-way conversation.
He's gotten much better since then in that department, but it never stopped him being hired quickly... granted that had more to do with industry contacts and networking than randomly submitting his resume to places.
How many in the industrialized world know how to grow and maintain sufficient crops to last them all year? Don't forget the Monstanto crops with the terminator genes, so you can't save seeds to plant next year.
Worse, the panicking hordes would beseige crop and animal farms and possibly kill the farmers trying to protect them. Long-term species survival would be sacrificed for short-term individual survival.
That's why we're trying to warm the place up...I say, Google away, so we won't have to worry about cold winters anymore.
Right, so tropical diseases and insects can spread and thrive further north. No thanks.
If applying to a smaller company that doesn't use software to rank resumes based on pointless buzzwords, an unpolished resume may actually be a benefit.
Why? Because they'll all be screened by an actual human, and it'll stand out. It won't look screened and cleaned, as if it had gone through a PR filter (which in a way, temp agencies and resume services are), and will appear more "honest."
I'd mod you up if I had the points.
This is the same mentality that people use to justify tossing garbage onto the street when there's a trash can one block further, or leaving your tray at the fast food table even though you'll pass the trash on your way out.
That said, it seems the e-waste getting to China is coming from people who were conscientious enough to not throw it in the garbage. May have even paid out-of-pocket for the recycler to take it.
Sad that an accreditation program has to be implemented, and even more government overhead to manage it. One more mark against the "the free market will take care of it" mantra; no it won't, it only gets it out-of-sight and out-of-mind, ending with the poorest of the poor.
One critical difference: all those features are things (some) drivers want. If they cause an accident, you'll be probably be laughed out of court for filing suit against the makers of these "voluntary" distractions.
Toss the equivalent of spam at them, in a product they paid tens of thousands of dollars for, and people will be much less willing to hold back the lawsuits. The court will be far more sympathetic too.
I think we're talking the same thing, we're just crossing wires on the circumstances.
ABS will give you more control compared to locking brakes, under any situation, at the expense of absolute stopping distance.
But, if braking on extremely slippery surfaces where traction is effectively zero (worst is probably water on top of ice), ABS won't help because the wheels can't get any grip to even change the car's orientation.
I have ABS and winter tires, and still slid through a stop at the bottom of a small, iced-over incline despite approaching at a mere 5 km/h. Thankfully no cars were coming from the sides.
You might improve your chances if your tires have studs or chains, but those are illegal where I live.
I'm not sure you understand the problem he had... on dry surface, ABS does (theoretically) keep you in control to drive around obstacles.
It is useless if sliding on ice, slush, or water (hydroplaning). Turn the wheel hard over, you'll have even less steering control than if your brakes locked up on dry pavement.