One of the taller buildings close to where I work has six windmills mounted on top. You can often see them twirling away. The local alternative paper did an article on them once. Apparently the building receives up to 4% of their total energy from the windmills. This is a LONG way from "windmill powered buildings", (although is a higher percentage than what I expected) but it does serve another important purpose: From most of downtown, you can see that the building owners have put up windmills. This is apparently important enough that the actual savings wasn't a consideration.
I have a special needs kid, so this topic has some interest for me, but I am not a doctor nor a scientist. That said, from an engineer's point of view, TFA doesn't seem to give context for the 30% figure. If the chances are nominally 100,000 to 1, a 30 percent increase makes it 76,923 to one, which is still, for an individual, highly unlikely. I've also heard that the incidence of people being hit by a falling piano is up 100% this year.
All I'm saying is that the 30% figure sounds good as a headline, but it doesn't tell us whether we should make this a priority or not. (I'm guessing, not.)
Oh, *I* can hack it. I've got the last supported version of Flash up in the Dolphin browser on my device. But the install process is not something you can expect Fred and Ethyl Mertz to do. To them, it just doesn't work. Still. And personally, I'm unwilling to hack a solution on a client's or family member's device, try to explain how to use it and then support it afterwards. That seems to be a good way to get buried in a bunch of hacks you'll have to support forever.
But whose fault is that? Put the blame where it lies, Steve jobs trying to push his appstore crapstore lock in. I have flash on my fricking THREE YEAR OLD single core cellphone and ya know what? plays great. try HTML V5 with H.264 on anything less than a dual core and see what you get,even with hardware acceleration its a fricking pig.
So call a spade a spade, the killing of flash on mobile didn't have a damned thing to do with compatibility, or battery life, it had to do with Steve jobs making damned sure you weren't getting shit on that iPad without giving him 30%.
I agree with all of that, and for a long while it was the primary reason I recommended Android devices rather than the ipad. Because lots of websites don't work on the ipad. It was a compelling argument.
But then, Adobe for whatever frakking reason decided to cease support of flash on Android, and new Android devices started shipping without flash. My wife was really pissed when she got her Kindle HD and it wouldn't play video on any of her favorite sites. She nearly returned the device. (I think she should have.) I know, everything was supposed to switch to html 5 or some damned thing by now, but it's been over three years with almost no progress.
I don't care if it's html 5 or some protocol not yet invented, or if Adobe brings Flash back to mobile, or whatever. It just HAS TO WORK. Tablets will be toys to many consumers until then.
The one possible exception might be the users of mobile devices for which any web site that uses flash (still a whole lot of 'em) doesn't work. (I know, sometimes you can make it work on some devices, but mom and pop won't be able to figure it out.) I personally am not a tablet user, but I support them, and the inability to use flash is probably users' number one complaint. They may not know that's the problem, to them the website doesn't work. This is probably the primary killer of the tablet experience, and website builders need to be encouraged to fix it quickly.
C'mon, realistically, there is a rate of releases that's too slow, (critical bugs and security holes never get fixed) and a rate of releases that's too fast (add-ons can't keep up). I don't have an opinion on where the sweet spot might be, but I think it's a valid discussion.
Ok, so it's highly likely this will be followed by a wooshing sound...
I'm all for fast upgrades, personally, but to Fluffy's point, it's not the straight line average clear back to Firebird 1.0 that's important, but the rate of change right now. Unless you'd like to argue that the rate of update release has not increased?
Moreover, comparing to a different software package (even another browser) is problematic because it depends on what the design team calls an update.
Hmm,- what if you had a large enough concentration of water (and other stuff, like rocks) that it remained liquid under its own gravity, hence, no steam?
One could look at it this way -- maybe there are billions of planets in the goldilocks zone, with liquid water, and no life whatsoever. This could be good news, in a way. The less good news is that whatever microbes, plants, animals, we need we'll have to take with us or do without.
> However, the more disturbing possibility is that it exists in our future: maybe civilizations before they can spread out manage to wipe themselves out with their technologies, such as through nuclear war, bad nanotech, engineered bioweapons, resource depletion, environmental damage, or something we haven't even thought about before.
They could merge this with positional data and advertising revenue, and give the user a pass on overeating when they're in the vicinity of a paid sponsor. "I can't eat right now, my app says I shouldn't... no wait, it says I can eat now. Hey, there's a McDonald's."
In time, we'll all just believe our smart phones. "I'm hungry now for... a charbroiled steak. Yeah, at that Black Angus over there. Right now. Um, wait, aren't I a vegetarian?"
I'm afraid that hasn't been my experience. I make a nice side living replacing headphone jacks, batteries, and occasionally screens in Apple devices, for the people who don't want to pay Apple repair prices after the device is out of warranty. Of all the parts of all the handheld Apple devices, the flimsiest and most likely to fail is the headphone jack. I really think Apple should look at their suppliers. I've not seen this problem on other devices, even ancient Blackberrys in constant use that are on their third keyboard. Batteries that will no longer hold a charge is the second most common failure in Apple devices.
Screens -- they all use Gorilla Glass these days, and you're as likely to break a screen on any handheld device. Apple had a distinct disadvantage for awhile, not having a user replaceable battery, (this becoming quite a little cash cow to mom-and-pop repair shops) but sadly, it looks like modern phones from other manufacturers are following suit. I miss the days when I could recharge my Droid X2 in 30 seconds. Snap off back, take out battery, pull new battery out of charger, put in battery, snap back on, boot. My latest Motorola takes a half hour with special tools to change the battery.
But if you replace your Apple device every time an incremental improvement comes out, (which is still apparently common practice, judging by the crowds outside the store before opening time on tribute day, sorry, I mean new product day) the device you're carrying is unlikely to ever be out of warranty, which I guess is an advantage. If you front-load your repair costs by replacing the device while the warranty is still in effect, I guess your repair experiences can be better than average.
...she ended getting a Kindle Fire HD. The price was attractive and it had the features she needed. It'll run Android apps, although I think Amazon has their own app store. It runs Netflix well enough, and she already had a Kindle account so it was trivial to download her ebooks to the device.
One thing you should be aware of -- Adobe no longer supports flash on Android, and to my knowledge it has never been available on the ipad. A *lot* of video on the net is still flash. Wife was very upset to find that the websites she wanted to frequent (mostly rebroadcasts of soaps or football) all used flash, and none would work on her tablet. This was true for Facebook as well -- some videos would work, but flash-based videos would not.
It would therefore be a very good idea if your dad played with a tablet in the store, and tried visiting the websites and playing the videos as he would do as an owner, and see if they work.
Wife had intended for the Fire to replace her laptop, but with the flash issue, she ended up carrying around the laptop *and* the Fire. From a "carry fewer items" standpoint, the Fire was a complete failure. Still, it's easier to handle and you can hold it over your head in bed without fatigue.
Ipad? I dunno, some people swear by them. I support applications on the ipad, and so was issued one, but after carrying it around for two weeks, I realized it was yet another device to carry, as I'd still need my laptop. I gave it to teenage daughter and wife to play with, and they soon got bored with it. It's great for certain kinds of content consumption. The lack of flash made it even more useless to my wife than the Kindle, (being larger and heavier) and daughter didn't see anything it could do that her phone couldn't, the phone being a more compact unit that she's more likely to have on her. I ended up giving the ipad back to work, and they issued it to someone else, who no doubt loves it.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the taller buildings close to where I work has six windmills mounted on top. You can often see them twirling away. The local alternative paper did an article on them once. Apparently the building receives up to 4% of their total energy from the windmills. This is a LONG way from "windmill powered buildings", (although is a higher percentage than what I expected) but it does serve another important purpose: From most of downtown, you can see that the building owners have put up windmills. This is apparently important enough that the actual savings wasn't a consideration.
> Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?
Because that wouldn't be cool.
I have a special needs kid, so this topic has some interest for me, but I am not a doctor nor a scientist. That said, from an engineer's point of view, TFA doesn't seem to give context for the 30% figure. If the chances are nominally 100,000 to 1, a 30 percent increase makes it 76,923 to one, which is still, for an individual, highly unlikely. I've also heard that the incidence of people being hit by a falling piano is up 100% this year.
All I'm saying is that the 30% figure sounds good as a headline, but it doesn't tell us whether we should make this a priority or not. (I'm guessing, not.)
A good case could be made for electing them to Congress.
Screaming and throwing feces at each other? It would be an improvement.
At least, it would be entertaining.
Don't watch commercials.
Oh, *I* can hack it. I've got the last supported version of Flash up in the Dolphin browser on my device. But the install process is not something you can expect Fred and Ethyl Mertz to do. To them, it just doesn't work. Still. And personally, I'm unwilling to hack a solution on a client's or family member's device, try to explain how to use it and then support it afterwards. That seems to be a good way to get buried in a bunch of hacks you'll have to support forever.
But whose fault is that? Put the blame where it lies, Steve jobs trying to push his appstore crapstore lock in. I have flash on my fricking THREE YEAR OLD single core cellphone and ya know what? plays great. try HTML V5 with H.264 on anything less than a dual core and see what you get,even with hardware acceleration its a fricking pig.
So call a spade a spade, the killing of flash on mobile didn't have a damned thing to do with compatibility, or battery life, it had to do with Steve jobs making damned sure you weren't getting shit on that iPad without giving him 30%.
I agree with all of that, and for a long while it was the primary reason I recommended Android devices rather than the ipad. Because lots of websites don't work on the ipad. It was a compelling argument.
But then, Adobe for whatever frakking reason decided to cease support of flash on Android, and new Android devices started shipping without flash. My wife was really pissed when she got her Kindle HD and it wouldn't play video on any of her favorite sites. She nearly returned the device. (I think she should have.) I know, everything was supposed to switch to html 5 or some damned thing by now, but it's been over three years with almost no progress.
I don't care if it's html 5 or some protocol not yet invented, or if Adobe brings Flash back to mobile, or whatever. It just HAS TO WORK. Tablets will be toys to many consumers until then.
That the mega-rich have mega-toys seems as good an explanation as any.
Whatever works.
The guy must have just broke out of a block of ice and still thinks it's 1978. On the plus side, he missed Jersey Shore and the Kardashians.
The one possible exception might be the users of mobile devices for which any web site that uses flash (still a whole lot of 'em) doesn't work. (I know, sometimes you can make it work on some devices, but mom and pop won't be able to figure it out.) I personally am not a tablet user, but I support them, and the inability to use flash is probably users' number one complaint. They may not know that's the problem, to them the website doesn't work. This is probably the primary killer of the tablet experience, and website builders need to be encouraged to fix it quickly.
> And who wants to eat in a crowd of nerds.
Not even other nerds.
Everyone should have a dream.
's a good point, although I can see the value in introducing new functionality quickly, especially support for new standards and codecs.
> I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.
But seriously, what's wrong with using a browser primarily to read news websites? How many cat videos can you watch anyway?
So, basically, what you're looking for is Lynx with images. Interesting idea. I bet it'd render really fast.
C'mon, realistically, there is a rate of releases that's too slow, (critical bugs and security holes never get fixed) and a rate of releases that's too fast (add-ons can't keep up). I don't have an opinion on where the sweet spot might be, but I think it's a valid discussion.
Ok, so it's highly likely this will be followed by a wooshing sound...
I'm all for fast upgrades, personally, but to Fluffy's point, it's not the straight line average clear back to Firebird 1.0 that's important, but the rate of change right now. Unless you'd like to argue that the rate of update release has not increased?
Moreover, comparing to a different software package (even another browser) is problematic because it depends on what the design team calls an update.
Maybe it's *supposed* to look natural.
Hmm,- what if you had a large enough concentration of water (and other stuff, like rocks) that it remained liquid under its own gravity, hence, no steam?
I think that's called a planet.
One could look at it this way -- maybe there are billions of planets in the goldilocks zone, with liquid water, and no life whatsoever. This could be good news, in a way. The less good news is that whatever microbes, plants, animals, we need we'll have to take with us or do without.
> However, the more disturbing possibility is that it exists in our future: maybe civilizations before they can spread out manage to wipe themselves out with their technologies, such as through nuclear war, bad nanotech, engineered bioweapons, resource depletion, environmental damage, or something we haven't even thought about before.
Reality TV. I tell ya.
They could merge this with positional data and advertising revenue, and give the user a pass on overeating when they're in the vicinity of a paid sponsor. "I can't eat right now, my app says I shouldn't... no wait, it says I can eat now. Hey, there's a McDonald's."
In time, we'll all just believe our smart phones. "I'm hungry now for... a charbroiled steak. Yeah, at that Black Angus over there. Right now. Um, wait, aren't I a vegetarian?"
Incorporate a taser in the garment, then you've got something.
"My boyfriend broke up with me. By email. Hand me that carton of chunky monkey..." KZERRRRK
"Here's your ice cream. Um, are you ok? Why do you smell like burning latex?"
I'm afraid that hasn't been my experience. I make a nice side living replacing headphone jacks, batteries, and occasionally screens in Apple devices, for the people who don't want to pay Apple repair prices after the device is out of warranty. Of all the parts of all the handheld Apple devices, the flimsiest and most likely to fail is the headphone jack. I really think Apple should look at their suppliers. I've not seen this problem on other devices, even ancient Blackberrys in constant use that are on their third keyboard. Batteries that will no longer hold a charge is the second most common failure in Apple devices.
Screens -- they all use Gorilla Glass these days, and you're as likely to break a screen on any handheld device. Apple had a distinct disadvantage for awhile, not having a user replaceable battery, (this becoming quite a little cash cow to mom-and-pop repair shops) but sadly, it looks like modern phones from other manufacturers are following suit. I miss the days when I could recharge my Droid X2 in 30 seconds. Snap off back, take out battery, pull new battery out of charger, put in battery, snap back on, boot. My latest Motorola takes a half hour with special tools to change the battery.
But if you replace your Apple device every time an incremental improvement comes out, (which is still apparently common practice, judging by the crowds outside the store before opening time on tribute day, sorry, I mean new product day) the device you're carrying is unlikely to ever be out of warranty, which I guess is an advantage. If you front-load your repair costs by replacing the device while the warranty is still in effect, I guess your repair experiences can be better than average.
One thing you should be aware of -- Adobe no longer supports flash on Android, and to my knowledge it has never been available on the ipad. A *lot* of video on the net is still flash. Wife was very upset to find that the websites she wanted to frequent (mostly rebroadcasts of soaps or football) all used flash, and none would work on her tablet. This was true for Facebook as well -- some videos would work, but flash-based videos would not.
It would therefore be a very good idea if your dad played with a tablet in the store, and tried visiting the websites and playing the videos as he would do as an owner, and see if they work.
Wife had intended for the Fire to replace her laptop, but with the flash issue, she ended up carrying around the laptop *and* the Fire. From a "carry fewer items" standpoint, the Fire was a complete failure. Still, it's easier to handle and you can hold it over your head in bed without fatigue.
Ipad? I dunno, some people swear by them. I support applications on the ipad, and so was issued one, but after carrying it around for two weeks, I realized it was yet another device to carry, as I'd still need my laptop. I gave it to teenage daughter and wife to play with, and they soon got bored with it. It's great for certain kinds of content consumption. The lack of flash made it even more useless to my wife than the Kindle, (being larger and heavier) and daughter didn't see anything it could do that her phone couldn't, the phone being a more compact unit that she's more likely to have on her. I ended up giving the ipad back to work, and they issued it to someone else, who no doubt loves it.