...a staple of science fiction for decades, but even when the price became trivial (most modern cell phones will do it) most people didn't want it.
And for much the same reason -- videophone conversations work well in movies as they more closely resemble the "talking head" interactions the public is used to in films, but in the real world, people don't necessarily want someone else looking at their face while they talk.
I thought of that too -- lighter than air craft helps make solar power more practical by significantly reducing the energy required for lift.
But there's a catch-22 waiting for you there. The Hindenberg disaster was related to the use of hydrogen, which is easy to make but very volatile. Modern lighter than air craft use helium, which is not volatile at all, but extremely difficult to make. Once we use up the helium available to us on Earth, we're pretty much out. Kinda like fossil fuels.
> Unless we see some truly shocking advances in module efficiency, it'll be impossible to cram enough solar panels onto a 747's wings to lift that much weight [...]
Besides that, I strongly suspect there isn't enough power in the form of sunlight falling on a surface the size of a 747's wings to achieve the objective. In other words, it's not just a matter of solar panel efficiency, it's also a matter of total energy available for capture.
Not really the point. The technology itself has limits that prevent it from scaling up to reasonable size. This is not a matter of figuring out how to make a better motor. The issue is the density (energy per weight) of the energy source itself. Surely this could be improved upon, but unlikely that sufficient gains could be made to power a passenger airplane.
I dunno, Cameron didn't do Alien, the film of which Aliens was a sequel. And he isn't the same person he was when he did Terminator 2. His current oral hijinks reminds me more of Lucas about the time he forgot how to make decent movies.
The thing I don't understand is that Cameron's "four sequels to Avatar" is old news -- why are we even talking about it now? I strongly suspect (as I did when this was first announced years ago) that he'll make one sequel, it'll do...ok... and if he manages to make a second sequel it'll be "meh" and that'll be the end of the franchise, except for the inevitable direct-to-video releases by unknown directors.
And finally, do we all understand that Avatar was made in 2009? Seven years ago?
I tried one at a store once. It did not find it intuitive.
At the shopping mall near my home, an Apple Store and Microsoft Store are across from each other. The Apple Store is always busy with many employees helping customers. The Microsoft Store is always empty with a few employees standing around. You might like the Microsoft Store better.
If you're comparing iphones or in fact practically any currently available smartphone with the Windows Phone, then yeah, point taken. At 2.8% the windows phone is pretty much a dead product, only kept afloat by Microsoft cash. The Surface is an overpriced laptop that pretends it's a tablet. No surprise there either. I suspect that Microsoft spends more on product placement than they get in sales.
But we both know that Microsoft isn't the real competition, don't we? It's like saying, yeah, Chrysler sales are down, but look how much better we are than Lada.
> (though studies have shown younger people tend to prefer Android, due to price I assume)
My daughter tells me that her friends prefer Android because the models tend to be distinctly different and you can customize the desktop, making the phone "your own". Whereas every Apple phone is like every other Apple phone.
But you know, that works for some people. I have a similar argument with a friend who tends to buy "custom" motorcycles, meaning a very expensive bike whereon the vendor has fastened a standard set of upgrades. I tend to buy a model closer to base and then only change or add the parts I want to change. He asks me, why didn't I just buy the bike I wanted? I point out that I may want something different than what the vendor sells. I've pointed out that his "custom" bike is exactly the same as every other "custom" bike of the same model, but he doesn't see anything wrong with that. His phone is an iphone, and he stands in line to trade up every time Apple craps out a new one. He's really looking forward to that one with the amoled display and the curved screen. Which Samsung has had for a couple years now. But that doesn't matter because it's not an iphone.
It's a different mindset. But to circle around to the original topic, the attraction of Android is not solely about price. It's also about having some control over the look and feel of your purchase. (And being able to replace the battery is nice, too.)
"Developers who can't ship their code, usually can't write good code either, and don't understand the bigger picture of systems they're creating"
That's most of the developers I've seen. Good QA can save them from themselves.
...except that QA people often lack context, and couldn't tell a trivial issue from a company-threatened snafu if it bit them on the ass. They need the developers to tell them what to look for. And... we're back to the first problem, only with more people on the payroll.
Other phones don't exist. If the next iphone has curved glass and an amoled display, it's new and innovative. Get with the program. And get in line outside the store. It opens in four hours.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that the servers will be built in China just like the servers they're currently buying? I mean, mightn't it be something as simple as changing the sign at the Foxconn assembly line to read "Apple" instead of some other vendor?
Mind you, I used to do admin on those (noisy!) Apple 1U servers way back when, and they didn't suck. But I don't think there's a chance in hell of Apple building servers in the US. At least on the long term. So although I commiserate (welcome to our world, Apple!) and wish them luck, I don't see a substantial difference.
I know it's a crazy idea, but maybe if Apple built their own servers, they wouldn't have to worry about that. Maybe they could even sell a few of them to other companies.
Nah. Crazy idea. Forget I mentioned it.
First I was nodding my head, yeah that's a good idea. But wait... does Apple build any of their own hardware?
I was going to say something snarky about the head of a trendy boutique brand pushing unnecessary obsolescence as a way to finance his second yacht, but C. Custer has already said what needed to be said.
...that is, some people will click on it. The same people who click on the "your computer is infested with 352 viruses!!!!!" popups. (A friend's son takes every one of these literally. I'm getting sick of getting calls at dinner with "I've been hacked again!! I have 823 viruses on my machine!!")
Personally, this adds motivation to my attempts to get off Winders I have Mint up on the new machine, just figuring out what to do about my Windows-only apps. (A few don't work under Wine.)
"So why don't you just upgrade? It's free, you know." Yeah, I know. But I don't want to spend time trying to figure out where they've hidden the features I use this time, and all the tricks to make it less annoying. If I'm going to go through that much trouble, I might as well look at alternate operating systems.
And just as a personal thing, I don't like "live tiles". I think that was a huge mistake. At least with widgets, you had to choose to use them. They didn't just pop up all over the screen.
I think the time of double digit raises in IT is past, except for really special circumstances. You have a point about training. Last year I worked for a company that had a training budget but didn't allow travel. So you could train, if you could do it with online classes you took at your desk in the (loud, distracting) bullpen area. It worked about as well as you could imagine.
If I'm understanding TFA correctly, we've come full cycle. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In the nineties, the thing was to hire bright individuals and grow them. Later, the paradigm changed to "IT is plug and play" so hire the talent you need at the time and lay off the people with training you didn't need anymore. Now we're back to the more healthy paradigm of growing your current employees to meet new challenges. This is a good thing. I wonder how long it'll last.
I also wonder what this will do of the paradigm of laying off locals and substituting green cards.
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I'm wondering how that would work. You're thinking layering transparent displays to some depth appropriate for 3d effects?
And for much the same reason -- videophone conversations work well in movies as they more closely resemble the "talking head" interactions the public is used to in films, but in the real world, people don't necessarily want someone else looking at their face while they talk.
Elbonian Air?
More like "railgun airways".
Sounds like takeoffs could be rather unpleasant.
I thought of that too -- lighter than air craft helps make solar power more practical by significantly reducing the energy required for lift.
But there's a catch-22 waiting for you there. The Hindenberg disaster was related to the use of hydrogen, which is easy to make but very volatile. Modern lighter than air craft use helium, which is not volatile at all, but extremely difficult to make. Once we use up the helium available to us on Earth, we're pretty much out. Kinda like fossil fuels.
> Unless we see some truly shocking advances in module efficiency, it'll be impossible to cram enough solar panels onto a 747's wings to lift that much weight [...]
Besides that, I strongly suspect there isn't enough power in the form of sunlight falling on a surface the size of a 747's wings to achieve the objective. In other words, it's not just a matter of solar panel efficiency, it's also a matter of total energy available for capture.
Not really the point. The technology itself has limits that prevent it from scaling up to reasonable size. This is not a matter of figuring out how to make a better motor. The issue is the density (energy per weight) of the energy source itself. Surely this could be improved upon, but unlikely that sufficient gains could be made to power a passenger airplane.
Elbonian Air?
I dunno, Cameron didn't do Alien, the film of which Aliens was a sequel. And he isn't the same person he was when he did Terminator 2. His current oral hijinks reminds me more of Lucas about the time he forgot how to make decent movies.
The thing I don't understand is that Cameron's "four sequels to Avatar" is old news -- why are we even talking about it now? I strongly suspect (as I did when this was first announced years ago) that he'll make one sequel, it'll do ...ok... and if he manages to make a second sequel it'll be "meh" and that'll be the end of the franchise, except for the inevitable direct-to-video releases by unknown directors.
And finally, do we all understand that Avatar was made in 2009? Seven years ago?
I tried one at a store once. It did not find it intuitive.
At the shopping mall near my home, an Apple Store and Microsoft Store are across from each other. The Apple Store is always busy with many employees helping customers. The Microsoft Store is always empty with a few employees standing around. You might like the Microsoft Store better.
If you're comparing iphones or in fact practically any currently available smartphone with the Windows Phone, then yeah, point taken. At 2.8% the windows phone is pretty much a dead product, only kept afloat by Microsoft cash. The Surface is an overpriced laptop that pretends it's a tablet. No surprise there either. I suspect that Microsoft spends more on product placement than they get in sales.
But we both know that Microsoft isn't the real competition, don't we? It's like saying, yeah, Chrysler sales are down, but look how much better we are than Lada.
> (though studies have shown younger people tend to prefer Android, due to price I assume)
My daughter tells me that her friends prefer Android because the models tend to be distinctly different and you can customize the desktop, making the phone "your own". Whereas every Apple phone is like every other Apple phone.
But you know, that works for some people. I have a similar argument with a friend who tends to buy "custom" motorcycles, meaning a very expensive bike whereon the vendor has fastened a standard set of upgrades. I tend to buy a model closer to base and then only change or add the parts I want to change. He asks me, why didn't I just buy the bike I wanted? I point out that I may want something different than what the vendor sells. I've pointed out that his "custom" bike is exactly the same as every other "custom" bike of the same model, but he doesn't see anything wrong with that. His phone is an iphone, and he stands in line to trade up every time Apple craps out a new one. He's really looking forward to that one with the amoled display and the curved screen. Which Samsung has had for a couple years now. But that doesn't matter because it's not an iphone.
It's a different mindset. But to circle around to the original topic, the attraction of Android is not solely about price. It's also about having some control over the look and feel of your purchase. (And being able to replace the battery is nice, too.)
"Developers who can't ship their code, usually can't write good code either, and don't understand the bigger picture of systems they're creating"
That's most of the developers I've seen. Good QA can save them from themselves.
Depends on how it's curved. I suspect something like what Samsung has been doing with the Edge.
It doesn't matter. It's different when Apple does it.
(I don't understand it either...)
Other phones don't exist. If the next iphone has curved glass and an amoled display, it's new and innovative. Get with the program. And get in line outside the store. It opens in four hours.
Hm. I wonder if it runs osx.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that the servers will be built in China just like the servers they're currently buying? I mean, mightn't it be something as simple as changing the sign at the Foxconn assembly line to read "Apple" instead of some other vendor?
Mind you, I used to do admin on those (noisy!) Apple 1U servers way back when, and they didn't suck. But I don't think there's a chance in hell of Apple building servers in the US. At least on the long term. So although I commiserate (welcome to our world, Apple!) and wish them luck, I don't see a substantial difference.
I know it's a crazy idea, but maybe if Apple built their own servers, they wouldn't have to worry about that. Maybe they could even sell a few of them to other companies.
Nah. Crazy idea. Forget I mentioned it.
First I was nodding my head, yeah that's a good idea. But wait... does Apple build any of their own hardware?
I was going to say something snarky about the head of a trendy boutique brand pushing unnecessary obsolescence as a way to finance his second yacht, but C. Custer has already said what needed to be said.
just sayin'...
Personally, this adds motivation to my attempts to get off Winders I have Mint up on the new machine, just figuring out what to do about my Windows-only apps. (A few don't work under Wine.)
"So why don't you just upgrade? It's free, you know." Yeah, I know. But I don't want to spend time trying to figure out where they've hidden the features I use this time, and all the tricks to make it less annoying. If I'm going to go through that much trouble, I might as well look at alternate operating systems.
And just as a personal thing, I don't like "live tiles". I think that was a huge mistake. At least with widgets, you had to choose to use them. They didn't just pop up all over the screen.
True, sadly. I guess we should enjoy reasonable behavior while it lasts.
I think the time of double digit raises in IT is past, except for really special circumstances. You have a point about training. Last year I worked for a company that had a training budget but didn't allow travel. So you could train, if you could do it with online classes you took at your desk in the (loud, distracting) bullpen area. It worked about as well as you could imagine.
If I'm understanding TFA correctly, we've come full cycle. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In the nineties, the thing was to hire bright individuals and grow them. Later, the paradigm changed to "IT is plug and play" so hire the talent you need at the time and lay off the people with training you didn't need anymore. Now we're back to the more healthy paradigm of growing your current employees to meet new challenges. This is a good thing. I wonder how long it'll last.
I also wonder what this will do of the paradigm of laying off locals and substituting green cards.
Man, it's gonna suck being old. Hope you feel the same way in a few decades.