Let's say you run Chris's Cell Phone Store. This law goes into effect. Now, you have to go to the FCC website and find every phone you sell, pay to have labels printed up (or hand scrawl the labels on every phone) and affix them to every phone. You also have to learn about the ratings to answer customer questions. Don't you love it when people waste your time and money for you? It's always "no big deal" when you make other people do your work for you. My answer would be, what's the big deal about you going to the FCC website yourself and looking up the useless information for the phone you are interested in?
Obviously, there are an arbitrary number of variables you could theoretically demand a label for; but this is one that is already computed, already available, and apparently of some public interest, which would seem to make it a not-illogical choice if the people of a municipality so decide.
I, for one, am glad that the court system can be used to keep the majority from making arbitrary rules.
You are right - we should let any nutjob group put useless information on our products. Each cell phone can come with a 50-page list of grievances. PETA can put whether animals were used in it's production. Al Gore can slap the carbon footprint on there. Greenpeace can list the natural resources used on there, and score the phone for it's environmental impact. UNICEF can score it for child welfare. Then of course, you will have religious groups who want to score it for thetan count and whatnot. (Thank you, Firefox, for not including "thetan" in your dictionary!)
I'm sorry, but it needs to be recognized that labels are not free and should be used judiciously. If people care about the emissivity of their cell phone, they can get together with other uneducated people and rate them at their own expense. If they find one that emits something greater than a few mW, they could just call the FCC anyway. Which, by the way, requires that this sort of testing be made public anyway.
Times have changed... now it is only older people who have landline phones. Ever notice the huge number of cell phone stores in poor areas? That Walmart, Target, and drug stores dedicate entire endcaps in high-traffic areas to prepaid cell phone cards? Low-income people have some really good tips on how to get cheap cell phone service. Follow their lead and you can save hundreds or thousands each year.
Amen. I can't believe people are leaving that out. The stories about failed IT projects abound on this site - you'd think people would recognize risk aversion.
Doubling the speed of cars isn't a solution UNLESS cars can go that fast, slow drivers speed up, highways are redesigned for the speed, safety features are improved, etc.
Adding lanes isn't a solution UNLESS you have the land available, money available, have a place to put the extra cars exiting onto secondary roads, etc.
All solutions have caveats, that doesn't make the solutions all invalid.
It takes an interesting mind to watch thousands of 5-passenger cars go by with a single occupant and not think that carpooling is a solution. Just one additional passenger will double the capacity of the road.
Seriously, I will never understand those who jackrabbit from on light to the next. Why in the world would you do that when slow and steady nearly always wins the race?
To avoid getting caught behind you?;p
Everywhere is different. On N. Broad St. in Philly, you can see all the lights ahead of you turn at almost the same instant. They are timed in such a way to encourage you to go as fast as is humanly possible. On my morning commute, there is one light timed for the speed limit, but timed to turn red. The only way to make the light is to accelerate as fast as possible. I'd love sensible light timing like you have.
The summary is quite misleading, conflating the CAFE standards test and the window sticker EPA mileage. The window sticker standards have changed many times, most recently in 2008. They will change again as reality changes.
The European tests are a joke in comparison. The exact same car will have fantastic mileage in Europe for some mysterious reason:) Carmakers over-inflate tires, put tape over body panel seams, and remove rear-view mirrors. There is less of that kind of thing in the US because the government spot-checks the manufacturers' numbers. Hyundai/Kia were the most recent culprits.
As for the speed limit issue - I believe the "highway" test originally tried to simulate rush hour traffic in Los Angeles... this obviously will not apply to everyone equally. If you take your family truckster down I-95 for a roadtrip and average 75 MPH, you will suffer significantly more aerodynamic loss than a test that averages 45 MPH.
They mentioned that they could lift a battleship with it, but they ended up making something brand new. They did use parts from battleships, though. Basically, they welded on anything they could muster. I remember looking into it after I read the book, and the most fanciful part is designing a shock absorber that could make the impulse from a nuclear explosion survivable for a human.
I have to disagree. Just last night I was marveling at how we have rovers cruising around mars, orbiters and probes strewn all over the place, and how the technology is now at hand to create "tugboats" for asteroids. Maybe manned missions have been disappointing, but robotic missions are amazing too.
Phones get used for picture taking and video capture very often ONLY because people have to carry them around all the time anyhow.
There's a saying that the best camera for the job is the one you have with you:)
Tablets certainly don't get used that way a notable amount.
Someone hasn't been to a dance recital in a while:) The iPad-as-a-video-camera thing is actually quite comical looking. Everyone has them up over their heads and you can tell which person is watching which kid based on the huge image they are holding over their head. I was one of perhaps only a half dozen with a traditional camcorder (I like to lurk in the back where I'm not blocking anyone and take advantage of the image stabilization and high zoom).... almost everyone else was using their cell phone. This has now happened two years in a row.
1) Because uploading uncompressed video via 3g, and downloading the encoded result, would take much longer than encoding it locally.
But why convert it? What are you going to do with it? You are setting the bar pretty low here - many devices would quickly run out of battery power if you ran them for the time necessary to convert even a short video. Is this really a use case for you?
2) I don't want to carry around enough batteries to power your 8 year-old computer, not to mention the device itself...
A MacBook Air weighs about 1kg and has a full on i5 or i7 processor. A Chromebook weights slightly more than that. If you really need to encode video on the run, weight is not going to be your limiting factor - cost might be, but not weight.
3) As long as you don't want H.264 video, an ATOM will encode to most other codecs at better than real-time, so there's probably no real bottleneck there.
I guess it is conceivable that they package an Atom with hardware encoding. A web search led me to the PowerVR VXE. If one of these netbooks included that chip, you could very well use it for encoding video. I'm fairly certain the products we are discussing do not have this chip.
4) It was just an illustration of where Android and other touch OSes still fall short of being "real computers" even though they're gradually getting more capable.
Yeah, I guess I was just arguing that Android is not really being released on devices where the hardware limits aren't already severe. In principle, you are right. In practice, Android is very unlikely to be limiting you from any practical use.
If the OS is Android, it's going to be pretty close to USELESS for content creation.
I think you are narrowly defining content creation. Android devices should be superior to general purpose devices for capturing raw video, photos, and the like. There are keyboards for Android that should let you pound out a novel just fine. There are a growing number of music-creation apps. Are you going to edit and convert pro-quality video? Hell, no. Are you going to do professional retouching of photos? Probably not. Text editors and programming APIs on Android pale in comparison to the tools available on Linux, OSX, or Windows.
Meanwhile, my old ~$100 EeePC running Linux does a pretty good job of it...
Yeah, but I bet you don't do much video conversion on it!:)
Symbolism is nice if it helps with funding, but no.
You do it because the engineering will only happen if it is needed. We'll never figure out how to live in a hostile radiation-blasted vacuum if we aren't even trying.
As the summary implies, one way people use when they attempt to adjust is by killing people and breaking things. It is probably in our best interest, both individually and "as a society", to help these people adjust in a more orderly fashion.
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Let's say you run Chris's Cell Phone Store. This law goes into effect. Now, you have to go to the FCC website and find every phone you sell, pay to have labels printed up (or hand scrawl the labels on every phone) and affix them to every phone. You also have to learn about the ratings to answer customer questions. Don't you love it when people waste your time and money for you? It's always "no big deal" when you make other people do your work for you. My answer would be, what's the big deal about you going to the FCC website yourself and looking up the useless information for the phone you are interested in?
Obviously, there are an arbitrary number of variables you could theoretically demand a label for; but this is one that is already computed, already available, and apparently of some public interest, which would seem to make it a not-illogical choice if the people of a municipality so decide.
I, for one, am glad that the court system can be used to keep the majority from making arbitrary rules.
You are right - we should let any nutjob group put useless information on our products. Each cell phone can come with a 50-page list of grievances. PETA can put whether animals were used in it's production. Al Gore can slap the carbon footprint on there. Greenpeace can list the natural resources used on there, and score the phone for it's environmental impact. UNICEF can score it for child welfare. Then of course, you will have religious groups who want to score it for thetan count and whatnot. (Thank you, Firefox, for not including "thetan" in your dictionary!)
I'm sorry, but it needs to be recognized that labels are not free and should be used judiciously. If people care about the emissivity of their cell phone, they can get together with other uneducated people and rate them at their own expense. If they find one that emits something greater than a few mW, they could just call the FCC anyway. Which, by the way, requires that this sort of testing be made public anyway.
Times have changed... now it is only older people who have landline phones. Ever notice the huge number of cell phone stores in poor areas? That Walmart, Target, and drug stores dedicate entire endcaps in high-traffic areas to prepaid cell phone cards? Low-income people have some really good tips on how to get cheap cell phone service. Follow their lead and you can save hundreds or thousands each year.
That's his point.
Amen. I can't believe people are leaving that out. The stories about failed IT projects abound on this site - you'd think people would recognize risk aversion.
Did you reply to the wrong person? It seems we agree.
It is indeed simplistic to view empty cars as underutilized. That was kind of my point?
But carpooling isn't a solution unless
Doubling the speed of cars isn't a solution UNLESS cars can go that fast, slow drivers speed up, highways are redesigned for the speed, safety features are improved, etc.
Adding lanes isn't a solution UNLESS you have the land available, money available, have a place to put the extra cars exiting onto secondary roads, etc.
All solutions have caveats, that doesn't make the solutions all invalid.
I hope that is obvious enough for me not to mention! :)
It takes an interesting mind to watch thousands of 5-passenger cars go by with a single occupant and not think that carpooling is a solution. Just one additional passenger will double the capacity of the road.
No, I was using liters/100 km... I'm aware of the differences between Imperial and US gallons - but Google will convert that for you, too :)
Seriously, I will never understand those who jackrabbit from on light to the next. Why in the world would you do that when slow and steady nearly always wins the race?
To avoid getting caught behind you? ;p
Everywhere is different. On N. Broad St. in Philly, you can see all the lights ahead of you turn at almost the same instant. They are timed in such a way to encourage you to go as fast as is humanly possible. On my morning commute, there is one light timed for the speed limit, but timed to turn red. The only way to make the light is to accelerate as fast as possible. I'd love sensible light timing like you have.
The summary is quite misleading, conflating the CAFE standards test and the window sticker EPA mileage. The window sticker standards have changed many times, most recently in 2008. They will change again as reality changes.
The European tests are a joke in comparison. The exact same car will have fantastic mileage in Europe for some mysterious reason :) Carmakers over-inflate tires, put tape over body panel seams, and remove rear-view mirrors. There is less of that kind of thing in the US because the government spot-checks the manufacturers' numbers. Hyundai/Kia were the most recent culprits.
As for the speed limit issue - I believe the "highway" test originally tried to simulate rush hour traffic in Los Angeles... this obviously will not apply to everyone equally. If you take your family truckster down I-95 for a roadtrip and average 75 MPH, you will suffer significantly more aerodynamic loss than a test that averages 45 MPH.
They mentioned that they could lift a battleship with it, but they ended up making something brand new. They did use parts from battleships, though. Basically, they welded on anything they could muster. I remember looking into it after I read the book, and the most fanciful part is designing a shock absorber that could make the impulse from a nuclear explosion survivable for a human.
Thank you, that is really cool.
I have to disagree. Just last night I was marveling at how we have rovers cruising around mars, orbiters and probes strewn all over the place, and how the technology is now at hand to create "tugboats" for asteroids. Maybe manned missions have been disappointing, but robotic missions are amazing too.
In "Footfall" they strap the whole fleet of shuttles to a single nuclear rocket and use them as fighters against alien invaders.
Phones get used for picture taking and video capture very often ONLY because people have to carry them around all the time anyhow.
There's a saying that the best camera for the job is the one you have with you :)
Tablets certainly don't get used that way a notable amount.
Someone hasn't been to a dance recital in a while :) The iPad-as-a-video-camera thing is actually quite comical looking. Everyone has them up over their heads and you can tell which person is watching which kid based on the huge image they are holding over their head. I was one of perhaps only a half dozen with a traditional camcorder (I like to lurk in the back where I'm not blocking anyone and take advantage of the image stabilization and high zoom).... almost everyone else was using their cell phone. This has now happened two years in a row.
Because eventually our current habitat will be no more. It's not exactly an emergency, but some forward progress would be nice.
1) Because uploading uncompressed video via 3g, and downloading the encoded result, would take much longer than encoding it locally.
But why convert it? What are you going to do with it? You are setting the bar pretty low here - many devices would quickly run out of battery power if you ran them for the time necessary to convert even a short video. Is this really a use case for you?
2) I don't want to carry around enough batteries to power your 8 year-old computer, not to mention the device itself...
A MacBook Air weighs about 1kg and has a full on i5 or i7 processor. A Chromebook weights slightly more than that. If you really need to encode video on the run, weight is not going to be your limiting factor - cost might be, but not weight.
3) As long as you don't want H.264 video, an ATOM will encode to most other codecs at better than real-time, so there's probably no real bottleneck there.
I guess it is conceivable that they package an Atom with hardware encoding. A web search led me to the PowerVR VXE. If one of these netbooks included that chip, you could very well use it for encoding video. I'm fairly certain the products we are discussing do not have this chip.
4) It was just an illustration of where Android and other touch OSes still fall short of being "real computers" even though they're gradually getting more capable.
Yeah, I guess I was just arguing that Android is not really being released on devices where the hardware limits aren't already severe. In principle, you are right. In practice, Android is very unlikely to be limiting you from any practical use.
If the OS is Android, it's going to be pretty close to USELESS for content creation.
I think you are narrowly defining content creation. Android devices should be superior to general purpose devices for capturing raw video, photos, and the like. There are keyboards for Android that should let you pound out a novel just fine. There are a growing number of music-creation apps. Are you going to edit and convert pro-quality video? Hell, no. Are you going to do professional retouching of photos? Probably not. Text editors and programming APIs on Android pale in comparison to the tools available on Linux, OSX, or Windows.
Meanwhile, my old ~$100 EeePC running Linux does a pretty good job of it...
Yeah, but I bet you don't do much video conversion on it! :)
What for? For the symbolism?
Symbolism is nice if it helps with funding, but no.
You do it because the engineering will only happen if it is needed. We'll never figure out how to live in a hostile radiation-blasted vacuum if we aren't even trying.
Screw warp speed, go plaid!
Wages won't come up until the oversupply in labor is gone (or some intervention from government occurs).
As the summary implies, one way people use when they attempt to adjust is by killing people and breaking things. It is probably in our best interest, both individually and "as a society", to help these people adjust in a more orderly fashion.