It's still pricey, though. The Surface will have the same software constraints as the iPad and the same cost problem. The Surface is also limited to the interface formerly called Metro.
Now the Atom based Windows 8 tablets, on the other hand - they are probably more your thing. Run all your favorite Windows software and use the tablet interface when it suits that kind of use.
The sky? Sorry, I don't mean to be a dick, but there are parts of the world where fresh water is in abundance. Place one of these factories next to a hydroelectric dam and you have a source of fresh water and renewable power in a single location. Using fresh water is not always a great evil. Even in parts of the world where water is more precious, you could use factory or sewage effluent if it isn't already being used for something else.
I'd say that if you found the older Windows tablets useful, then yeah of course the Surface would appeal to you. The battery life and weight improvements will probably even grow the market. But I don't see a huge marketshare appearing for this one edge case. Just MHO:)
Most (all?) of the hotels I have been in on business have the TV in a location that would suck as a workstation. Also, a laptop lets you work in the common areas. Really I don't think this idea holds up to real use.
When I'm stationed in the hotel, I can connect the Surface to the hotel TV and a keyboard+mouse and I have a full office suite right there.
While that idea does scream "Neato!" in my head, when I think about it a little longer, it is absurd. By the time you carry around keyboard, connectors, and Surface - wouldn't you be better off with a small laptop? And then you wouldn't need to stress over whether or not you can actually jack in to the hotel TV or whether it will be in a convenient spot. Something like a Macbook Air (2.4lbs) or 3lb Ultrabook is a bit larger than a tablet, but not significantly larger than tablet+keyboard+cover+connection cables and adapters, and a lot less unwieldy.
At least the magazines had the excuse of being written a month before they actually got delivered... this guy is running a frigging blog and his "comparison" involves reading down spec sheets and accessory lists. And he dismisses "almost no apps" and "no accessories" and "inferior screen" as not really being that important. And then the really strange part is his assumption that people will use this for Office apps? Is that what people are doing with tablets?
I've never understood the appeal of the tablets, so I don't really feel like I have a device to "root" for. My wife wanted a Kindle Fire HD, so we got one. I played with it for a few hours and she turned it on once, I think. I asked her why she made me get it and she said "to play videos for the kids in the car". Alrighty, then - glad she didn't ask for an iPad...
LibreOffice had a long-running bug on documents with wrap set on certain objects that rendered my invoices almost unusable, so I'm still on OpenOffice. I do appreciate the work they've done, though.
If I were going to do coding work on one of the suites, I might pick OpenOffice for the more permissive license.
I think this has been discussed, but Bitcoin is not infinitely divisible - each bitcoin consists of 10^8 satoshis, which cannot be further divided. Once the coins are all mined, there can be no increase in the money supply, and once people start to trade in single satoshis, no further splitting can occur.
Deflation has a few drawbacks, which I would probably describe poorly.
But one big one is that employees are generally more resistant to a pay cut than a pay increase. This is understandable and makes perfect sense given human nature, but screws up the efficiency of the economy. You can try to fight human nature, or you can set up the system so that there is a steady level of predictable inflation. Then, when the economy requires a pay cut, you don't actually have to cut pay - you only have to freeze it. Some people have gotten wise to this ruse - government tends to pay out to unions and certain benefits with "cost of living" increases. But in general, it seems to be pretty effective.
The second big one is that if money is increasing in value, people will hold on to cash - "speculating" that it's value will increase. This is a horrible drain on the economy. Cash is supposed to be a proxy for barter. If people start hoarding it, it can't be used for barter anymore and the economy suffers. When cash is constantly losing value, people are foolish to hold on to it, which makes it available for use in the economy.
Yet another is debt. If I buy a home with a 30-year mortgage, I can rest easy that I will be able to afford to pay off my loan so long as my income doesn't go down. In fact, because of inflation, my income is likely to increase relative to the loan amount. In other words, some of my debt inflates away. If there was deflation, there would be a risk that I would be unable to pay off my 30-year mortgage since my salary might actually reduce compared to the loan amount. This is a drain on the economy, since businesses and individuals are less likely to take out a loan.
There are other negative effects of a fixed money supply, but those are the ones that concern me the most. Inflation is not all roses, and it can really bite you in the ass, too. But low levels of predictable inflation are something that can be planned for, and most of the disadvantages can be dealt with by simply not holding on to cash.
Yeah, I was going to say, you want your kid to take public speaking? Behold! Not everything needs to happen in school.
Besides, we don't need to cram every damn thing into high school. I took a public speaking course in high school. It was an elective. There were other electives I would have liked to take as well... I took them in (drumroll, please...) college! I also took a worthless Chemistry class in high school - but the teacher was horrible, not the subject (I think our class collectively scored a 40% on the state Chemistry test).
I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. I didn't mean that people were interested in this story because it mentioned Bitcoin. I meant that people on Slashdot seem interested in how currency works in general, at least in part because of Bitcoin.
One of the criticisms of Bitcoin is that it does not inflate after a certain point - so in theory it could stifle an economy that outgrows it. And along comes a real-world example of a fiat currency that is unable to inflate. Personally, I find that to be very interesting.
I think that, at least in part because of Bitcoin, there is quite a bit of interest about currency here. I know I appreciate the story and find it interesting.
Yeah, I've seen that, too. That looks different - like SD video zoomed to fill a laptop screen. I'm talking about definite compression problems. The somewhat fuzzy zoomed picture doesn't bother me as much, for some reason. Or at least not as much during sporting events. There's nothing like a 70-inch screen to really magnify compression artifacts:)
I notice it when out at a bar or something. They have these huge, gorgeous flat panels and the room is dark so you can see the compression well. Football is particularly brutal - their live encoder can't handle grass well... it looks very over-compressed to anyone who has ever ripped DVDs and played with the compression settings. OTA signal is generally much better.
you appeared to be making fun of what my standards for accepting SSDs for use in my own machines
Correct. I consider WD's bread and butter to be making an entirely different product. While it is possible that their SSDs will be great, I'd put my own money on a chipmaker (as you did with Intel).
I thought the analogy was pretty decent. Two ways to travel with different underlying technologies versus two ways to store data with different underlying technologies.
and that is the part that seems to have given SSD users such headaches in the past.
Agreed. The drive controller is probably pretty hard to get right. But in the case of Intel, some of their products use a chip by LSI's Sandforce, who make nothing except SSD controllers.
Apple didn't have any cell phone experience either, that didn't seem to stop them.
That's an excellent point, but let me ask you - would you have taken that bet? I sure would not have. Maybe WD will rock the world with a really superior iSSD, but I'm not going to bet on it. And as you say, the do seem to be betting on their bread-and-butter. The weird thing is that they inherited an SSD joint venture of some kind with Intel when they bought Hitachi.
Boeing makes a reliable way to get from point A to point B.
Aren't you taking a joke a bit too seriously?
Nvidia doesn't own a single chip fab either, what does that have to do with anything?
Nvidia at least designs their own graphics chips. If WD has any chip design experience at all, it is in their drive controller. And I'm sure some of that experience applies to SSDs, but they have no memory chip experience at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh... feel that argument have facts for those who think and arguments for those who reason?
Also, how can plug-design speed up charge time 24 times?
The standard redefines time to be 24x of SI time.
It's still pricey, though. The Surface will have the same software constraints as the iPad and the same cost problem. The Surface is also limited to the interface formerly called Metro.
Now the Atom based Windows 8 tablets, on the other hand - they are probably more your thing. Run all your favorite Windows software and use the tablet interface when it suits that kind of use.
The sky? Sorry, I don't mean to be a dick, but there are parts of the world where fresh water is in abundance. Place one of these factories next to a hydroelectric dam and you have a source of fresh water and renewable power in a single location. Using fresh water is not always a great evil. Even in parts of the world where water is more precious, you could use factory or sewage effluent if it isn't already being used for something else.
I'd say that if you found the older Windows tablets useful, then yeah of course the Surface would appeal to you. The battery life and weight improvements will probably even grow the market. But I don't see a huge marketshare appearing for this one edge case. Just MHO :)
You don't really believe that, do you? If you do, I want to sell you a bridge. Only one owner, Roman Polanski.
Most (all?) of the hotels I have been in on business have the TV in a location that would suck as a workstation. Also, a laptop lets you work in the common areas. Really I don't think this idea holds up to real use.
The Tea Party certainly shares some ideals with the Libertarians... the founding fathers were largely Libertarian, after all.
But in general the Tea Party platform is a bullet list of platitudes and the Libertarian platform is a well-thought-out, self-consistent document.
And I hope you aren't married.
But haven't Windows tablets been available for decades?
If you have to play Angry Birds with visible pixels, it makes baby Jesus quite irate.
Captialisation? Punctuation?
When I'm stationed in the hotel, I can connect the Surface to the hotel TV and a keyboard+mouse and I have a full office suite right there.
While that idea does scream "Neato!" in my head, when I think about it a little longer, it is absurd. By the time you carry around keyboard, connectors, and Surface - wouldn't you be better off with a small laptop? And then you wouldn't need to stress over whether or not you can actually jack in to the hotel TV or whether it will be in a convenient spot. Something like a Macbook Air (2.4lbs) or 3lb Ultrabook is a bit larger than a tablet, but not significantly larger than tablet+keyboard+cover+connection cables and adapters, and a lot less unwieldy.
At least the magazines had the excuse of being written a month before they actually got delivered... this guy is running a frigging blog and his "comparison" involves reading down spec sheets and accessory lists. And he dismisses "almost no apps" and "no accessories" and "inferior screen" as not really being that important. And then the really strange part is his assumption that people will use this for Office apps? Is that what people are doing with tablets?
I've never understood the appeal of the tablets, so I don't really feel like I have a device to "root" for. My wife wanted a Kindle Fire HD, so we got one. I played with it for a few hours and she turned it on once, I think. I asked her why she made me get it and she said "to play videos for the kids in the car". Alrighty, then - glad she didn't ask for an iPad...
Am I missing something, or did he not even have the unit to review?
Because there was an un-broken version of the software?
I submitted the bug, provided sample documents, and ran tests that they asked me to. I don't think anyone wants me submitting C++ code...
LibreOffice had a long-running bug on documents with wrap set on certain objects that rendered my invoices almost unusable, so I'm still on OpenOffice. I do appreciate the work they've done, though.
If I were going to do coding work on one of the suites, I might pick OpenOffice for the more permissive license.
I think this has been discussed, but Bitcoin is not infinitely divisible - each bitcoin consists of 10^8 satoshis, which cannot be further divided. Once the coins are all mined, there can be no increase in the money supply, and once people start to trade in single satoshis, no further splitting can occur.
Deflation has a few drawbacks, which I would probably describe poorly.
But one big one is that employees are generally more resistant to a pay cut than a pay increase. This is understandable and makes perfect sense given human nature, but screws up the efficiency of the economy. You can try to fight human nature, or you can set up the system so that there is a steady level of predictable inflation. Then, when the economy requires a pay cut, you don't actually have to cut pay - you only have to freeze it. Some people have gotten wise to this ruse - government tends to pay out to unions and certain benefits with "cost of living" increases. But in general, it seems to be pretty effective.
The second big one is that if money is increasing in value, people will hold on to cash - "speculating" that it's value will increase. This is a horrible drain on the economy. Cash is supposed to be a proxy for barter. If people start hoarding it, it can't be used for barter anymore and the economy suffers. When cash is constantly losing value, people are foolish to hold on to it, which makes it available for use in the economy.
Yet another is debt. If I buy a home with a 30-year mortgage, I can rest easy that I will be able to afford to pay off my loan so long as my income doesn't go down. In fact, because of inflation, my income is likely to increase relative to the loan amount. In other words, some of my debt inflates away. If there was deflation, there would be a risk that I would be unable to pay off my 30-year mortgage since my salary might actually reduce compared to the loan amount. This is a drain on the economy, since businesses and individuals are less likely to take out a loan.
There are other negative effects of a fixed money supply, but those are the ones that concern me the most. Inflation is not all roses, and it can really bite you in the ass, too. But low levels of predictable inflation are something that can be planned for, and most of the disadvantages can be dealt with by simply not holding on to cash.
Yeah, I was going to say, you want your kid to take public speaking? Behold! Not everything needs to happen in school.
Besides, we don't need to cram every damn thing into high school. I took a public speaking course in high school. It was an elective. There were other electives I would have liked to take as well... I took them in (drumroll, please...) college! I also took a worthless Chemistry class in high school - but the teacher was horrible, not the subject (I think our class collectively scored a 40% on the state Chemistry test).
I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. I didn't mean that people were interested in this story because it mentioned Bitcoin. I meant that people on Slashdot seem interested in how currency works in general, at least in part because of Bitcoin.
One of the criticisms of Bitcoin is that it does not inflate after a certain point - so in theory it could stifle an economy that outgrows it. And along comes a real-world example of a fiat currency that is unable to inflate. Personally, I find that to be very interesting.
I think that, at least in part because of Bitcoin, there is quite a bit of interest about currency here. I know I appreciate the story and find it interesting.
Yeah, I've seen that, too. That looks different - like SD video zoomed to fill a laptop screen. I'm talking about definite compression problems. The somewhat fuzzy zoomed picture doesn't bother me as much, for some reason. Or at least not as much during sporting events. There's nothing like a 70-inch screen to really magnify compression artifacts :)
I notice it when out at a bar or something. They have these huge, gorgeous flat panels and the room is dark so you can see the compression well. Football is particularly brutal - their live encoder can't handle grass well... it looks very over-compressed to anyone who has ever ripped DVDs and played with the compression settings. OTA signal is generally much better.
you appeared to be making fun of what my standards for accepting SSDs for use in my own machines
Correct. I consider WD's bread and butter to be making an entirely different product. While it is possible that their SSDs will be great, I'd put my own money on a chipmaker (as you did with Intel).
I thought the analogy was pretty decent. Two ways to travel with different underlying technologies versus two ways to store data with different underlying technologies.
and that is the part that seems to have given SSD users such headaches in the past.
Agreed. The drive controller is probably pretty hard to get right. But in the case of Intel, some of their products use a chip by LSI's Sandforce, who make nothing except SSD controllers.
Apple didn't have any cell phone experience either, that didn't seem to stop them.
That's an excellent point, but let me ask you - would you have taken that bet? I sure would not have. Maybe WD will rock the world with a really superior iSSD, but I'm not going to bet on it. And as you say, the do seem to be betting on their bread-and-butter. The weird thing is that they inherited an SSD joint venture of some kind with Intel when they bought Hitachi.
Boeing makes a reliable way to get from point A to point B.
Aren't you taking a joke a bit too seriously?
Nvidia doesn't own a single chip fab either, what does that have to do with anything?
Nvidia at least designs their own graphics chips. If WD has any chip design experience at all, it is in their drive controller. And I'm sure some of that experience applies to SSDs, but they have no memory chip experience at all.