I'm quite literate and I find this literature misleading. Just because it is technically correct does not make it any less misleading. I like Apple and their products, but I don't like ads like this.
Yeah, that is misleading - even if it dose say at the bottom:
4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the US, and on Bell, Rogers and Telus networks in Canada. Data plans sold separately. See your carrier for details.
It implies that 4G will work "around the world", yet it only works in the US and Canada... not even the UK market where this is advertised. The Australian page has the exact same copy.
It depends on what you mean by "standardized". Sure, there's nothing directly analogous to a PC with "Intel Inside", but there certainly are a limited number of choices for any robot designer when it comes to any aspect of the design.
Start with communications... you will quickly settle on a few choices - if millisecond latency is not an issue, you'll probably talk via ethernet or some serial bus, of which the choices are limited. If you need less latency, you'll chose a more traditional bus, of which the options are even more limited.
Host/main CPUs are more or less restricted to the same ones that already run Linux.
Servo control is a problem that can be solved in a generic way. Stepper control is the same.
There are limited options when it comes to sensors, and most sensors of the same type will behave in ways that are similar. For instance, a home sensor is just going to read on or off, no matter what technology it uses. A pressure sensor will return some voltage level that linearly corresponds to pressure. An encoder will return some position. Etc.
Sure, there are examples of things that won't be a good fit to the canned solutions, but it sure would be nice to be able to concentrate on those and let the framework handle the generic stuff. We write our own software for our entire machine (industrial robot) and right now the only libraries we can fall back on are vision libraries, which are already an excellent example of something that can be generically implemented. We buy ours for various reasons, but there are decent free libraries as well.
Which is why these arguments about "look how big my country is" are so stupid.
I don't think they are stupid at all... the per-user costs do go up as the population density goes down, all other things being equal.
It also depends on your subsidy system. In the US, phone and electric service for rural users is subsidized by all other users. We do not do the same for internet or cable television. In other countries, rural users are subsidized with tax money or not at all. In the US, cable companies pay every individual municipality a franchise fee - but that isn't the case in much of the world. In some countries, telecommunications lines travel upon public or "free" rights of way, and in other countries the land has to be acquired privately. These will all change the telecommunications rates, and make it very very difficult to compare rates in different countries.
GEM car is not fast or safe enough. A Leaf would work fine, but at that price is just not economically viable - I wish they sold a version with a cheaper battery and less range - she really only ever needs to go 10 miles total! The rest of the battery is wasted bulk to haul around.
Similarly, I'd never be able to pay for the price differential on a TDI. The roughly $5000 price differential would buy a whole lot of gas. Bio-diesel is an interesting option (as would be bio-gas), but I'll have to look into local availability. My wife sure isn't going to look around for biofuel.:)
I think that was his point - Canada has approximately the same population as California (less, actually), but spread over a much larger area... thus telecommunications become more expensive.
In reality, though, the inhabited portion of Canada isn't all that big, and it is fairly densely populated. Something like 75% of Canadians live in a strip 100-miles wide on the US-Canadian border. That's about 1500 miles, so 150,000 square miles. Which happens to be almost exactly California's land area:)
But for some reason, renting a large vehicle is crazy expensive.
It's worse than just expensive - it is nearly impossible when everyone gets the same idea. I lived in NYC and had a Zip Car membership. Zip Car was great for running to the store or for visiting a friend for dinner in NJ. But it was simply impossible to get a Zip Car on the weekends in the summer or during holidays... everyone had the same idea! Even trying to rent a regular Avis/Hertz/whatever car got to be crazy expensive during those times. That's because over 90% of the population depends on mass transit, and everyone needs to rent when they want to blow town.
Anyway, I keep looking into electric and hybrid cars, but they just don't make any sense for us - my commute is 20 miles/day and my wife's is 10. I typically drive the minivan because I do the kid pickups and dropoffs, and they don't make an electric version of those yet. Even if they did, the minivan is the car of choice on long trips, so electric would be a no-go. Hybrid may or may not pay off, depending on what the price of gas does.
It would be nice to stop paying Hugo Chavez for oil, though.
I didn't say it was bad, just that it is much weaker than the initial statement would lead you to believe once you throw the "except anything contrary to morality" line. It is in line with the rest of Europe. If you ask me, political speech is the most important thing to protect - and throwing out hate speech doesn't impact that in any significant way. I'm still in favor of allowing it, though, because I'd rather people participate in public discussions openly, rather than going back to secret handshakes and whatnot.
For example, check "Article 21" in the Italian Constitution.
Oh my God, it's a bunch of jibberish! It uses the same letters as English, but they are all mixed up!
Seriously, the provision here:
(6) Publications, performances, and other exhibits offensive to public morality are prohibited. Measures of prevention and repression against violations are provided by law.
Is what makes the rest of the article much less powerful. That's a pretty strong loophole. Is a racist tweet a "publication... offensive to public morality"? Most of Europe has anti-hate speech laws.
What USA are you talking about? I can't even drive across a northeastern state without running into forest. Even New Jersey, the state with the highest population density in the US, is roughly 1/4 pinelands.
Don't forget Bing! LOL, yeah I got schooled - at least the moderation worked.
I knew about the Bing app, but didn't really consider it worthy of mention - I was not aware of most of the others that you mention. It's good to see their games division seems to understand that it's OK to sell on the "other" platform (still no Android though). I hope you are right and their Office division sees the light as well. Microsoft didn't always have 100% of the desktop market, either, and yet somehow they managed to capture that market while selling their wares to owners of competing OSes.
You are absolutely right - I had no idea that there was anything for the iOS other than the Bing app. Thanks for correcting me.
That said, where is MS Office? It's great that they have some free apps, but I don't see anything very ambitious on there. The only paid app I could find was from their games division.
I don't think it makes sense to favor Windows in divisions that aren't related to Windows, but it's not my company to run. Dogfooding only makes sense when people who have the ability to actually change the product in some way are the ones forced to use it. Everywhere else you are just preventing people from doing their jobs more efficiently in the name of corporate unity.
I won't second guess their strategy - I'm no longer a stockholder so I don't really care. But it is very surprising to me that when you search for Office apps on iOS devices you don't see any MS apps. If they are not careful they will lose their Office monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
I ain't no chemicologist or nuthin, but I'd figure water.
Unfortunately now everyone wants the latest/shiniest/coolest gadget, not just a business phone.
It was a decent phone, I suppose. And it was fantastic for text emails.
But other phones came along that simply outclassed it and absorbed it's capability into their feature sets.
It's like what happened to the alphanumeric pager companies once SMS came along.
Does someone sell tickets to that in Australia?
First you say:
And we have to back up everything, even if it's completely redundant it has to be a complete snap-shot.
Then you say:
I realize that most people don't associate government with being practical or financially responsible, but ...
LOL.
I'm quite literate and I find this literature misleading. Just because it is technically correct does not make it any less misleading. I like Apple and their products, but I don't like ads like this.
Yes, maybe at some point in the future it will work around the world. Currently, the only places it will work on "4G" are the US and Canada.
Yeah, that is misleading - even if it dose say at the bottom:
It implies that 4G will work "around the world", yet it only works in the US and Canada... not even the UK market where this is advertised. The Australian page has the exact same copy.
How standardized is robotic hardware?
It depends on what you mean by "standardized". Sure, there's nothing directly analogous to a PC with "Intel Inside", but there certainly are a limited number of choices for any robot designer when it comes to any aspect of the design.
Start with communications... you will quickly settle on a few choices - if millisecond latency is not an issue, you'll probably talk via ethernet or some serial bus, of which the choices are limited. If you need less latency, you'll chose a more traditional bus, of which the options are even more limited.
Host/main CPUs are more or less restricted to the same ones that already run Linux.
Servo control is a problem that can be solved in a generic way. Stepper control is the same.
There are limited options when it comes to sensors, and most sensors of the same type will behave in ways that are similar. For instance, a home sensor is just going to read on or off, no matter what technology it uses. A pressure sensor will return some voltage level that linearly corresponds to pressure. An encoder will return some position. Etc.
Sure, there are examples of things that won't be a good fit to the canned solutions, but it sure would be nice to be able to concentrate on those and let the framework handle the generic stuff. We write our own software for our entire machine (industrial robot) and right now the only libraries we can fall back on are vision libraries, which are already an excellent example of something that can be generically implemented. We buy ours for various reasons, but there are decent free libraries as well.
Which is why these arguments about "look how big my country is" are so stupid.
I don't think they are stupid at all... the per-user costs do go up as the population density goes down, all other things being equal.
It also depends on your subsidy system. In the US, phone and electric service for rural users is subsidized by all other users. We do not do the same for internet or cable television. In other countries, rural users are subsidized with tax money or not at all. In the US, cable companies pay every individual municipality a franchise fee - but that isn't the case in much of the world. In some countries, telecommunications lines travel upon public or "free" rights of way, and in other countries the land has to be acquired privately. These will all change the telecommunications rates, and make it very very difficult to compare rates in different countries.
GEM car is not fast or safe enough. A Leaf would work fine, but at that price is just not economically viable - I wish they sold a version with a cheaper battery and less range - she really only ever needs to go 10 miles total! The rest of the battery is wasted bulk to haul around.
Similarly, I'd never be able to pay for the price differential on a TDI. The roughly $5000 price differential would buy a whole lot of gas. Bio-diesel is an interesting option (as would be bio-gas), but I'll have to look into local availability. My wife sure isn't going to look around for biofuel. :)
I think that was his point - Canada has approximately the same population as California (less, actually), but spread over a much larger area... thus telecommunications become more expensive.
In reality, though, the inhabited portion of Canada isn't all that big, and it is fairly densely populated. Something like 75% of Canadians live in a strip 100-miles wide on the US-Canadian border. That's about 1500 miles, so 150,000 square miles. Which happens to be almost exactly California's land area :)
But for some reason, renting a large vehicle is crazy expensive.
It's worse than just expensive - it is nearly impossible when everyone gets the same idea. I lived in NYC and had a Zip Car membership. Zip Car was great for running to the store or for visiting a friend for dinner in NJ. But it was simply impossible to get a Zip Car on the weekends in the summer or during holidays... everyone had the same idea! Even trying to rent a regular Avis/Hertz/whatever car got to be crazy expensive during those times. That's because over 90% of the population depends on mass transit, and everyone needs to rent when they want to blow town.
Anyway, I keep looking into electric and hybrid cars, but they just don't make any sense for us - my commute is 20 miles/day and my wife's is 10. I typically drive the minivan because I do the kid pickups and dropoffs, and they don't make an electric version of those yet. Even if they did, the minivan is the car of choice on long trips, so electric would be a no-go. Hybrid may or may not pay off, depending on what the price of gas does.
It would be nice to stop paying Hugo Chavez for oil, though.
Idiots by the standards of this site, sure - but probably perfectly adequate for teaching most primary school subjects.
Not so bad if you ask me.
I didn't say it was bad, just that it is much weaker than the initial statement would lead you to believe once you throw the "except anything contrary to morality" line. It is in line with the rest of Europe. If you ask me, political speech is the most important thing to protect - and throwing out hate speech doesn't impact that in any significant way. I'm still in favor of allowing it, though, because I'd rather people participate in public discussions openly, rather than going back to secret handshakes and whatnot.
Only if you tweet something like "all people who write hate speech should be killed". There must be a way to make a recursive loop here...
I agree that the guy saying the soldiers should die should not be prosecuted - hate speech should be protected speech.
Encouraging a riot should not be protected speech.
And finally, trolling is a god-given right :)
For example, check "Article 21" in the Italian Constitution.
Oh my God, it's a bunch of jibberish! It uses the same letters as English, but they are all mixed up!
Seriously, the provision here:
Is what makes the rest of the article much less powerful. That's a pretty strong loophole. Is a racist tweet a "publication... offensive to public morality"? Most of Europe has anti-hate speech laws.
Which is rather unfortunate, since I can say without exaggeration that Blackboard is probably the worst piece of modern software I've ever had to use.
I have no experience with it, but I know teachers who love it.
Not that teachers are reliable judges of software, but still...
You are right - clearly this should be called the megasim!
Unfortunately (fortunately?) they don't run landfills like that anymore.
What USA are you talking about? I can't even drive across a northeastern state without running into forest. Even New Jersey, the state with the highest population density in the US, is roughly 1/4 pinelands.
Don't forget Bing! LOL, yeah I got schooled - at least the moderation worked.
I knew about the Bing app, but didn't really consider it worthy of mention - I was not aware of most of the others that you mention. It's good to see their games division seems to understand that it's OK to sell on the "other" platform (still no Android though). I hope you are right and their Office division sees the light as well. Microsoft didn't always have 100% of the desktop market, either, and yet somehow they managed to capture that market while selling their wares to owners of competing OSes.
MS Office has extensive scripting capabilities, not allowed.
MS Office for mac 2008 had no built-in scripting capabilities (no VBA), so it's not unprecedented.
You are absolutely right - I had no idea that there was anything for the iOS other than the Bing app. Thanks for correcting me.
That said, where is MS Office? It's great that they have some free apps, but I don't see anything very ambitious on there. The only paid app I could find was from their games division.
I don't think it makes sense to favor Windows in divisions that aren't related to Windows, but it's not my company to run. Dogfooding only makes sense when people who have the ability to actually change the product in some way are the ones forced to use it. Everywhere else you are just preventing people from doing their jobs more efficiently in the name of corporate unity.
I won't second guess their strategy - I'm no longer a stockholder so I don't really care. But it is very surprising to me that when you search for Office apps on iOS devices you don't see any MS apps. If they are not careful they will lose their Office monopoly.