I don't even have cable, and I can immediately spot problems with these boxes at friends and family's houses.
First of all, why the hell do you all put up with the ads showing the whole time on the pay-per-view/channel listings area??? All that space is wasted for some inane repeating "preview". Remember, you are paying these people like $100/month and they reward you by putting an irritating ad where additional channel listings could be?
Second, in ye olde days of regular TV, you could browse channels by pushing the button on the remote as quickly as you liked. Or before that, you could machine-gun turn the knob and watch the programs fly by. Now with digital cable you have a distinct pause on each channel that makes flipping around take forever. Is this inherent to digital TV? If it is a buffering issue, why can't the box buffer the next channel and the previous channel so that flipping is instant?
Third, I notice that these boxes are crawling with input and output. Firewire, analog inputs, etc. None of them are actually turned on. WTF?
I'm sure I could make this into an article, so I'll just stop.
Not if you're allowed to vote as many times as you like, but it only counts the last one. You can vote with someone watching, for the candidate that they want, take their money, and then vote again for the other candidate.
That's a pretty good point. On the other hand, that capability could be exploited by a simple bot. All it would have to do is watch you log in the first time, and then re-cast your vote using the same credentials.
so the corporations and the rich get completely free reign without any of that "for the people" sosialistic crap.
There is no evidence of that, whatsoever.
Hell, corporation LIKE socialist "crap". Why do you think there are so many automakers in Canada? The huge labor population and 3rd-world labor laws? No, they don't have to provide any health benefits there.
The F-16 is hard to beat in a dogfight. But it has limited range, limited payload, and is not stealthy. It originally was designed such that it could be modified for carrier use, but the Navy wanted two engines and thought the landing gear was too narrow. So the navy chose the F/A-18, which wasn't very good. It has a bit better low-speed performance than the F-16, but loses on almost every other score. Note that this is different than the current "Super Hornet" which is an entirely different beast.
Anyway, the F-35 may not beat the F-16 in a dogfight with a cannon, but it is stealthy, has a longer range, and carries more ordinance. It beats the F/A-18 (regular Hornet) in almost everything - though the Hornet has become very reliable and we obviously don't have data on that yet. But it's back to a single engine and it costs waaaay more than either the F-16 or the F/A-18. So I guess you could argue that money might be better spent adapting the F-16 to a flight deck. I think that's absurd, but that's just IMHO.
I wasn't rejecting it out of hand. I pointed out that the B-1B, F/A-18, and F-22 were also boondoggles. I have absolutely no reason to believe that the US government can develop a new 5th generation fighter that will have a lower cost going forward than the F-35. I'm not talking about sunk cost at all - that money is gone. I'm talking about cost of new aircraft, maintenance, and training.
But our Harrier II needs a replacement - they don't make it anymore and the existing airframes are getting old. And the F/A-18C/D is also not produced anymore, isn't really a match for other modern fighters, and is not at all stealthy.
Does the air force need them? Maybe not. At least not in the short term, since the F-16 and F-15 are still in production.
So does our country have the best equipment? Sure. But the airframes are getting older and our stuff won't be "best" forever. We could start all over again and design a new plane, but with the track record like the B-1B, F/A-18, F-22, and now the F-35, do you really think we can do it any cheaper? The money that has been spent is gone forever - I'm not sure how starting over again will help save money.
On paper it's less effective than late block F-16s in the light fighter role.
Yes, it is. But it's hard to beat the F-16 so long as you don't need range. Most countries can't afford an interceptor fighter and an attack fighter, and it's not surprising that we are making the same compromises.
It's never going to be an effective replacement for the A-10 in that role
The A-10 is a complicated story, but it's clear that the Air Force hates dedicated fixed-wing ground support. We've been fighting this fight since Vietnam. The F-16 was supposed to replaces the A-10, but that's also a joke. The A-10 isn't going anywhere, and no multi-purpose plane can ever take the role of a flying cannon with a titanium armored cockpit. (I like the A-10.)
in the AV-8B role it's at least 300% more per plane
More like 500%. But the Harrier II is out of production, and the earliest planes are 30 years old. It is subsonic and about as stealth-less as they come. Harriers also crash a lot - time will tell if the F-35B is safer, but that's certainly a design goal. The Marine Corp pushed very, very hard for this plane. They want it.
and in the F/A-18C/D role its at least 200% more per plane
Closer to 300%:). The navy has no stealth aircraft. The F-22 was not designed for carrier use. The F-18C/D was a boondoggle all its own. It lost a competition with the F-16 to be the joint services fighter, but the Navy pushed for it anyway because of the single engine on the F-16. Even after a serious redesign, the thing didn't have enough range. Then they had to keep screwing around with the floppy wings. Ironically (coincidentally?), the engine on the thing has turned out to be so reliable that there probably was no need to put two in:) Anyway, the C/D is no longer in production, and it's no match for a 5th generation fighter (or even an F-16).
No supercruise, so it's slower the F-22, less stealthy than the F-22
Those were all cost-cutting compromises. The F-22 was deemed too expensive and too delicate.
one engine so the things will be falling into the sea like A-4s, A-7s and F-8s did.
Time will tell, but if the engine is as good as the one on the F-18C/D (F404?) it will not have that fate.
The up-front cost IS staggering, and the program has been poorly run. But up-front cost is not as high as ongoing maintenance, and replacing the older planes will save money in the long run. Or, at least, that's the idea:)
Congress managed to focus on the F-22 program for 21 years now, the JSF/F-35 program for 15 years now...
The F-22, the JSF, and the Shuttle all enjoyed wide popular support and provided jobs to powerful districts. The stupid drug war is also quite popular - I'm constantly arguing with people about it and I don't think I've ever gotten anyone to agree with me other than on marijuana. Congress is pretty agonizingly frustrating, but I can't fault them for doing what they were elected to do.
By the way, despite its warts, the JSF will save money overall. Of course, when it is grounded we will have no air force, no naval air protection, and no marine corp jet. Just some old national guard A-10s, a bunch of old bombers, and whatever the UAV fleet looks like at the time. There's some saying about putting all of your eggs somewhere or something...:)
As soon as thats happens on an x86 processor, and I can run Windows (not mobile, the real Windows) or full OSX on it, I'll likely be first in line to buy multiple devices
I'm right there with you. I can't imagine not having a desktop. But we are not the mainstream, and the mainstream market is what determines what "era" we are in. My phone is a pathetic piece of computing crap compared to even my 2004 desktop, but people I know with tablets tend to sit there on the couch with them while watching TV - playing games, doing their facebook thing, checking email, and looking up stuff on IMDB and Wikipedia. That's not me, and that's why I'm not mainstream:)
QT will be in the capable hands at Redmond. They love cross-platform and they love open source. Expect to see them use it as a basis for a cross-platform.NET.
I agree with you on your personal choice, but you are not "the market". You don't get to determine what products are preferred by the population at large.
No kidding. Most valuable company in the world? Vertically integrated tablet and phone (and computer I guess) maker Apple. I guess Google figures, hey, we can do that! Motorola makes decent hardware, and Google makes Android... Google has a fantastic brand name. Get some anal retentive product designers and you have a real Apple competitor.
I still don't get the people who are touting the "post-PC" label.
Because the current trend is for PCs to be marginalized. Just because PCs still make a better word processor doesn't mean people will need to buy them forever. I can see a cheap docking station for your phone/tablet easily running a competent word processor. People are already moving to phones and tablets for web and email. All that is left is the corporate market. That's a huge market, mind you. And I don't think PC sales will go down - it's just that growth will slow or stall while phone and tablet sales continue to increase.
I think cost is the main hurdle right now. The good tablets are still more expensive than a decent PC.
I don't think this is a real concern. Electric cars won't replace gasoline overnight - if it happens, it will be very gradual. The grid will have plenty of time to adapt, in bits and pieces, as needed. The utility companies don't want to pour capital into the grid, but they also don't want to have blackouts. Both bite into the cash flow statement.
I did read the article, and there's no way that a 500 lb unit can produce 250MW. That's along the lines of a mid-sized hydro-electric dam! They also wouldn't be talking about cars. I came to the conclusion that they were talking about kW - it has to be a typo. The other possibility is that they meant a 250MW-h unit to last the life of the car. Since they state that the life of the unit is 300,000 miles and we assume 60MPH that would be 5000 hours. Divide 250MW-h by 5000 h and you have about 50kW, which is more reasonable.
Yes, it would be something like a Boss Hoss motorcycle - pretty unwieldy!
Even with jQuery (one of my favorite things ever), recommending JavaScript for a novice programmer isn't a great idea IMHO. Sure, it does stuff right away, but it is a devil to debug. I'd be afraid of putting them off on the whole programming thing.
But yes, it might be a good start. It's still not as comprehensive as a piano is to music.
It's clear that we won't agree on why Windows has a monopoly, so I won't argue the point. Fact is, it doesn't matter "why" - they won't have a monopoly forever. And when that day comes, and for whatever reason, there will probably be competition again. And just like in the phone market, I see no reason why Linux wouldn't serve as one or more of the competing kernels. The hottest phone OSes right now are both based on open source unix. No phone is based on the traditional Windows kernel, AFAIK - though MS does have a "Windows" branded offering that does use some similar tech (.NET).
Oh, sure. But, Windows doesn't have a long history of arbitrary and capricious changes the way FLOSS products do.
You need to pick on a specific project! Linux doesn't have such a bad history, but other open source projects certainly do. Microsoft doesn't have a reputation of change, but Apple certainly does. There are terrible proprietary as well as open source projects in this regard.
And, the XP/7 changes are not as major as XP/GNOME.
Perhaps. But no worse than going from Windows to Apple, which people do all the time. Or changing smart phones. Or getting a new DVD player. People can handle small changes - the two big Linux desktops are very similar to Windows IMHO.
If it can be done, why hasn't it been done? Answer: "Linux is geared towards geeks" not users.
PalmOS does not require command line. Android does not require command line. Linux has been tamed, just not by Red Hat (or even Ubuntu).
I have installed WinXP, Vista, Win7, Ubuntu, and RedHat in the last few years. I know what I am talking about. Win7 installed easily. Ubuntu was three times as difficult and required me to do a lot of CLI work after saying it had installed successfully.
All I can say is we're both posting our personal experiences, and they have differed. I don't have any statistics or anything to back my argument up, so unless you do I'll just have to come away saying that people's experience installing OSs seems to vary.
And, if you had read my post instead of cherry-picking points
I assure you that I was reading your post - I just didn't respond to every last item. No one else is going to read this, so if I didn't care what you had to say I wouldn't bother corresponding with you!:)
The reason is that Linux is not geared towards the average user.
I agree that all but a few Linux desktop distributions are not geared toward the average user. It would be pointless to make such a beast, since Windows has a monopoly. When companies need a kernel to build a new OS around, they sometimes choose Linux - sometimes something proprietary. For phones Apple went with the open-source mach and BSD, Google and Palm went with Linux. For tablets, the mix seems to be some open source (Apple, Samsung) and some not (Windows, RIM). If someone needed to come up with a competitive Desktop OS, I see no reason why Linux wouldn't be just as well represented.
In order for "Linux (or some open unix-like system)" to be popular, it has to be geared to the average user, not be tied to over-priced hardware, easy to use, have a stable UI, be a platform that is easy to program for, and a platform where the users will actually pay for software.
I agree with all of those except for "not be tied to over-priced hardware". Anyway, I think that Android shows Linux can be all of the things you listed.
The GNU/Linux community does not actually want "Linux on the Desktop", regardless of what anyone says.
I don't think you can speak for the whole community like that. Currently my use of Linux is minimal (I switched my server to FreeBSD to take advantage of ZFS), but I much prefer the unix way to the Windows way and so I'd love to see unix desktops more popular. So here's one member of the "community" rooting for Linux Desktop.
It seems a case of 5,000 sheets can be readily had for around $45 or less. That means at leas 222 sheets for $2.
I agree with your sentiment, but your analysis didn't include toner/ink, which is good for a penny or so per page.
I guess this could be useful for the equivalent of "paper backups" - daily reports and such that don't get handled unless there is some kind of emergency. When it's no longer useful just put it in the eraser and re-use instead of the shredder. Hey! Another cost savings - no more shredder truck!:)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't even have cable, and I can immediately spot problems with these boxes at friends and family's houses.
First of all, why the hell do you all put up with the ads showing the whole time on the pay-per-view/channel listings area??? All that space is wasted for some inane repeating "preview". Remember, you are paying these people like $100/month and they reward you by putting an irritating ad where additional channel listings could be?
Second, in ye olde days of regular TV, you could browse channels by pushing the button on the remote as quickly as you liked. Or before that, you could machine-gun turn the knob and watch the programs fly by. Now with digital cable you have a distinct pause on each channel that makes flipping around take forever. Is this inherent to digital TV? If it is a buffering issue, why can't the box buffer the next channel and the previous channel so that flipping is instant?
Third, I notice that these boxes are crawling with input and output. Firewire, analog inputs, etc. None of them are actually turned on. WTF?
I'm sure I could make this into an article, so I'll just stop.
Not if you're allowed to vote as many times as you like, but it only counts the last one. You can vote with someone watching, for the candidate that they want, take their money, and then vote again for the other candidate.
That's a pretty good point. On the other hand, that capability could be exploited by a simple bot. All it would have to do is watch you log in the first time, and then re-cast your vote using the same credentials.
so the corporations and the rich get completely free reign without any of that "for the people" sosialistic crap.
There is no evidence of that, whatsoever.
Hell, corporation LIKE socialist "crap". Why do you think there are so many automakers in Canada? The huge labor population and 3rd-world labor laws? No, they don't have to provide any health benefits there.
Malicious code is the least of the problems with online voting.
It becomes almost trivial to buy/extort votes.
It's all speculative, but speculation is fun :)
The F-16 is hard to beat in a dogfight. But it has limited range, limited payload, and is not stealthy. It originally was designed such that it could be modified for carrier use, but the Navy wanted two engines and thought the landing gear was too narrow. So the navy chose the F/A-18, which wasn't very good. It has a bit better low-speed performance than the F-16, but loses on almost every other score. Note that this is different than the current "Super Hornet" which is an entirely different beast.
Anyway, the F-35 may not beat the F-16 in a dogfight with a cannon, but it is stealthy, has a longer range, and carries more ordinance. It beats the F/A-18 (regular Hornet) in almost everything - though the Hornet has become very reliable and we obviously don't have data on that yet. But it's back to a single engine and it costs waaaay more than either the F-16 or the F/A-18. So I guess you could argue that money might be better spent adapting the F-16 to a flight deck. I think that's absurd, but that's just IMHO.
I wasn't rejecting it out of hand. I pointed out that the B-1B, F/A-18, and F-22 were also boondoggles. I have absolutely no reason to believe that the US government can develop a new 5th generation fighter that will have a lower cost going forward than the F-35. I'm not talking about sunk cost at all - that money is gone. I'm talking about cost of new aircraft, maintenance, and training.
But our Harrier II needs a replacement - they don't make it anymore and the existing airframes are getting old. And the F/A-18C/D is also not produced anymore, isn't really a match for other modern fighters, and is not at all stealthy.
Does the air force need them? Maybe not. At least not in the short term, since the F-16 and F-15 are still in production.
So does our country have the best equipment? Sure. But the airframes are getting older and our stuff won't be "best" forever. We could start all over again and design a new plane, but with the track record like the B-1B, F/A-18, F-22, and now the F-35, do you really think we can do it any cheaper? The money that has been spent is gone forever - I'm not sure how starting over again will help save money.
On paper it's less effective than late block F-16s in the light fighter role.
Yes, it is. But it's hard to beat the F-16 so long as you don't need range. Most countries can't afford an interceptor fighter and an attack fighter, and it's not surprising that we are making the same compromises.
It's never going to be an effective replacement for the A-10 in that role
The A-10 is a complicated story, but it's clear that the Air Force hates dedicated fixed-wing ground support. We've been fighting this fight since Vietnam. The F-16 was supposed to replaces the A-10, but that's also a joke. The A-10 isn't going anywhere, and no multi-purpose plane can ever take the role of a flying cannon with a titanium armored cockpit. (I like the A-10.)
in the AV-8B role it's at least 300% more per plane
More like 500%. But the Harrier II is out of production, and the earliest planes are 30 years old. It is subsonic and about as stealth-less as they come. Harriers also crash a lot - time will tell if the F-35B is safer, but that's certainly a design goal. The Marine Corp pushed very, very hard for this plane. They want it.
and in the F/A-18C/D role its at least 200% more per plane
Closer to 300% :). The navy has no stealth aircraft. The F-22 was not designed for carrier use. The F-18C/D was a boondoggle all its own. It lost a competition with the F-16 to be the joint services fighter, but the Navy pushed for it anyway because of the single engine on the F-16. Even after a serious redesign, the thing didn't have enough range. Then they had to keep screwing around with the floppy wings. Ironically (coincidentally?), the engine on the thing has turned out to be so reliable that there probably was no need to put two in :) Anyway, the C/D is no longer in production, and it's no match for a 5th generation fighter (or even an F-16).
No supercruise, so it's slower the F-22, less stealthy than the F-22
Those were all cost-cutting compromises. The F-22 was deemed too expensive and too delicate.
one engine so the things will be falling into the sea like A-4s, A-7s and F-8s did.
Time will tell, but if the engine is as good as the one on the F-18C/D (F404?) it will not have that fate.
The up-front cost IS staggering, and the program has been poorly run. But up-front cost is not as high as ongoing maintenance, and replacing the older planes will save money in the long run. Or, at least, that's the idea :)
Congress managed to focus on the F-22 program for 21 years now, the JSF/F-35 program for 15 years now...
The F-22, the JSF, and the Shuttle all enjoyed wide popular support and provided jobs to powerful districts. The stupid drug war is also quite popular - I'm constantly arguing with people about it and I don't think I've ever gotten anyone to agree with me other than on marijuana. Congress is pretty agonizingly frustrating, but I can't fault them for doing what they were elected to do.
By the way, despite its warts, the JSF will save money overall. Of course, when it is grounded we will have no air force, no naval air protection, and no marine corp jet. Just some old national guard A-10s, a bunch of old bombers, and whatever the UAV fleet looks like at the time. There's some saying about putting all of your eggs somewhere or something... :)
As soon as thats happens on an x86 processor, and I can run Windows (not mobile, the real Windows) or full OSX on it, I'll likely be first in line to buy multiple devices
I'm right there with you. I can't imagine not having a desktop. But we are not the mainstream, and the mainstream market is what determines what "era" we are in. My phone is a pathetic piece of computing crap compared to even my 2004 desktop, but people I know with tablets tend to sit there on the couch with them while watching TV - playing games, doing their facebook thing, checking email, and looking up stuff on IMDB and Wikipedia. That's not me, and that's why I'm not mainstream :)
QT will be in the capable hands at Redmond. They love cross-platform and they love open source. Expect to see them use it as a basis for a cross-platform .NET.
Until then, it's ho-hum phone as a phone for me.
I agree with you on your personal choice, but you are not "the market". You don't get to determine what products are preferred by the population at large.
No kidding. Most valuable company in the world? Vertically integrated tablet and phone (and computer I guess) maker Apple. I guess Google figures, hey, we can do that! Motorola makes decent hardware, and Google makes Android... Google has a fantastic brand name. Get some anal retentive product designers and you have a real Apple competitor.
I still don't get the people who are touting the "post-PC" label.
Because the current trend is for PCs to be marginalized. Just because PCs still make a better word processor doesn't mean people will need to buy them forever. I can see a cheap docking station for your phone/tablet easily running a competent word processor. People are already moving to phones and tablets for web and email. All that is left is the corporate market. That's a huge market, mind you. And I don't think PC sales will go down - it's just that growth will slow or stall while phone and tablet sales continue to increase.
I think cost is the main hurdle right now. The good tablets are still more expensive than a decent PC.
nuh-uh
I don't think this is a real concern. Electric cars won't replace gasoline overnight - if it happens, it will be very gradual. The grid will have plenty of time to adapt, in bits and pieces, as needed. The utility companies don't want to pour capital into the grid, but they also don't want to have blackouts. Both bite into the cash flow statement.
I did read the article, and there's no way that a 500 lb unit can produce 250MW. That's along the lines of a mid-sized hydro-electric dam! They also wouldn't be talking about cars. I came to the conclusion that they were talking about kW - it has to be a typo. The other possibility is that they meant a 250MW-h unit to last the life of the car. Since they state that the life of the unit is 300,000 miles and we assume 60MPH that would be 5000 hours. Divide 250MW-h by 5000 h and you have about 50kW, which is more reasonable.
Yes, it would be something like a Boss Hoss motorcycle - pretty unwieldy!
The element is in a container made from three inch thick stainless steel.
The small motorcycle would need room for a 500-lb thorium oxidizing laser/generator thing :)
I was just trying to be funny, since about 4 up the thread there was some talk about the rich defending their interests. Fail :(
Ahhh, so see? The rich did get hurt after all!
Even with jQuery (one of my favorite things ever), recommending JavaScript for a novice programmer isn't a great idea IMHO. Sure, it does stuff right away, but it is a devil to debug. I'd be afraid of putting them off on the whole programming thing.
But yes, it might be a good start. It's still not as comprehensive as a piano is to music.
If you didn't have the discipline to learn a recorder, music was never your bag.
It's clear that we won't agree on why Windows has a monopoly, so I won't argue the point. Fact is, it doesn't matter "why" - they won't have a monopoly forever. And when that day comes, and for whatever reason, there will probably be competition again. And just like in the phone market, I see no reason why Linux wouldn't serve as one or more of the competing kernels. The hottest phone OSes right now are both based on open source unix. No phone is based on the traditional Windows kernel, AFAIK - though MS does have a "Windows" branded offering that does use some similar tech (.NET).
Oh, sure. But, Windows doesn't have a long history of arbitrary and capricious changes the way FLOSS products do.
You need to pick on a specific project! Linux doesn't have such a bad history, but other open source projects certainly do. Microsoft doesn't have a reputation of change, but Apple certainly does. There are terrible proprietary as well as open source projects in this regard.
And, the XP/7 changes are not as major as XP/GNOME.
Perhaps. But no worse than going from Windows to Apple, which people do all the time. Or changing smart phones. Or getting a new DVD player. People can handle small changes - the two big Linux desktops are very similar to Windows IMHO.
If it can be done, why hasn't it been done? Answer: "Linux is geared towards geeks" not users.
PalmOS does not require command line. Android does not require command line. Linux has been tamed, just not by Red Hat (or even Ubuntu).
I have installed WinXP, Vista, Win7, Ubuntu, and RedHat in the last few years. I know what I am talking about. Win7 installed easily. Ubuntu was three times as difficult and required me to do a lot of CLI work after saying it had installed successfully.
All I can say is we're both posting our personal experiences, and they have differed. I don't have any statistics or anything to back my argument up, so unless you do I'll just have to come away saying that people's experience installing OSs seems to vary.
And, if you had read my post instead of cherry-picking points
I assure you that I was reading your post - I just didn't respond to every last item. No one else is going to read this, so if I didn't care what you had to say I wouldn't bother corresponding with you! :)
The reason is that Linux is not geared towards the average user.
I agree that all but a few Linux desktop distributions are not geared toward the average user. It would be pointless to make such a beast, since Windows has a monopoly. When companies need a kernel to build a new OS around, they sometimes choose Linux - sometimes something proprietary. For phones Apple went with the open-source mach and BSD, Google and Palm went with Linux. For tablets, the mix seems to be some open source (Apple, Samsung) and some not (Windows, RIM). If someone needed to come up with a competitive Desktop OS, I see no reason why Linux wouldn't be just as well represented.
In order for "Linux (or some open unix-like system)" to be popular, it has to be geared to the average user, not be tied to over-priced hardware, easy to use, have a stable UI, be a platform that is easy to program for, and a platform where the users will actually pay for software.
I agree with all of those except for "not be tied to over-priced hardware". Anyway, I think that Android shows Linux can be all of the things you listed.
The GNU/Linux community does not actually want "Linux on the Desktop", regardless of what anyone says.
I don't think you can speak for the whole community like that. Currently my use of Linux is minimal (I switched my server to FreeBSD to take advantage of ZFS), but I much prefer the unix way to the Windows way and so I'd love to see unix desktops more popular. So here's one member of the "community" rooting for Linux Desktop.
It seems a case of 5,000 sheets can be readily had for around $45 or less. That means at leas 222 sheets for $2.
I agree with your sentiment, but your analysis didn't include toner/ink, which is good for a penny or so per page.
I guess this could be useful for the equivalent of "paper backups" - daily reports and such that don't get handled unless there is some kind of emergency. When it's no longer useful just put it in the eraser and re-use instead of the shredder. Hey! Another cost savings - no more shredder truck! :)