The thig is that their ATMs are by no means rock-solid, but they do work well enough. I haven't heard of any reports of them being responsible for misallocation of people's funds or of being able to (really) hax0r one just by having physical access to it. Even when they screw up really badly they aren't skewing people's bank accounts. Diebold SHOULD be able to make this work. Unfortunately they seem to be unwilling.
I forgot to mention the cleanup method for the nuclear waste. There's been some interesting work in how to get the Earth's subduction zones to take care of it for us. Here's a brief (but ugly) site that explains it pretty well.
I suggest anyone interested in what we SHOULD be doing (nuclear power and hydrogen fuel wise) look in to Pebble Bed Reactors. Not only can they provide fault-tollerant, safe, cheap nuclear power, they can also be designed to produce hydrogen as a byproduct. Why our government isn't already dumping billions in to this is beyond me.
The Chinese are completely trouncing us on this one.
For that matter so does Mazda. They've had a street-legal RX-8 that can run on either hydrogen or gasoline for a while now. The driver can even select which fuel they'd like to use just by flicking a switch.
I'm with you on the leaning into corners (and such) on the console games. However, there is a phenomenom that I haven't quite gotten my mind around yet. For some reason when I'm sitting at the PC when surprising/unexpected things happen my body doesn't react. My eyes and face do, but not my body. I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with trying to keep my hands precisely positioned above certain keys whereas having a "gamepad" or sorts makes me feel more free. I've observed this in others too. Are myself, and my friends, abnormal; or have you guys noticed this too?
I suppose I should have qualified "smaller" with a short explanation. I agree that if they came out with something thinner/lighter it'd do well and I'd want one. I meant that I couldn't see there being a market for a machine with a screen smaller than 12 inches.
What I'd really like to see them do is cram a 17" screen into a 12" enclosure... I'm a whore for large screens, but don't want to carry around a larger machine. If they could make it one of those tablet/laptop convertables (eg. this gateway model) I'd give my right arm for it.
Not to nit-pick because I agree with your premise, but my understanding is that Apple has already dedicated itself to the Merom and Conroe processor lines. I have a feeling that Apple and Intel REALLY got in to bed together to make this all go off without a hitch. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple starts being the reference design for Intel's chips.
I am a pretty skinny guy (6'1" tall by 140lbs). My transportation currently consits of walking, bus/train, and motorcycling. I carry everything I take with me in a backpack (no saddlebags on the motorcycle, or anything like that). I have an old 12" 500MHz G3 iBook that I carry EVERYWHERE. I, honestly don't know what the problem is. Sure, I'd like something lighter, but this is more than light enough to be comfortable. If they could do better, weight wise, then more power to them. However, I can't imagine there being enough market for anything between what I have and a palm device. Even if they did come out with something smaller I would never buy it. One of the greatest things about all of the Apple laptops over the years is that they've kept a full-sized keyboard. Are you really willing to give up the ability to type well to save a few fractions of a pound (and get a lesser machine)?
I work at a porn shop and we have a huge wall of Vivid videos (literally a few hundred). You know what? No one ever rents them. They get rifeled through regurlarly, but no one want them. To back up what you were saying, we have shelf after shelf of "star" videos by them and the vast majority of them have never been rented... not even once. To quote the "Who is Paul Thomas and why don't we like him?" question from the RAME FAQ:
Paul Thomas (also known informally as PT), a big star in 70's porno and the main director of 90's adult video powerhouse Vivid, has often been a target for derision in this group for his efforts. The accusation is that his films are pretentious and unexciting, and that more frequently than not he appears to forget he's shooting a porn flick and not some cheesy daytime soap.
So yeah, I'm with you. I'd rather see some people with more talent an clout do this first.
What I'm curious about is the fact that almost all porn DVDs are region free (and they advertise it on the boxes)... they know that it's a plus. Why can't the Holywood mainstream figure this out?
Not my service contract. If fact, I don't have one. I guessed Comcast's fone number 1-800-COMCAST and told them I wanted the service installed. The guy showed up the next day and hooked up the line and handed over the modem. All I signed was the peice of paper saying that he did, in fact, show up and do those things. I hooked up the modem and did the setup through the web browser (I don't use Windows and if I did I still probably wouldn't use their software). Sure, a little screen may have asked me if I agreed to such-and-such, but ya know what? I had already paid for and was already receiving the service... doesn't count. Since then I haven't signed anything either. As far as I am concerned I have no contract.
You don't need a grant for your project. Grants are to give you funding while you develop a project (lets not debate it's merit here) so that you can aford the costs of development. It sounds like you've already developed it, so what you really need is advertisers for when you launch.
Giving that you're going up against MySpace I'd have to advise you to find a time machine and go back and warn yourself to spend your time on a different project (seriously, what could you have spent that much time on? I could best MySpace in 2-3 weeks of semi-serious coding.). Several better alternatives have come up and subsequently died. Not because they weren't vastly superior, but because of the power of word of mouth. A few million 14 year olds is a powerfull marketing force.
Oh ok... I misread your post thought you were advocating making your own hydrogen that way. My mistake. Having now read it again it's clear I misspoke.
What concerns me is the lack of transparancy in some of the budgeted items. On the budget page it lists two things I'm really curious about... "Chapter startup money" and "Domain names". There's no details on either one.
What is this "chapter startup" and why does it need two grand?
Where I do my shopping (GoDaddy) $1500 will buy me 167 domain names. How many does WikiMedia have/need?
I can't really contest any of the rest of the fees because I lack enough info, but the complete ommision of data regarding these irks me.
It isn't just the computer buying people that advertisers market to. They also market to potential investors. People are a lot more willing to invest their money in companies that they know.
Here's a link to a page with lots and lots of pictures of Paul's boat, "Octopus" (outside pics only). If you poke around the site a bit you can also find a page of pictures for the "Platinum" as well as several other ships that are larger than Octopus.
Some other interesting things that apparently came with it:
Tender - 63ft "Man of War"
Submarine - Nomad 1000 (world's first luxury submarine)
I wasn't advocating it for all-around use. If I were doing any of the things you mentioned (image processing and the like) it simply would not make sense to do it this way. However my argument wouldn't apply. It'd (more than likely) actually take longer to develop this type of software in what is, essentially, a scripting language designed for rapid web development.
I wasn't claiming that that Ruby (or RoR) is an end-all language/framework... just that in certain instances rapid development is worth a lot more than a few clock cycles. In this case I CAN use Paul Graham as an example because though he may be a "highly specific case" that's exactly the user-base that RoR is for... people who want to develop web apps really quickly.
As far as the comparrison to LISP (LISP being a "mature" language)... they all had to start somewhere. Ruby was released in 1995 (aka. the same year as Java's first public release) and has grown a lot since then. In fact it borrows a lot from LISP and Smalltalk (which also borrows a lot from LISP).
Anyhow... considering that you posted about 20 posts on this one topic and all of them (well, all that I read) were talking about how Java was good and Ruby (and Rails) was bad I don't think we'll ever agree. One theme I noticed was an apparent misunderstanding of what Rails is. It isn't just ActiveRecord... it's a whole MVC architecture. If you think that MVC is a bad idea you might want to let a whole list of popular / sucessful projects know that they can stop waisting their time.
An extra server costs what, the same as hiring a programmer for a single month?
Exactly... I was hashing out this very thing this morning for a project I'm working on. At some point I realized I'd be stupid to not use the quickest development method (in this case RoR) since the cost of a new server is roughly equivalent to half a week worth of my time (I'll be using cheaper homebuilt Linux boxes). If I can get the project done a month sooner (maybe a bit conservative for this project) then that's ~ 8 more servers I could afford to throw at it. I can guarantee that RoR isn't enough slower to demand that much more hardware.
However, don't take my word for it. Paul Graham (et al) suceeded in his startup because of this very thing. He thinks (and I tend to agree) that programmer time is worth more than computer time.
I agree. The probelm we, in the USofA, face is with our legaslative body. We need to step forward and convince our representitives that embryonic stem cell research is for everyone's over-all good. Before the flames start flying I'd like to say that I'm not a big fan of abortion and the like. HOWEVER, if a life was going to be ended anyhow why not put it towards further good? How about legeslating towards making dead fetuses fair game for the rest of us, but making it illegal to kill embryo for the purpos of harvesting these "cells". If one dead foetus can save 10-20 (or even 2) lives, isn't it already worth it?
p.s. I'm sure this post is full of gramatical and spelling errors... it's 6:20 in the morning my time, gimme a break.
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The thig is that their ATMs are by no means rock-solid, but they do work well enough. I haven't heard of any reports of them being responsible for misallocation of people's funds or of being able to (really) hax0r one just by having physical access to it. Even when they screw up really badly they aren't skewing people's bank accounts. Diebold SHOULD be able to make this work. Unfortunately they seem to be unwilling.
I forgot to mention the cleanup method for the nuclear waste. There's been some interesting work in how to get the Earth's subduction zones to take care of it for us. Here's a brief (but ugly) site that explains it pretty well.
I suggest anyone interested in what we SHOULD be doing (nuclear power and hydrogen fuel wise) look in to Pebble Bed Reactors. Not only can they provide fault-tollerant, safe, cheap nuclear power, they can also be designed to produce hydrogen as a byproduct. Why our government isn't already dumping billions in to this is beyond me.
The Chinese are completely trouncing us on this one.
For that matter so does Mazda. They've had a street-legal RX-8 that can run on either hydrogen or gasoline for a while now. The driver can even select which fuel they'd like to use just by flicking a switch.
I'm sorry, but I'm unfamiliar with this "hentai" of which you speak. Does it have something to do with tentacle-overlords?
I'm with you on the leaning into corners (and such) on the console games. However, there is a phenomenom that I haven't quite gotten my mind around yet. For some reason when I'm sitting at the PC when surprising/unexpected things happen my body doesn't react. My eyes and face do, but not my body. I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with trying to keep my hands precisely positioned above certain keys whereas having a "gamepad" or sorts makes me feel more free. I've observed this in others too. Are myself, and my friends, abnormal; or have you guys noticed this too?
I suppose I should have qualified "smaller" with a short explanation. I agree that if they came out with something thinner/lighter it'd do well and I'd want one. I meant that I couldn't see there being a market for a machine with a screen smaller than 12 inches.
What I'd really like to see them do is cram a 17" screen into a 12" enclosure... I'm a whore for large screens, but don't want to carry around a larger machine. If they could make it one of those tablet/laptop convertables (eg. this gateway model) I'd give my right arm for it.
Not to nit-pick because I agree with your premise, but my understanding is that Apple has already dedicated itself to the Merom and Conroe processor lines. I have a feeling that Apple and Intel REALLY got in to bed together to make this all go off without a hitch. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple starts being the reference design for Intel's chips.
I am a pretty skinny guy (6'1" tall by 140lbs). My transportation currently consits of walking, bus/train, and motorcycling. I carry everything I take with me in a backpack (no saddlebags on the motorcycle, or anything like that). I have an old 12" 500MHz G3 iBook that I carry EVERYWHERE. I, honestly don't know what the problem is. Sure, I'd like something lighter, but this is more than light enough to be comfortable. If they could do better, weight wise, then more power to them. However, I can't imagine there being enough market for anything between what I have and a palm device. Even if they did come out with something smaller I would never buy it. One of the greatest things about all of the Apple laptops over the years is that they've kept a full-sized keyboard. Are you really willing to give up the ability to type well to save a few fractions of a pound (and get a lesser machine)?
What I'm curious about is the fact that almost all porn DVDs are region free (and they advertise it on the boxes)... they know that it's a plus. Why can't the Holywood mainstream figure this out?
Wasn't the whole point that they aren't anyways? However, they have to, at least, live up to their advertisement.
Not my service contract. If fact, I don't have one. I guessed Comcast's fone number 1-800-COMCAST and told them I wanted the service installed. The guy showed up the next day and hooked up the line and handed over the modem. All I signed was the peice of paper saying that he did, in fact, show up and do those things. I hooked up the modem and did the setup through the web browser (I don't use Windows and if I did I still probably wouldn't use their software). Sure, a little screen may have asked me if I agreed to such-and-such, but ya know what? I had already paid for and was already receiving the service... doesn't count. Since then I haven't signed anything either. As far as I am concerned I have no contract.
You don't need a grant for your project. Grants are to give you funding while you develop a project (lets not debate it's merit here) so that you can aford the costs of development. It sounds like you've already developed it, so what you really need is advertisers for when you launch. Giving that you're going up against MySpace I'd have to advise you to find a time machine and go back and warn yourself to spend your time on a different project (seriously, what could you have spent that much time on? I could best MySpace in 2-3 weeks of semi-serious coding.). Several better alternatives have come up and subsequently died. Not because they weren't vastly superior, but because of the power of word of mouth. A few million 14 year olds is a powerfull marketing force.
"Chief, do you like to have sex with your wife?" ...
"Can I watch?"
Oh ok... I misread your post thought you were advocating making your own hydrogen that way. My mistake. Having now read it again it's clear I misspoke.
D'oh.
I'm trying to figure out what making alcohol has to do with making hydrogen. I think you're mistaking this for another (E85) technology.
I'm not saying that I don't trust you, but you've made some pretty big claims here. Do you have any sources where I/we could research this more?
- What is this "chapter startup" and why does it need two grand?
- Where I do my shopping (GoDaddy) $1500 will buy me 167 domain names. How many does WikiMedia have/need?
I can't really contest any of the rest of the fees because I lack enough info, but the complete ommision of data regarding these irks me.It isn't just the computer buying people that advertisers market to. They also market to potential investors. People are a lot more willing to invest their money in companies that they know.
Aw come on... who wouldn't want a drop-in-widget web browser that they could use anywhere? Think of what you could do with About boxes!!!
Some other interesting things that apparently came with it:
I wasn't advocating it for all-around use. If I were doing any of the things you mentioned (image processing and the like) it simply would not make sense to do it this way. However my argument wouldn't apply. It'd (more than likely) actually take longer to develop this type of software in what is, essentially, a scripting language designed for rapid web development.
I wasn't claiming that that Ruby (or RoR) is an end-all language/framework... just that in certain instances rapid development is worth a lot more than a few clock cycles. In this case I CAN use Paul Graham as an example because though he may be a "highly specific case" that's exactly the user-base that RoR is for... people who want to develop web apps really quickly.
As far as the comparrison to LISP (LISP being a "mature" language)... they all had to start somewhere. Ruby was released in 1995 (aka. the same year as Java's first public release) and has grown a lot since then. In fact it borrows a lot from LISP and Smalltalk (which also borrows a lot from LISP).
Anyhow... considering that you posted about 20 posts on this one topic and all of them (well, all that I read) were talking about how Java was good and Ruby (and Rails) was bad I don't think we'll ever agree. One theme I noticed was an apparent misunderstanding of what Rails is. It isn't just ActiveRecord... it's a whole MVC architecture. If you think that MVC is a bad idea you might want to let a whole list of popular / sucessful projects know that they can stop waisting their time.
However, don't take my word for it. Paul Graham (et al) suceeded in his startup because of this very thing. He thinks (and I tend to agree) that programmer time is worth more than computer time.
I agree. The probelm we, in the USofA, face is with our legaslative body. We need to step forward and convince our representitives that embryonic stem cell research is for everyone's over-all good. Before the flames start flying I'd like to say that I'm not a big fan of abortion and the like. HOWEVER, if a life was going to be ended anyhow why not put it towards further good? How about legeslating towards making dead fetuses fair game for the rest of us, but making it illegal to kill embryo for the purpos of harvesting these "cells". If one dead foetus can save 10-20 (or even 2) lives, isn't it already worth it?
p.s. I'm sure this post is full of gramatical and spelling errors... it's 6:20 in the morning my time, gimme a break.