It is a desktop OS, although made by a company that doesn't sell or want you to run a traditional desktop computer. You know, those with cards, hard drives and memory DIMMs.
Silly me though, I should order the Macbook with the maximum memory configuration, use a monitor on USB, sound over bluetooth and the hard drive over wifi:-). That will be $2000 well spent to replace outmoded wires and local storage.
When you find yourself with ten people competing for two chargers at work's parking lot that's a problem, along with need and ethics of having to interrupt what you're doing, go back to the parking lot and unplug/move your car so that someone else can use the charger.
There was an article about that very situation happening in the Silicon Valley or a similar Californian setting. Similarly there's irony in the electric car requiring you to have you own garage (with power that runs to it), thus likely requiring you to live in suburbs thus likely requiring you to commute by car, possibly a moderately long commute. Thus you need an electric car because you need an electric car. Same deal anyway If the car is electric or not : you pay for your car so you can go to work so you can pay for your car. (Take that as a bit of humor if you can or wish!)
I agree with your assessment of the technical problem : the technical problem can be dealt with but there are the social, behavioral, urbanistic problems. In theory catering to the electric cars ought to be easy : it was probably harder or more expensive to take care of horses.
A more complicated option would be the car connecting a charger itself. Doable, but somewhat more work.
So I'm picturing a car moving to the charger on its own, like you left your horse in a stable and the horse drinks and eats what he finds there or what the workers staffing the stables bring him. Maybe some robotic solution would be used and/or the parking lot is supervised by someone who is guarding the lot, guides the cars, manages the chargers. I like that idea but too bad such an occupation might be considered too expensive, if considering a min wage full time employee (or more) is quite a cost to man a parking lot for a few dozen cars (or less, or more). But why not:-). That may work in some countries (I'm thinking developing ones, or Japan). In African countries or really poor areas you can have someone dusting off solar panels (and doing whatever basic, unfrequent maintenance) whereas in the first world it's not worth paying someone to go clean them...
It used to be known as the "interoperable" format. Also carries a connotation of being lightweight (in a sense), simple or braindead. I thought it was unchanged since the early 90s and apparently that's not true.
Use the customer's processing resources to run computer vision algorithms etc., then send very short pseudo real-time reports and perhaps more detailed daily/weekly ones. This has the added benefit that the customer's hardware wastes a few watt and not your own megawatts and hardware, so not only you reduced the network bandwidth and storage use by orders of magnitude, but you've exported most of the processing costs as well.
I would want ALSA of some sort to run under MS-DOS (or FreeDOS), in extended memory and emulating Sound Blaster 16/Pro/Vanilla, Adlib etc. so we can play the good old games without DRM, slowdowns and sound glitches, or Windows.
I like PCs too, so what about putting a PC in my PC.. 300MHz 486 on a PCIe 1x card that beams VGA and sound output (SB compatible) over the PCIe bus to my main PC, my PC gives it input and block devices. Nerds can get GPIO and serial on the card, and total cost low. That stuff was boring 20 years ago (Mac Performa DOS compatible, Amiga before that and Z80 add-ons for 6502 computers etc. before that)
To be fair, I had pain with word processors that warn you that "warning, you will lose important information blah-blah because you're saving in.rtf". Fine, but the only complicated thing was a table with two columns and some "underlining". Single page document with nothing really going on. Now, why the hell couldn't it interoperate cleanly between AbiWord and Libreoffice or Word and Libreoffice? Or seemingly, LibreOffice with itself? Now I still have at least one version of the RTF document that mattered, but it is mangled (slightly, but I would have to study the underlying structure or install and try several word processors)
Lesson learned : only use the native file format (likely.odt) or don't use a word processor in the first place.
Maybe your SSD is extremely slow on writes - triggers very slow "thinking" after a few MBs are written - or the partitions, at least the swap one are "misaligned"?
I restarted it a while ago, using the "Restartless restart" extension. All it takes is a few pages opened from news web sites to peg firefox around 100% to 110% CPU use (per top where one core used is 100%)
I don't use Chrome-ium because it will use up all my memory + swap and when all swap is used, the mouse cursor doesn't respond. It takes minutes to ctrl-alt-f1 into a shell and kill it. If I get a laptop running as a serial console for the desktop I might have a try at running Chromium so I can kill it faster in that case.
I blame the web sites. It's like the age old competition between the shield and the sword. It's unwinnable : every time a new browser version runs 5% faster, the web developers will make their crap 10% heavier or slower. And even if they run laptops, a few-year-old Intel CPU in a laptop is incredibly fast so if your PC's single-threaded performance doesn't keep up with that you will suffer.
But how much does it cost to store say, 50 gigawatts-hour ?
Renewable non-hydro electricity is so cheap because the storage, base load, transmission, hydro and gas peaking etc. are externalities for the producers, AND we have rigged the markets so that is encouraged and the renewable producers are subsidized / paid by everyone else rather than the other way around.
That's not necessarily a very bad thing but it can't scale forever. So, we fail to account for the costs of nuclear (especially fusion, sadly) but at the same times regarding renewables, it's trillions in costs for transmission and storage that are swept under the rug. If you want/need some 20,000 km length of high power power lines someone will have to pay for it.
Whether or not we think that we're better off without the soviet union, it was really an epic economic and social catastrophe. Millions starved or died from methanol poisoning. The "Arduous March" in DPRK is sad. Come to think of it, the financial capitalism crisis from 2007-2010 was rather disastrous but that system survived. It's not without its horrors too, what with the US deciding to destroy Libya so as to warn other states what their fate may be if their pursue an independent policy.
Actually widespread horse transportation may be unsubstainable. I guess the solution was that most people didn't and never traveled at all in their whole lives ; horse riding tended to be associated with nobility and knighthood. On the other hand, with the second industrial revolution we developed a vehicle that's much cheaper and less energy intensive, that's the bicycle (less energy intensive during use than walking) Likewise, perhaps LED lighting is a better idea than whale oil lamps, although I hope something will replace LEDs that has better spectrum.
Like century old furniture, what if we could inherit a post-LED light bulb, or a battery or supercapacitor bank from our great-grandparents? Eat eggs and tend to your garden (if applicable) rather than eat beef. Keep your 5-watt computer for 30 years then hand it to some kids. Don't heat your home in the winter except in one room at certain times, wear a nightcap instead. Demolish that swimming pool and fill it with dirt. Basically go forward in technology, but go backward in income level and consumerism.
Let's say a business's activity is to shovel shit out of an area so that it can get somewhat clean and safe, without using motorized vehicles and tools. Because you can't be 100% efficient, the people collecting shit and carrying it in carts or bags will produce as much shit if not more, by say shitting themselves while shoveling shit. Riiiiight.
(Disclaimer : there was a hyperbole in that post. Workers can at least put aside their shovel, drop their pants and shit on the ground near them. But there is a minimum quantity of human shit produced per megajoule of effective mechanical human labor)
Let's say you are in the market for an electric oven. You are a consumer when shopping for the oven, rather than making it yourself. Doesn't mean you're limited to baking pre-made items such as ready-made pizzas. Some of the oven users might expect to cook their own food in it.
The problem with the smartphones is that they force customer to create an online account to install software, and most of the applications are malware. E.g. to install Skype you have to create a Google account to use the app store, and when installing Skype you're presented with a "choice" to accept Microsoft reading your phone directory (extremely intimate information) and uploading it to their servers, or not being able to use the software and stay in touch with loved ones abroad.
Permission management? for that you need to follow a complicated (hard to find) device-specific procedure that involves using a desktop computer, and if that's not possible throw away your smartphone and buy a newer one. But even in that latter case you have to know about which OS version allows permission management.
So, for the simple feature of "don't send your phone numbers to third parties" it is easier to maintain a Windows or Linux desktop computer.
The dongle sort of counts, since it is on external PCIe : at least you don't worry about USB overhead or having a crappy NIC. A buddy has one : ethernet runs to the room, ISP is a cable ISP (no caps and not $100 per month, this is not the US). That makes for crazy low latency, compared to the usual wifi + DSL.
The Macbook pro effectively almost never leaves the place it's chained to : it's way too invaluable. That's the biggest "fail" in that story, it's thin, fragile, a thief magnet and worth about a month's wage.
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It is a desktop OS, although made by a company that doesn't sell or want you to run a traditional desktop computer. You know, those with cards, hard drives and memory DIMMs.
Silly me though, I should order the Macbook with the maximum memory configuration, use a monitor on USB, sound over bluetooth and the hard drive over wifi :-). That will be $2000 well spent to replace outmoded wires and local storage.
When you find yourself with ten people competing for two chargers at work's parking lot that's a problem, along with need and ethics of having to interrupt what you're doing, go back to the parking lot and unplug/move your car so that someone else can use the charger.
There was an article about that very situation happening in the Silicon Valley or a similar Californian setting.
Similarly there's irony in the electric car requiring you to have you own garage (with power that runs to it), thus likely requiring you to live in suburbs thus likely requiring you to commute by car, possibly a moderately long commute. Thus you need an electric car because you need an electric car. Same deal anyway If the car is electric or not : you pay for your car so you can go to work so you can pay for your car. (Take that as a bit of humor if you can or wish!)
I agree with your assessment of the technical problem : the technical problem can be dealt with but there are the social, behavioral, urbanistic problems. In theory catering to the electric cars ought to be easy : it was probably harder or more expensive to take care of horses.
A more complicated option would be the car connecting a charger itself. Doable, but somewhat more work.
So I'm picturing a car moving to the charger on its own, like you left your horse in a stable and the horse drinks and eats what he finds there or what the workers staffing the stables bring him. Maybe some robotic solution would be used and/or the parking lot is supervised by someone who is guarding the lot, guides the cars, manages the chargers. I like that idea but too bad such an occupation might be considered too expensive, if considering a min wage full time employee (or more) is quite a cost to man a parking lot for a few dozen cars (or less, or more). But why not :-).
That may work in some countries (I'm thinking developing ones, or Japan). In African countries or really poor areas you can have someone dusting off solar panels (and doing whatever basic, unfrequent maintenance) whereas in the first world it's not worth paying someone to go clean them...
It used to be known as the "interoperable" format.
Also carries a connotation of being lightweight (in a sense), simple or braindead. I thought it was unchanged since the early 90s and apparently that's not true.
Use the customer's processing resources to run computer vision algorithms etc., then send very short pseudo real-time reports and perhaps more detailed daily/weekly ones. This has the added benefit that the customer's hardware wastes a few watt and not your own megawatts and hardware, so not only you reduced the network bandwidth and storage use by orders of magnitude, but you've exported most of the processing costs as well.
I would want ALSA of some sort to run under MS-DOS (or FreeDOS), in extended memory and emulating Sound Blaster 16/Pro/Vanilla, Adlib etc. so we can play the good old games without DRM, slowdowns and sound glitches, or Windows.
I like PCs too, so what about putting a PC in my PC.. 300MHz 486 on a PCIe 1x card that beams VGA and sound output (SB compatible) over the PCIe bus to my main PC, my PC gives it input and block devices. Nerds can get GPIO and serial on the card, and total cost low.
That stuff was boring 20 years ago (Mac Performa DOS compatible, Amiga before that and Z80 add-ons for 6502 computers etc. before that)
To be fair, I had pain with word processors that warn you that "warning, you will lose important information blah-blah because you're saving in .rtf".
Fine, but the only complicated thing was a table with two columns and some "underlining". Single page document with nothing really going on.
Now, why the hell couldn't it interoperate cleanly between AbiWord and Libreoffice or Word and Libreoffice? Or seemingly, LibreOffice with itself?
Now I still have at least one version of the RTF document that mattered, but it is mangled (slightly, but I would have to study the underlying structure or install and try several word processors)
Lesson learned : only use the native file format (likely .odt) or don't use a word processor in the first place.
Do you change thermal paste every two years or so
Can they even do stuff like addition, multiplication and conditional branching?
Maybe your SSD is extremely slow on writes - triggers very slow "thinking" after a few MBs are written - or the partitions, at least the swap one are "misaligned"?
Nope, parents used it to play Solitaire (in the early 90s) while children used it for adventure games and 3D games.
Right-click on somewhere in the UI where it works and selecting "menu bar" is good enough for me, although perhaps I suffer Stockholm's syndrome..
Bull's balls is an actual food.
I restarted it a while ago, using the "Restartless restart" extension.
All it takes is a few pages opened from news web sites to peg firefox around 100% to 110% CPU use (per top where one core used is 100%)
I don't use Chrome-ium because it will use up all my memory + swap and when all swap is used, the mouse cursor doesn't respond. It takes minutes to ctrl-alt-f1 into a shell and kill it. If I get a laptop running as a serial console for the desktop I might have a try at running Chromium so I can kill it faster in that case.
I blame the web sites. It's like the age old competition between the shield and the sword. It's unwinnable : every time a new browser version runs 5% faster, the web developers will make their crap 10% heavier or slower. And even if they run laptops, a few-year-old Intel CPU in a laptop is incredibly fast so if your PC's single-threaded performance doesn't keep up with that you will suffer.
I'm sure they could have printed it on bible paper, but it was the 60s and the works would have been lost to people rolling marijuana joints with it.
But how much does it cost to store say, 50 gigawatts-hour ?
Renewable non-hydro electricity is so cheap because the storage, base load, transmission, hydro and gas peaking etc. are externalities for the producers, AND we have rigged the markets so that is encouraged and the renewable producers are subsidized / paid by everyone else rather than the other way around.
That's not necessarily a very bad thing but it can't scale forever.
So, we fail to account for the costs of nuclear (especially fusion, sadly) but at the same times regarding renewables, it's trillions in costs for transmission and storage that are swept under the rug. If you want/need some 20,000 km length of high power power lines someone will have to pay for it.
That's boron-11
Whether or not we think that we're better off without the soviet union, it was really an epic economic and social catastrophe. Millions starved or died from methanol poisoning. The "Arduous March" in DPRK is sad.
Come to think of it, the financial capitalism crisis from 2007-2010 was rather disastrous but that system survived. It's not without its horrors too, what with the US deciding to destroy Libya so as to warn other states what their fate may be if their pursue an independent policy.
The imaginary cores do work, getting +30% out of them is ordinary even in games nowadays.
It still won't allow to have a baby in a month.
Actually widespread horse transportation may be unsubstainable. I guess the solution was that most people didn't and never traveled at all in their whole lives ; horse riding tended to be associated with nobility and knighthood.
On the other hand, with the second industrial revolution we developed a vehicle that's much cheaper and less energy intensive, that's the bicycle (less energy intensive during use than walking)
Likewise, perhaps LED lighting is a better idea than whale oil lamps, although I hope something will replace LEDs that has better spectrum.
Like century old furniture, what if we could inherit a post-LED light bulb, or a battery or supercapacitor bank from our great-grandparents? Eat eggs and tend to your garden (if applicable) rather than eat beef. Keep your 5-watt computer for 30 years then hand it to some kids. Don't heat your home in the winter except in one room at certain times, wear a nightcap instead. Demolish that swimming pool and fill it with dirt.
Basically go forward in technology, but go backward in income level and consumerism.
Let's say a business's activity is to shovel shit out of an area so that it can get somewhat clean and safe, without using motorized vehicles and tools.
Because you can't be 100% efficient, the people collecting shit and carrying it in carts or bags will produce as much shit if not more, by say shitting themselves while shoveling shit.
Riiiiight.
(Disclaimer : there was a hyperbole in that post. Workers can at least put aside their shovel, drop their pants and shit on the ground near them. But there is a minimum quantity of human shit produced per megajoule of effective mechanical human labor)
Let's say you are in the market for an electric oven. You are a consumer when shopping for the oven, rather than making it yourself. Doesn't mean you're limited to baking pre-made items such as ready-made pizzas. Some of the oven users might expect to cook their own food in it.
The problem with the smartphones is that they force customer to create an online account to install software, and most of the applications are malware.
E.g. to install Skype you have to create a Google account to use the app store, and when installing Skype you're presented with a "choice" to accept Microsoft reading your phone directory (extremely intimate information) and uploading it to their servers, or not being able to use the software and stay in touch with loved ones abroad.
Permission management? for that you need to follow a complicated (hard to find) device-specific procedure that involves using a desktop computer, and if that's not possible throw away your smartphone and buy a newer one. But even in that latter case you have to know about which OS version allows permission management.
So, for the simple feature of "don't send your phone numbers to third parties" it is easier to maintain a Windows or Linux desktop computer.
The dongle sort of counts, since it is on external PCIe : at least you don't worry about USB overhead or having a crappy NIC.
A buddy has one : ethernet runs to the room, ISP is a cable ISP (no caps and not $100 per month, this is not the US). That makes for crazy low latency, compared to the usual wifi + DSL.
The Macbook pro effectively almost never leaves the place it's chained to : it's way too invaluable. That's the biggest "fail" in that story, it's thin, fragile, a thief magnet and worth about a month's wage.