(mini-)USB is not very good as a general consumer standard. It only provides 5v, it is a relatively expensive plug (many pins) and it is hard to plug in for older people.
There is a much better idea to have a plug with one extra pin that determines the voltage, that would cover 80% of all devices instead of just phones. It's called UniCharge and consumer electronics companies have been looking at it for years but balked at the switchover cost. Cost after switchover would be much lower because you can simply leave the adapter out of the box and sell them separately just like they do with batteries.
A bit of a push from a government might actually help here.
USB connectors are relatively expensive, a few dimes each. In a world where a simple power supply can cost as little is $1 (whole sale factory), that is never going to compete with a 2 pin plug that costs only a few cents.
Plus they are limited to 5V, which means you need to add conversion circuitry for anything else.
And old people have trouble plugging them in.
And they are not as durable as simpler designs.
And they can't supply enough power for fast charging batteries
And there are better alternatives (that's a subject for another post)
Although I'm a staunch believer in free markets, for basic infrastructure like payment systems perhaps a guiding role by the government wouldn't be a bad idea, just like they have a role with regular old currency.
Almost. They re-index it every now and then, and it tends to drift upwards, so it should be a bit above 100 now. Yes, it goes up, that surprised me as well. The average IQ a century ago would have been around 80.
...27000+ officials that can issue a passport. It should be trivial to find a corrupt official in, say, Italy who will create a passport for you with the right biometrics. How is this going to make anyone safer?
I can't find the reference right now but I remember from economics class that 1% growth of gross national product corresponds to roughly 0.5% growth in energy consumption of a country. (Although it depends on how advanced a particular economy is).
So you would have to more than halve the US GDP to reduce the carbon footprint by 25%. Not a great idea, it's less painful to get the same reduction through technological innovation.
TFA states that he was also convicted for obscene e-mails describing sex acts with children. Anybody else find this even more worrying than the pictures?
I guess this means you can commit a felony by posting a few choice lines on slashdot?
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
Good point. If you have a chance to go to MIT they simply offer the best CS course by any standard. I would say the top 10% of US schools are better than their Euro counterparts. My guess is the the average US school is probably below their Euro counterpart. And you get a nice culture boost form attending a European school, and they are often much cheaper (local tax payers picking up the bill). So, unless you think you can get into the top 10% in the US, a european school is a good idea.
(I have a degree from both MIT and a European school - Delft University)
So is Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python). They both moved to the US though. On the other hand, Andrew S. Tanenbaum went the other way. As far as I know he's still teaching at Amsterdam University. And the Netherlands is pretty easy to get around without learning a foreign language. If you are considering the Netherlands, the CS program is better at Delft University of Technology though.
Two reasons, firstly the benefits are long term, the cost are short term. Adding a few dollars per device, when you sell several hundred million, seriously impacts your quarterly results. The benefits to consumers, the environment and the bottom line were clear and pretty certain. But it would take 3 to 5 years before the benefits outweighed the investment. More importantly: firms that would not participate could essentially avoid the cost and then free ride later on. So the management said: let's try to free ride. In the end none of the consumer electronic firms involved (all the big ones) went ahead with it.
I've actually been involved in a study for a large consumer electronics firm and the benefits of standardisation are substantially larger than the profit that would be lost from no longer being able to sell chargers and related equipment. Just imagine: if chargers were as standard as batteries you could leave them out of the box giving you a huge saving on shelf space and transportation costs. Did you know that there are laws in Europe requiring consumer electronic firms to have to be able to replace power supplies for products that went out of production 7 years ago? There are warehouses with dozens of obsolete charges just lying around. Image the cost of that.
The wireless pad they are using still needs to be supplied with power. Presumable with one of those non-standard bricks, they are not putting 110/220V on your desk for safety reasons. So the total inefficiency should be 40-80% multiplied by the transformer efficiency.
With todays technology it is perfectly possible to standardize on one plug, that has an extra 2 pins to communicate what power it needs. A transformer that uses that technology only sees a couple of dollars price increase. Everyone wants this but no one wants to be first in adding a few dollars cost to their devices.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
Freedoms, you say? As a UK citizen I think taking on some of the things you "enjoy" would give me the perfect freedom to:
-pay for the National Health Service to abort the children of teenage sluts who are too lazy to be responsible for their actions
Uhm, the Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world.
-pay for the National Health Service treatment of those who have been mugged/robbed by junkies
The number of junkies is on par with other countries, drug related crime is slightly lower due to junkies not needing that much money.
-pay for liver transplants for George Best-alike wastrels that see the liberalisation of alcohol as an adequate response to life's problems
Again, lower than European average
-pay for National Health Service treatment of STDs spread by hookers
Both STD and visits to prostitues are lower then elsewhere.
I could go on, but you get the point. The fact that it's legal certainly does not mean it's getting out of hand. Far from it.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
It's also interesting that you claim you don't need a Visa to visit 99% of the planet, yet those who want to visit YOU, do need one
I don't like that either, but those things are mostly decided on an EU level nowadays. It looks like we may lose our soft drug policy too for the same reason. The current government doesn't seem to mind much (a coalition of socialists and christian democats... no liberals of any kind).
This thread will likely contain a bunch of clever technical solutions to spam. Probably all of them flawed because if there was a good technical solution we would have found it by now.
We know who the spammers are: almost all spam involves some sort of financial transaction which we can track. The only thing that stops us from getting at them is that they are seldom in the jurisdiction where they committed their offence. This however, can be solved. We did it for war crimes and for child porn. The UN just needs to get its act together. Perhaps they can create something like an international criminal court for spam.
There are a million technical solutions proposed here but curbing spam should simply be left to politicians and lawyers. We know who the spammers are: they always want money and we can track that.
We just can't get at them because they are in different jurisdictions. But that can be solved by the UN by simply setting up an "international criminal court" like the one we now have for war crimes.
There is also a perfectly legal way to get the spammers. First of all it's relatively easy to find spammers, since almost all there services entail a money transfer of some kind. Then just sue the bastards.
The main reason this does not work at the moment is that the crime/offense crosses so many different jurisdictions. However, we managed to solve that problem for a lot of other crimes through the UN, so there is no reason why we could not set up an "international internet criminal" court like the one in The Hague.
In his defense: He's also Dutch and male. You could say he is double handicapped. (Most Dutchmen, like me, are not very politically correct. It's a cultural thing that tends to offend those not in the know)
If you RTFA is says the ships will be anchored 7 miles off the coast. That is well within the national borders so they would simply be protected by the coast guard.
I don't think there is a way you would be able to go outside national territory without paying for a huge fibre cable
Or you could just wait for them to leave, call the police and let the law deal with it. Even if you do have a gun handy, your chances of survival would be much better.
(I also think killing someone is not something to be done lightly, not even when he's an armed robber threatening you, but you obviously feel differently)
I meant to say "per capita", and granted, it is no longer 10 times when comparing US and China (for other 3rd world countries the difference is still in that order though).
The point is that it is not realistic to expect politicians there to do much about reducing their CO2 when children are still dying from malnutrition. Even if we get China to play ball, there are 3 billion other people not in the west that have way more pressing issues on their mind than CO2 reduction.
It is just entirely unrealistic to expect any kind of CO2 reduction in a global context. We better start coming up with mitigation measures, and this plan is as good as any I've heard so far.
The beauty of this idea is that you can start small, measure what happens and stop right away if it doesn't work as intended or if it turns out to have side effects.
The idea that China and India will stop their fossil fuel intake while the US uses 10 times as much is about as realistic in a geopolitical sense as, oh I don't know, sending an army to Irak and expecting democracy to appear.
Slashdot Mirror
(mini-)USB is not very good as a general consumer standard. It only provides 5v, it is a relatively expensive plug (many pins) and it is hard to plug in for older people.
There is a much better idea to have a plug with one extra pin that determines the voltage, that would cover 80% of all devices instead of just phones. It's called UniCharge and consumer electronics companies have been looking at it for years but balked at the switchover cost. Cost after switchover would be much lower because you can simply leave the adapter out of the box and sell them separately just like they do with batteries.
A bit of a push from a government might actually help here.
Although I'm a staunch believer in free markets, for basic infrastructure like payment systems perhaps a guiding role by the government wouldn't be a bad idea, just like they have a role with regular old currency.
First, Microsoft does not have a monopoly.
They have been tried and convicted in a US court: the are indeed a monopoly
Almost. They re-index it every now and then, and it tends to drift upwards, so it should be a bit above 100 now. Yes, it goes up, that surprised me as well. The average IQ a century ago would have been around 80.
...27000+ officials that can issue a passport. It should be trivial to find a corrupt official in, say, Italy who will create a passport for you with the right biometrics. How is this going to make anyone safer?
I can't find the reference right now but I remember from economics class that 1% growth of gross national product corresponds to roughly 0.5% growth in energy consumption of a country. (Although it depends on how advanced a particular economy is).
So you would have to more than halve the US GDP to reduce the carbon footprint by 25%. Not a great idea, it's less painful to get the same reduction through technological innovation.
And the alternatives to CFLs are made in China as well, making the whole shipping issue moot
Yeah, I know. Browser crash made me do it (safari). Oh, well.
TFA states that he was also convicted for obscene e-mails describing sex acts with children. Anybody else find this even more worrying than the pictures?
I guess this means you can commit a felony by posting a few choice lines on slashdot?
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
Good point. If you have a chance to go to MIT they simply offer the best CS course by any standard. I would say the top 10% of US schools are better than their Euro counterparts. My guess is the the average US school is probably below their Euro counterpart. And you get a nice culture boost form attending a European school, and they are often much cheaper (local tax payers picking up the bill). So, unless you think you can get into the top 10% in the US, a european school is a good idea.
(I have a degree from both MIT and a European school - Delft University)
Dijkstra was Dutch
So is Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python). They both moved to the US though. On the other hand, Andrew S. Tanenbaum went the other way. As far as I know he's still teaching at Amsterdam University. And the Netherlands is pretty easy to get around without learning a foreign language. If you are considering the Netherlands, the CS program is better at Delft University of Technology though.
Two reasons, firstly the benefits are long term, the cost are short term. Adding a few dollars per device, when you sell several hundred million, seriously impacts your quarterly results. The benefits to consumers, the environment and the bottom line were clear and pretty certain. But it would take 3 to 5 years before the benefits outweighed the investment.
More importantly: firms that would not participate could essentially avoid the cost and then free ride later on. So the management said: let's try to free ride. In the end none of the consumer electronic firms involved (all the big ones) went ahead with it.
I've actually been involved in a study for a large consumer electronics firm and the benefits of standardisation are substantially larger than the profit that would be lost from no longer being able to sell chargers and related equipment. Just imagine: if chargers were as standard as batteries you could leave them out of the box giving you a huge saving on shelf space and transportation costs. Did you know that there are laws in Europe requiring consumer electronic firms to have to be able to replace power supplies for products that went out of production 7 years ago? There are warehouses with dozens of obsolete charges just lying around. Image the cost of that.
The wireless pad they are using still needs to be supplied with power. Presumable with one of those non-standard bricks, they are not putting 110/220V on your desk for safety reasons. So the total inefficiency should be 40-80% multiplied by the transformer efficiency.
With todays technology it is perfectly possible to standardize on one plug, that has an extra 2 pins to communicate what power it needs. A transformer that uses that technology only sees a couple of dollars price increase. Everyone wants this but no one wants to be first in adding a few dollars cost to their devices.
Freedoms, you say? As a UK citizen I think taking on some of the things you "enjoy" would give me the perfect freedom to:
-pay for the National Health Service to abort the children of teenage sluts who are too lazy to be responsible for their actions
Uhm, the Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world.
-pay for the National Health Service treatment of those who have been mugged/robbed by junkies
The number of junkies is on par with other countries, drug related crime is slightly lower due to junkies not needing that much money.
-pay for liver transplants for George Best-alike wastrels that see the liberalisation of alcohol as an adequate response to life's problems
Again, lower than European average
-pay for National Health Service treatment of STDs spread by hookers
Both STD and visits to prostitues are lower then elsewhere.
I could go on, but you get the point. The fact that it's legal certainly does not mean it's getting out of hand. Far from it.
It's also interesting that you claim you don't need a Visa to visit 99% of the planet, yet those who want to visit YOU, do need one
I don't like that either, but those things are mostly decided on an EU level nowadays. It looks like we may lose our soft drug policy too for the same reason. The current government doesn't seem to mind much (a coalition of socialists and christian democats... no liberals of any kind).
This thread will likely contain a bunch of clever technical solutions to spam. Probably all of them flawed because if there was a good technical solution we would have found it by now.
We know who the spammers are: almost all spam involves some sort of financial transaction which we can track. The only thing that stops us from getting at them is that they are seldom in the jurisdiction where they committed their offence. This however, can be solved. We did it for war crimes and for child porn. The UN just needs to get its act together. Perhaps they can create something like an international criminal court for spam.
There are a million technical solutions proposed here but curbing spam should simply be left to politicians and lawyers. We know who the spammers are: they always want money and we can track that.
We just can't get at them because they are in different jurisdictions. But that can be solved by the UN by simply setting up an "international criminal court" like the one we now have for war crimes.
There is also a perfectly legal way to get the spammers. First of all it's relatively easy to find spammers, since almost all there services entail a money transfer of some kind. Then just sue the bastards.
The main reason this does not work at the moment is that the crime/offense crosses so many different jurisdictions. However, we managed to solve that problem for a lot of other crimes through the UN, so there is no reason why we could not set up an "international internet criminal" court like the one in The Hague.
He's extremely blunt.
In his defense: He's also Dutch and male. You could say he is double handicapped. (Most Dutchmen, like me, are not very politically correct. It's a cultural thing that tends to offend those not in the know)
If you RTFA is says the ships will be anchored 7 miles off the coast. That is well within the national borders so they would simply be protected by the coast guard.
I don't think there is a way you would be able to go outside national territory without paying for a huge fibre cable
Or you could just wait for them to leave, call the police and let the law deal with it. Even if you do have a gun handy, your chances of survival would be much better.
(I also think killing someone is not something to be done lightly, not even when he's an armed robber threatening you, but you obviously feel differently)
I meant to say "per capita", and granted, it is no longer 10 times when comparing US and China (for other 3rd world countries the difference is still in that order though).
The point is that it is not realistic to expect politicians there to do much about reducing their CO2 when children are still dying from malnutrition. Even if we get China to play ball, there are 3 billion other people not in the west that have way more pressing issues on their mind than CO2 reduction.
It is just entirely unrealistic to expect any kind of CO2 reduction in a global context. We better start coming up with mitigation measures, and this plan is as good as any I've heard so far.
The beauty of this idea is that you can start small, measure what happens and stop right away if it doesn't work as intended or if it turns out to have side effects.
The idea that China and India will stop their fossil fuel intake while the US uses 10 times as much is about as realistic in a geopolitical sense as, oh I don't know, sending an army to Irak and expecting democracy to appear.