I'm regularly amused and annoyed by the attempt to compare healthcare.gov to pretty much any technological achievement. First, the comparison to Apple iOS (or anything else). In the first place, nobody is forcing people to buy an Apple phone. Nobody is forcing owners of iPhones to upgrade. Nobody is fining people (oh, 'scuse me, taxing people) for not buying an iPhone or upgrading the OS. This entire comparison is bogus. Next, the Apollo program. Much of the technology to make the Apollo program work hadn't been invented at the time that Kennedy made his "we choose to go to the moon" speech. And Apollo wasn't the beginning either. The Mercury and Gemini programs were key proof-of-concept steps needed to show that docking, EVA, and long duration spaceflight were possible. We also had to not just do those things once but over and over again. Third, high-traffic websites are nothing new. Lots of companies have been doing this for a decade without a hitch. HHS could have easily contracted with Google or Amazon to make this work but instead they chose a Canadian company, which is baffling on its face, that had a documented lousy track record.
Maybe it's just me but I get the sense that 3D printing in the near term is going to be the next dotcom crash. Why? Well, in my own research on the product offerings that are out there, they just don't live up to the hype. Sure the companies are great at showing you tiny trinkets and endless variations of cellphone bumpers. So what? I looked into this to see if printing electronics enclosures on demand would be a viable method of manufacture. Most machines couldn't print anything big enough (exceeding 8"x6"x4"). Those that could would take around 8 hours to print it. Even then, none of the companies talk about the failure rate. Imagine getting 7 hours into the print only to have the thing screw up. What hammer this point home is the fact that one company is now making a machine to chop up failed prints to be reconstituted back into new filament. This is the desktop machines of course. But the companies like Shapeways who have industrial-grade equipment are so expensive that it's not worth it for anything but a prototype.
My point is that in the late 90s, everybody was spending obscene amounts of money on the latest dotcom IPOs who had no concrete product and no revenue. Eventually, people pulled back the curtain to see that there wasn't even a guy pretending to be the wizard. Of course, once the smoke cleared, companies with realistic business plans and products emerged and that's where we are now. IMHO, the same this is going to happen to the 3D printing industry. Reality will clear the decks of the wannabes. But then some big improvements to the technology will have to emerge that will decrease printing time dramatically while dramatically reducing failure rates.
I'm the same way. My beef with this recent foolishness is the same one that I've had for years. Why does there have to be this massive omnibus spending bill that covers pretty much everything and basically gets an all-or-nothing vote? I supported line item veto even though the SCOTUS has said it's unconstitutional. Okay, fine, you can't do it in the executive branch but why couldn't you do the same thing in the House? If people really want transparency in government then being able to see exactly what the money is being spent on and who is voting for it is the way to do it.
So here's a question. Let's say you happen to have a full time job that pays you $50k a year. On January 1, do you look at all the bills you know you're going to have for the entire year and all the things you want to buy and spend all of that money on January 1? Or do you take all the money you have to spend on bills and put it aside somewhere so you don't inadvertently spend it on something else like a Ferrari? Or do you deal with things one month at a time?
Heard of Lenovo but only because they bought IBM's PC business. So they didn't really create the brand. They bought notoriety. Never heard of yeeloong.
I'm having trouble thinking of a Chinese retail brand name that a majority of people worldwide have heard of. Same thing for Russia. Even India (Bollywood doesn't count).
In fact, the fertility rates in the developed world are much less than in poor regions. The fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa are more than twice that of the developed world. Therefore a poor person's carbon footprint is much higher. http://www.econ.yale.edu/~pschultz/cdp925.pdf
That's typical of a bullsh*t artist. To those who can't see the forest through the sleaze, it's intended to assuage fears by making them believe that a "conversation" is actually going to take place and she'll "fix" things if elected. Coming from a person who damn near screamed at the members of a congressional hearing on her monumental failure in Benghazi, this statement is nothing more than a buttf*cking without a reach-around. It's no different than Harry Reid saying "Give us everything we want now and maybe one of these days we'll think about thinking about having an off-the-record chat about the debt limit." And that is no different from some woman you have the hots for telling you that she doesn't like you in THAT way.
Yeah, okay, whatever. That's all fine and dandy until some naturalist comes along and say "Hey, look, there's an insect that only lives in this area and this solar plant you want to is going to destroy its ecosystem."
My point is that most people vote with their wallets. When it all shakes out and people realize their utility bills and/or taxes, probably both, are going to skyrocket, that will be all she wrote.
The uninformed who spout off endlessly about how great green energy is rarely realize or talk about the cost to keep the power plants running at peak efficiency for a long enough time to recoup the initial investment. So what are the overhead costs? If they increase the cost of electricity to the consumer, are they going to care that there's a chance the Great Barrier Reef won't shrink as much especially since most of them couldn't afford to go see it?
It's pretty simple. Thrown money at the problem. A lot of it. Stupid amounts of it. Make the rewards for being a nerd as good or better than those showered all over the jocks. Make sure that a lot of these major geek kids get full scholarships, signing bonuses, and access to cutting edge lab facilities when they get to college. But you also have to add a fame component to it. These kids need to be put on TV and written up in mainstream magazines. And not just once every few years. Not just once a year but followed regularly as they move from high-school science fair star, through college, and all the way to startup company.
How fast does the thing come up with a file system, USB support, and wifi? That needs to happen in less than 10 seconds for a faceless embedded application or people are going to wonder if it's working. And what about the file system? Can you pull power without corrupting it or requiring a long fsck operation?
A COTS GPS module will give you around 2 meter accuracy. One of the UBlox devices can talk to WAAS and get around 1 meter (supposedly). So my question is: why do they need any better than than?
And all this is going to do is convince the US government to turn selective availability back on and we're all screwed.
You might want to read today's Wall Street Journal report on startup investing. The SEC regulations for VC funding have become much more onerous that many angel investors are getting out of the game. You have to be an "accredited" investor and you have to be able to prove that fact. Startups have to do a lot more work to ensure that they are only getting funding from accredited investors. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323309404578611543232094874.html
Putting resources towards medical research is one thing but publicity stunts are pointless. Until a solar panel can power a fully loaded Ford F-150 for 400 miles, I'm not interested. And why wouldn't they take that money and use it as VC funding for people who don't want to work for Google. Or fund things like the X-Prize but with practical real-world goals.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously? Nobody is playing the trouser snake card?
I'm regularly amused and annoyed by the attempt to compare healthcare.gov to pretty much any technological achievement. First, the comparison to Apple iOS (or anything else). In the first place, nobody is forcing people to buy an Apple phone. Nobody is forcing owners of iPhones to upgrade. Nobody is fining people (oh, 'scuse me, taxing people) for not buying an iPhone or upgrading the OS. This entire comparison is bogus.
Next, the Apollo program. Much of the technology to make the Apollo program work hadn't been invented at the time that Kennedy made his "we choose to go to the moon" speech. And Apollo wasn't the beginning either. The Mercury and Gemini programs were key proof-of-concept steps needed to show that docking, EVA, and long duration spaceflight were possible. We also had to not just do those things once but over and over again.
Third, high-traffic websites are nothing new. Lots of companies have been doing this for a decade without a hitch. HHS could have easily contracted with Google or Amazon to make this work but instead they chose a Canadian company, which is baffling on its face, that had a documented lousy track record.
Maybe it's just me but I get the sense that 3D printing in the near term is going to be the next dotcom crash. Why? Well, in my own research on the product offerings that are out there, they just don't live up to the hype. Sure the companies are great at showing you tiny trinkets and endless variations of cellphone bumpers. So what? I looked into this to see if printing electronics enclosures on demand would be a viable method of manufacture. Most machines couldn't print anything big enough (exceeding 8"x6"x4"). Those that could would take around 8 hours to print it. Even then, none of the companies talk about the failure rate. Imagine getting 7 hours into the print only to have the thing screw up. What hammer this point home is the fact that one company is now making a machine to chop up failed prints to be reconstituted back into new filament. This is the desktop machines of course. But the companies like Shapeways who have industrial-grade equipment are so expensive that it's not worth it for anything but a prototype.
My point is that in the late 90s, everybody was spending obscene amounts of money on the latest dotcom IPOs who had no concrete product and no revenue. Eventually, people pulled back the curtain to see that there wasn't even a guy pretending to be the wizard. Of course, once the smoke cleared, companies with realistic business plans and products emerged and that's where we are now. IMHO, the same this is going to happen to the 3D printing industry. Reality will clear the decks of the wannabes. But then some big improvements to the technology will have to emerge that will decrease printing time dramatically while dramatically reducing failure rates.
All the defense has to do is enter Steven Levy's book into evidence. That history properly defines the term hackers.
http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-Anniversary/dp/1449388396/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382495568&sr=1-1&keywords=hackers
I'm the same way. My beef with this recent foolishness is the same one that I've had for years. Why does there have to be this massive omnibus spending bill that covers pretty much everything and basically gets an all-or-nothing vote? I supported line item veto even though the SCOTUS has said it's unconstitutional. Okay, fine, you can't do it in the executive branch but why couldn't you do the same thing in the House? If people really want transparency in government then being able to see exactly what the money is being spent on and who is voting for it is the way to do it.
So here's a question. Let's say you happen to have a full time job that pays you $50k a year. On January 1, do you look at all the bills you know you're going to have for the entire year and all the things you want to buy and spend all of that money on January 1? Or do you take all the money you have to spend on bills and put it aside somewhere so you don't inadvertently spend it on something else like a Ferrari? Or do you deal with things one month at a time?
Off slashdot. I'll bet most mortals have never heard of them. I'm talking about brands that 90% of people have heard of.
Okay, but TCL didn't actually create the RCA brand. They bought name recognition. That's a very different thing that, say, Coca-cola or Ford.
Heard of Lenovo but only because they bought IBM's PC business. So they didn't really create the brand. They bought notoriety.
Never heard of yeeloong.
Okay but they bought Volvo. They didn't create it. And Chinese beer? Feh.
Does anyone even carry those brands?
I'm having trouble thinking of a Chinese retail brand name that a majority of people worldwide have heard of. Same thing for Russia. Even India (Bollywood doesn't count).
In fact, the fertility rates in the developed world are much less than in poor regions. The fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa are more than twice that of the developed world. Therefore a poor person's carbon footprint is much higher. http://www.econ.yale.edu/~pschultz/cdp925.pdf
That's typical of a bullsh*t artist. To those who can't see the forest through the sleaze, it's intended to assuage fears by making them believe that a "conversation" is actually going to take place and she'll "fix" things if elected. Coming from a person who damn near screamed at the members of a congressional hearing on her monumental failure in Benghazi, this statement is nothing more than a buttf*cking without a reach-around. It's no different than Harry Reid saying "Give us everything we want now and maybe one of these days we'll think about thinking about having an off-the-record chat about the debt limit." And that is no different from some woman you have the hots for telling you that she doesn't like you in THAT way.
Yeah, okay, whatever. That's all fine and dandy until some naturalist comes along and say "Hey, look, there's an insect that only lives in this area and this solar plant you want to is going to destroy its ecosystem."
My point is that most people vote with their wallets. When it all shakes out and people realize their utility bills and/or taxes, probably both, are going to skyrocket, that will be all she wrote.
The uninformed who spout off endlessly about how great green energy is rarely realize or talk about the cost to keep the power plants running at peak efficiency for a long enough time to recoup the initial investment. So what are the overhead costs? If they increase the cost of electricity to the consumer, are they going to care that there's a chance the Great Barrier Reef won't shrink as much especially since most of them couldn't afford to go see it?
It's pretty simple. Thrown money at the problem. A lot of it. Stupid amounts of it. Make the rewards for being a nerd as good or better than those showered all over the jocks. Make sure that a lot of these major geek kids get full scholarships, signing bonuses, and access to cutting edge lab facilities when they get to college. But you also have to add a fame component to it. These kids need to be put on TV and written up in mainstream magazines. And not just once every few years. Not just once a year but followed regularly as they move from high-school science fair star, through college, and all the way to startup company.
How fast does the thing come up with a file system, USB support, and wifi? That needs to happen in less than 10 seconds for a faceless embedded application or people are going to wonder if it's working. And what about the file system? Can you pull power without corrupting it or requiring a long fsck operation?
And all this time I thought it was about girth.
Helps to read the article. It's all about height and speed.
A COTS GPS module will give you around 2 meter accuracy. One of the UBlox devices can talk to WAAS and get around 1 meter (supposedly). So my question is: why do they need any better than than?
And all this is going to do is convince the US government to turn selective availability back on and we're all screwed.
Exactly. However the new SEC rules make it even more difficult.
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-340039/
You might want to read today's Wall Street Journal report on startup investing. The SEC regulations for VC funding have become much more onerous that many angel investors are getting out of the game. You have to be an "accredited" investor and you have to be able to prove that fact. Startups have to do a lot more work to ensure that they are only getting funding from accredited investors.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323309404578611543232094874.html
Silly debugging question but how do you they know the sensor is working?
Putting resources towards medical research is one thing but publicity stunts are pointless. Until a solar panel can power a fully loaded Ford F-150 for 400 miles, I'm not interested. And why wouldn't they take that money and use it as VC funding for people who don't want to work for Google. Or fund things like the X-Prize but with practical real-world goals.