Complaining about system performance? The "upgrade" is less capable than the system it is supposed to replace. That's about as valid a complaint as there can be. That said, I never complained about the performance, I pointed out that, while it would be quite a winner in Nintendo's handheld lineup (e.g. I actually like the hardware), they chose to position it as a replacement for a more capable system. That makes it a loser; it's positioned to be, quite literally, a downgrade.
I can think of at least 1 other company that went that route.. **cough** Apple **cough** mini **cough**
Look at it this way: The Geo Metro wasn't a horrible car, for what it was. It was cheap, fuel efficient, and got you from point A to point B. It wasn't built really well and it is obvious that corners were cut, but that was fine because Geo sold it as what it was: cheap transportation. If they had sold it as a sports car, luxury car, or even anything of any quality, it would have been complete crap.
The Geo Metro was maybe 1 step above a Yugo and only maybe slightly less prone to breaking down. Sometimes it is better to not have a particularly bad version of a thing.
I still own a Wii, I saw no reason to "upgrade" to any of their later stuff, as you noted, nothing really compelling about any of them. For me, Wii U didn't float 5 years ago, and nothing has changed in that regard. I mean, I think my 5 year old smartphone in the drawer is a better piece of kit, it just doesn't have the content.
It's radiation being reflected and focused - multiple filaments can produce more of it for a given price than one larger filament. It's also easier to create the reflectors for smaller filaments, plus the source becomes more linear or point in form.
Nobody complains about LTE speeds. Everybody complains about LTE data caps.
You are kidding, right? LTE speeds are maybe fast enough to do a little playing around or watching some 4Mbps stream, but pushing 10GB across to another site? I don't think so, not when I can't even keep a conference call going reliably after 9am.
You know, if you only use your phone to make calls and 5-10 texts a day, most of today's phones will last at least 3-4 days, and some will last a week or more on a single charge. Of course, if you don't want to be stuck in Razr land and actually be able to use your phone's capabilities, well, then you're going to have to sacrifice somewhere. A double thick phone for me with everything extra being battery will likely only stretch me out to 2 full days on a single charge.
But the front screen is the one place that people--for good reason--actively avoid having their fingers rest when holding the phone, and thus the worst possible location for a fingerprint sensor.
Which is why that's the best place to put a scanner, you'll only scan when you explicitly want to scan, and not inadvertently.
Along with pyrotechnic shows sometimes gone wrong. Seriously, a multi amp hour battery still takes hours to charge safely.
Nonsense. Tesla uses ordinary 18650s and charges them in 40 minutes. Batteries that stress power density over energy density can charge in under 10 minute charges. Trust me, I've used them. They've been on the market for years.
So, if those miracle 10 minute chargeable batteries are so common, why all the pyrotechnics with phones, tablets, laptops, hoverboards.... The list just doesn't end. Everything that has used "fast charge" batteries has wound up on a nice smoking youtube video. Perhaps they're not as common or as viable as you make out?
Yay, so I now have a double or triple run time for a given battery after 25 years. That's incremental, not orders of magnitude.
Most technological fields would kill for advancements on the order of 4x, 6x, or ~20x in ~25 years.
Improvements in orders of magnitudes: CPUs - 1000s. Memory - 1000s. Controller chips - 1000s. Batteries - 0.3.
Do you think - say, picking a random example - that tensile strengths have advanced anywhere near that much? How about rocket propellent performance? Internal combustion engine efficiencies? Car tire rolling resistance improvements? Seriously, just because computers have advanced by Moore's Law doesn't mean that anything even close to that is normal. The rate of battery improvements has been very rapid by the standards of most technologies.
Rocket propellant efficiency was pretty much completed around the early 60s. Before that - sure. Tensile strengths? To what are you referring? Of a material? No. That's a physical property. Of manufactured structures for a given purpose? Absolutely doubled at least since the 80s (not quite 25 years, but you're talking about a field that's been around for centuries). Internal combustion engines have certainly improved, but the days of large improvements were very early on, and the limits were physical, you can't get more energy out than you put in. Were there orders of improvements in removing losses? Depends on what window in time you pick and how you define the improvement. Car tires have improved in many ways over the last 150 years, however rolling resistance is a tough one - how much comfort are you willing to give up? Sure, I can make several orders of improvement in rolling resistance, but your teeth will likely not agree. Beryllium tires wouldn't be too comfortable, and likely would not last very long either.
But, with batteries, their purpose is to store electrical power, and release. For instance, capacitors can rapidly store and release power, far far more efficiently than any battery. They're just not energy dense enough to replace batteries, plus there are some other challenges. The point here is that a battery is still like a 1800s wood burning steam engine compared to the charging rate of a battery, and like a large tank of gasoline for storage. It will eventually break out, just like fusion energy will eventually happen.
I guess we have entirely different experiences with smart meters. I've gotten billed for the "upgrade" twice now. I've seen no benefits. The appliance opt-in thing you're talking about has nothing to do with what they're discussing here ("They" = power utility folks) They're discussing doing effectively micromanaged rolling brownouts on those people in the "lower cost opt in" power program that are high users during a high use time period, staggering the outages. Nothing like what you're talking about, and I'm certainly not trying to confuse the point.
Are you kidding? Lithium-ion batteries used to all take several hours to charge. Now some types can charge in 10 minutes or less.
Along with pyrotechnic shows sometimes gone wrong. Seriously, a multi amp hour battery still takes hours to charge safely.
Gravimetric energy density has quadrupled since li-ions first hit the market. Volumetric has sextupled.
Yay, so I now have a double or triple run time for a given battery after 25 years. That's incremental, not orders of magnitude.
For the serious stretch, I'm envisioning a battery pack that gets hit by lightning and holds a multi kilo amp hour charge for months. Near term, a phone that charges in a few minutes and runs for a week would be a major step up. We are no where near that kind of battery system, and nothing I know of will be forthcoming.
Grip around sides.. index finger rests right in middle, where the scanner is. The only time that doesn't apply is when holding landscape style.
When gripping the phone to activate frontal fingerprint readers you actually need to let the phone hang loose a bit to get the thumb onto the reader, which is problematic on large format phones. I have an iPhone 7 and an LG V20. The V20 is more natural to hold and activate.
This likely may apply to you and those who happen to have hands and fingers similar to yours and prefer to hold their phones like you do. Otherwise, it'll be a little off or even in the way. Kind of like how the volume toggle is on the wrong side of an ipad/iphone as far as I'm concerned, especially when in landscape mode.
Actually it was Ronald Reagan, not the "liberal democrats," who signed the federal law that hospital emergency rooms couldn't turn people away just because they can't pay.
This is, basically, the unfunded federal mandate that Obamacare is solving: when people with no insurance have no other way to get medical care than to go to an emergency room, and everybody else has to pay for that very expensive way of getting medical care, it makes sense to require people to have insurance.
While kudos on blaming Reagan, who deserves all the accolades he can get, it doesn't make sense to require people to have insurance. It makes sense for people to have universal basic health care, since that's where we effectively are.
The statement should not be that it's about time astronauts get healthcare for life it should be that it's about time everyone gets healthcare for life.
You know as well as I do that their foot is already in the door; they've been offering this for at least as long as I've lived down here, going on 7 years now, and it seemed to be an established offering at that time, so I'd estimate well over a decade.
That's untrue. They're just in the process of foisting these things on us, at our cost no less. If it's supposed to save money, let the savings pay for it, otherwise... don't throw away perfectly good meters.
If they were interested in that ability, they would install addressable disconnects at the pole, meter be damned.
Beyond that, utility regulations prevent them from wholesale disconnecting service in this manner. They can get away with opt-in devices attached to certain appliances, but they can not make opting in a requirement for service, either.
You know as well as I do that once their foot is in the door, they're going to start abusing it by making the non-opt in option more and more expensive.
I'll admit I hadn't considered the HOA locked closet aspect as that's never occurred. Not having access would be very annoying. Current load readings are interesting as well. You imply that you can read load in real time. That's a major change from 15 min intervals.
Further, what advantage would the power company have in the ability to temporarily disconnect customers at will, other than not having to roll a truck when someone doesn't pay? If they were interested in that ability, they would install addressable disconnects at the pole, meter be damned.
Oh, there's lots of advantages, like, say, it's 100 degrees, houses 5, 8 and 207 are sucking up 2x power than their neighbors, we'll disconnect them for the next 30 minutes instead of browning out block 6. Then it'll quickly be, wait, unit 207 is on the more expensive D plan, just cut 5 and 8 for 60 min.... instead of actually upgrading the power grid like they should be.
What I'm partly interested in is how did your smart meter help you figure out that motor was arcing any faster than looking at your meter would? Smart meters purport to only record in 15 min intervals. I saw elsewhere that in your meter appears to be located disproportionately far from your residence, but for most, that's not an issue. For instance, I pass mine on the way to my car, mailbox, etc and I am by far not alone in having the meters at most a few steps away from something I do on a regular basis.
Intel could crush AMD at any moment they choose.... Intel spends more on R&D alone per year than AMDs entire market cap.
And yet AMD blew Intel's doors off with Opteron previously, and just this month forced a large cut in Intel's prices across the board. I'd say that Intel is not spending effectively on R&D, or not getting their money's worth out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am sensitive to the fact that it is such a crappy movie that a 7 year old would see through the plot, such as it is.
Either embrace web based software and accept that or stick to traditional style desktop software.
I prefer not to embrace spy on me,,, errr web based software. Thank you very much.
Complaining about system performance? The "upgrade" is less capable than the system it is supposed to replace. That's about as valid a complaint as there can be. That said, I never complained about the performance, I pointed out that, while it would be quite a winner in Nintendo's handheld lineup (e.g. I actually like the hardware), they chose to position it as a replacement for a more capable system. That makes it a loser; it's positioned to be, quite literally, a downgrade.
I can think of at least 1 other company that went that route.. **cough** Apple **cough** mini **cough**
Look at it this way: The Geo Metro wasn't a horrible car, for what it was. It was cheap, fuel efficient, and got you from point A to point B. It wasn't built really well and it is obvious that corners were cut, but that was fine because Geo sold it as what it was: cheap transportation. If they had sold it as a sports car, luxury car, or even anything of any quality, it would have been complete crap.
The Geo Metro was maybe 1 step above a Yugo and only maybe slightly less prone to breaking down. Sometimes it is better to not have a particularly bad version of a thing.
I still own a Wii, I saw no reason to "upgrade" to any of their later stuff, as you noted, nothing really compelling about any of them. For me, Wii U didn't float 5 years ago, and nothing has changed in that regard. I mean, I think my 5 year old smartphone in the drawer is a better piece of kit, it just doesn't have the content.
It's radiation being reflected and focused - multiple filaments can produce more of it for a given price than one larger filament. It's also easier to create the reflectors for smaller filaments, plus the source becomes more linear or point in form.
I don't know. You'd have to ask a someone in the lower 37% percentile range :-)
Which happens to match Trump's shrinking support base. Coincidence? ;)
But you would hire lying, criminal, illegal drug abusers.
I wouldn't hire those Trump supporters either.
It would matter if you're replacing your home internet connection with an LTE connection.
Mine's 58 down, 62 up. I think I'll stick to mine, since I have need of pushing 100s of MB or even GBs to various places.
Nobody complains about LTE speeds. Everybody complains about LTE data caps.
You are kidding, right? LTE speeds are maybe fast enough to do a little playing around or watching some 4Mbps stream, but pushing 10GB across to another site? I don't think so, not when I can't even keep a conference call going reliably after 9am.
That's funny. I'm aware of several companies that don't hire Trump supporters.
Why would you hire a delusional paranoid pathological liar?
Here is my Climate Theory.
It will get warmer. It will get cooler. Repeat.
It is irrefutable!
In the grand scheme of things, it will get warmer, a lot warmer, then it will get cooler, a whole lot cooler, and then it will slowly dwindle away.
Timeframe? Roughly 10^99 years with the warm blip at the very beginning.
business connections run about $100/month minumum here, but it is 100/100.
You could also just say: "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
When asked to use Chrome? Absolutely!
You know, if you only use your phone to make calls and 5-10 texts a day, most of today's phones will last at least 3-4 days, and some will last a week or more on a single charge. Of course, if you don't want to be stuck in Razr land and actually be able to use your phone's capabilities, well, then you're going to have to sacrifice somewhere. A double thick phone for me with everything extra being battery will likely only stretch me out to 2 full days on a single charge.
But the front screen is the one place that people--for good reason--actively avoid having their fingers rest when holding the phone, and thus the worst possible location for a fingerprint sensor.
Which is why that's the best place to put a scanner, you'll only scan when you explicitly want to scan, and not inadvertently.
Nonsense. Tesla uses ordinary 18650s and charges them in 40 minutes. Batteries that stress power density over energy density can charge in under 10 minute charges. Trust me, I've used them. They've been on the market for years.
So, if those miracle 10 minute chargeable batteries are so common, why all the pyrotechnics with phones, tablets, laptops, hoverboards.... The list just doesn't end. Everything that has used "fast charge" batteries has wound up on a nice smoking youtube video. Perhaps they're not as common or as viable as you make out?
Most technological fields would kill for advancements on the order of 4x, 6x, or ~20x in ~25 years.
Improvements in orders of magnitudes: CPUs - 1000s. Memory - 1000s. Controller chips - 1000s. Batteries - 0.3.
Do you think - say, picking a random example - that tensile strengths have advanced anywhere near that much? How about rocket propellent performance? Internal combustion engine efficiencies? Car tire rolling resistance improvements? Seriously, just because computers have advanced by Moore's Law doesn't mean that anything even close to that is normal. The rate of battery improvements has been very rapid by the standards of most technologies.
Rocket propellant efficiency was pretty much completed around the early 60s. Before that - sure. Tensile strengths? To what are you referring? Of a material? No. That's a physical property. Of manufactured structures for a given purpose? Absolutely doubled at least since the 80s (not quite 25 years, but you're talking about a field that's been around for centuries). Internal combustion engines have certainly improved, but the days of large improvements were very early on, and the limits were physical, you can't get more energy out than you put in. Were there orders of improvements in removing losses? Depends on what window in time you pick and how you define the improvement. Car tires have improved in many ways over the last 150 years, however rolling resistance is a tough one - how much comfort are you willing to give up? Sure, I can make several orders of improvement in rolling resistance, but your teeth will likely not agree. Beryllium tires wouldn't be too comfortable, and likely would not last very long either.
But, with batteries, their purpose is to store electrical power, and release. For instance, capacitors can rapidly store and release power, far far more efficiently than any battery. They're just not energy dense enough to replace batteries, plus there are some other challenges. The point here is that a battery is still like a 1800s wood burning steam engine compared to the charging rate of a battery, and like a large tank of gasoline for storage. It will eventually break out, just like fusion energy will eventually happen.
I guess we have entirely different experiences with smart meters. I've gotten billed for the "upgrade" twice now. I've seen no benefits. The appliance opt-in thing you're talking about has nothing to do with what they're discussing here ("They" = power utility folks) They're discussing doing effectively micromanaged rolling brownouts on those people in the "lower cost opt in" power program that are high users during a high use time period, staggering the outages. Nothing like what you're talking about, and I'm certainly not trying to confuse the point.
Are you kidding? Lithium-ion batteries used to all take several hours to charge. Now some types can charge in 10 minutes or less.
Along with pyrotechnic shows sometimes gone wrong. Seriously, a multi amp hour battery still takes hours to charge safely.
Gravimetric energy density has quadrupled since li-ions first hit the market. Volumetric has sextupled.
Yay, so I now have a double or triple run time for a given battery after 25 years. That's incremental, not orders of magnitude.
For the serious stretch, I'm envisioning a battery pack that gets hit by lightning and holds a multi kilo amp hour charge for months. Near term, a phone that charges in a few minutes and runs for a week would be a major step up. We are no where near that kind of battery system, and nothing I know of will be forthcoming.
Grip around sides.. index finger rests right in middle, where the scanner is. The only time that doesn't apply is when holding landscape style. When gripping the phone to activate frontal fingerprint readers you actually need to let the phone hang loose a bit to get the thumb onto the reader, which is problematic on large format phones. I have an iPhone 7 and an LG V20. The V20 is more natural to hold and activate.
This likely may apply to you and those who happen to have hands and fingers similar to yours and prefer to hold their phones like you do. Otherwise, it'll be a little off or even in the way. Kind of like how the volume toggle is on the wrong side of an ipad/iphone as far as I'm concerned, especially when in landscape mode.
Actually it was Ronald Reagan, not the "liberal democrats," who signed the federal law that hospital emergency rooms couldn't turn people away just because they can't pay.
This is, basically, the unfunded federal mandate that Obamacare is solving: when people with no insurance have no other way to get medical care than to go to an emergency room, and everybody else has to pay for that very expensive way of getting medical care, it makes sense to require people to have insurance.
While kudos on blaming Reagan, who deserves all the accolades he can get, it doesn't make sense to require people to have insurance. It makes sense for people to have universal basic health care, since that's where we effectively are.
The statement should not be that it's about time astronauts get healthcare for life it should be that it's about time everyone gets healthcare for life.
Exactly this.
You know as well as I do that their foot is already in the door; they've been offering this for at least as long as I've lived down here, going on 7 years now, and it seemed to be an established offering at that time, so I'd estimate well over a decade.
That's untrue. They're just in the process of foisting these things on us, at our cost no less. If it's supposed to save money, let the savings pay for it, otherwise... don't throw away perfectly good meters.
If they were interested in that ability, they would install addressable disconnects at the pole, meter be damned.
Beyond that, utility regulations prevent them from wholesale disconnecting service in this manner. They can get away with opt-in devices attached to certain appliances, but they can not make opting in a requirement for service, either.
You know as well as I do that once their foot is in the door, they're going to start abusing it by making the non-opt in option more and more expensive.
I'll admit I hadn't considered the HOA locked closet aspect as that's never occurred. Not having access would be very annoying. Current load readings are interesting as well. You imply that you can read load in real time. That's a major change from 15 min intervals.
Further, what advantage would the power company have in the ability to temporarily disconnect customers at will, other than not having to roll a truck when someone doesn't pay? If they were interested in that ability, they would install addressable disconnects at the pole, meter be damned.
Oh, there's lots of advantages, like, say, it's 100 degrees, houses 5, 8 and 207 are sucking up 2x power than their neighbors, we'll disconnect them for the next 30 minutes instead of browning out block 6. Then it'll quickly be, wait, unit 207 is on the more expensive D plan, just cut 5 and 8 for 60 min.... instead of actually upgrading the power grid like they should be.
What I'm partly interested in is how did your smart meter help you figure out that motor was arcing any faster than looking at your meter would? Smart meters purport to only record in 15 min intervals. I saw elsewhere that in your meter appears to be located disproportionately far from your residence, but for most, that's not an issue. For instance, I pass mine on the way to my car, mailbox, etc and I am by far not alone in having the meters at most a few steps away from something I do on a regular basis.
all true, and hinted at in my post.
Intel could crush AMD at any moment they choose. ... Intel spends more on R&D alone per year than AMDs entire market cap.
And yet AMD blew Intel's doors off with Opteron previously, and just this month forced a large cut in Intel's prices across the board. I'd say that Intel is not spending effectively on R&D, or not getting their money's worth out of it.