Why bother with that? There are plenty of other, smaller deserts that are nevertheless big enough to hold a significant fraction of those solar panels. There's the Kalahari in Africa, the Syro-Arabian in the Middle East, the Karakum and Gobi in Asia, Patagonian in South America, etc. I'm not convinced we need to do anything fancier in scope than "simply" building the power grids in the rest of the world out to first-world standards.
Not to mention, a non-negligible amount of solar cell area would fit on building roofs: there is 6000 square miles worth of residential roof area in the US alone. Once you include commercial and industrial roofs and extrapolate worldwide, I suspect we could easily fit 20%+ of the necessary solar panels before even thinking about the desert.
Vertical integration (i.e., both manufacturing the product and delivering it) is not necessarily a problem. Vertical integration where any part is a monopoly or oliopoly, however, is against the public interest and should not be allowed.
Replace "older parents" with "grandparents" and you'll see that this already happens reasonably frequently by accident, especially among the lower socioeconomic classes. Making it more "normal" and "planned" (and thereby reducing the amount of stress experienced by the parties involved) might be worthwhile.
it just needs enough propellant, a crude guidance system (like a cheap GPS [use existing infrastructure,] some actuators for targeting and detonation,) air bursting at height seems to generate a big blast.
GPS is controlled by the US military. If North Korea tried launching a missile that used it, surely the US would turn it off in the area.
Or better yet, why can't the manufacturer just email everybody a flash drive containing the update which they can then stick in the car's USB port at their leisure? No phone necessary, no possibility of wireless hacking, and the owner can apply the update at a time when it's convenient for them (avoiding the possibility of a bad update stranding somebody in the middle of a road trip or something).
Sure, the cost is probably higher than OTA updates, but it's lower than dealer updates and it maintains the manufacturers' incentive not to screw up in the first place.
No. Institutional investors -- funds managed by people in the same club with the CEOs -- have the same vested interest in perpetuating the graft and collusion.
If you want one, sign up for it. You'll get an invite within a couple of weeks because lots of people are interested, but they're not $1500 interested when it comes down to it.
Google held a "glass event" in my city the other day and I had a chance to try it out.
I found it awkward to use: the gesture interface is clunky, voice commands are obtrusive to people nearby, and it takes way too much attention and focus to use the screen. I found it harder to use Glass while walking around than it is to use an Android smartphone while walking around.
Also, the apps they had available to demo -- which I can only assume are some of the best existing on the platform right now, because why would you demo anything other than the best? -- were not particularly useful. The closest that came to being cool was a program that used the camera to take pictures of signs in foreign languages and then display them translated to English. I could see that being useful if you travel in foreign countries extensively, but even then the experience was clunky -- you had to pick which language you thought the sign was in and aim the camera directly at the middle of the sign for it to work. And even then the translation wasn't "stable:" there was one German word displayed along an arch instead of a straight line where the translation kept shifting between completely different words as the viewing angle changed slightly.
If you want to develop apps for Google Glass, it might be worth getting. But if you just want to use it, it's not ready yet. Personally, I think it's actually a regression in functionality compared to what people like Steve Mann and Thad Starner had a decade ago, because it lacks both a reasonable input interface (e.g. a twiddler) and software that actually does something that a smartphone can't.
As long as the stock goes up, the stockholders will look the other way too. "It is all the cost of doing business," they will say.
The other problem is that the stockholders mostly aren't people. Instead, they're large mutual funds managed by a single person who is in the CEO/director good ol' boys club too.
At the top tier (VP, Pres, CxO), pay should be capped as some (documented) multiplier of the lowest level salary. Bonuses should be tied to company performance. That's it. If the CIO wants to get paid more, he either needs to raise the rates of those below him or improve the performance of the company in some meaningful way. When a company making billions pays its executives $50M but lays off thousands making $40K, it feels really crappy.
The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay "feels really crappy" is not a problem. The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay destabilizes society by destroying the middle class is a problem!
You can interpret what Mark Shuttleworth said as a WIN for manufacturers and telecom companies, but it doesn't necessarily make it a LOSE situation for USERS. It will be a win for the USERS if the phone itself competes with Apple hardware style, at an Apple Price point with a Linux Desktop Digital Freedom/Digital Privacy expectations.
"Linux Desktop Digital Freedom/Digital Privacy expectations" are a lose for telecoms. Users winning and telecoms winning are mutually-exclusive possibilities. Therefore, your initial assertion is wrong.
None of the cities in the Atlanta area could be considered technologically advanced. Most of them are actually just suburbs, and not well-off suburbs at that. Sandy Springs would be the only well-off exception.
Decatur and the northeastern half of the City of Atlanta are well-off, along with Roswell and Alpharetta. Metro Atlanta is a pretty big tech hub (mostly the midtown and buckhead neighborhoods in Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Roswell and Alpharetta, plus some in Duluth).
What those three cities DO have is plenty of dark fiber and railroad ROW to lay in more, and local governments who would probably welcome Google with open arms.
Alas, the City of Atlanta's government is too incompetent regardless of how much lip service they'll pay to it. Google wants expedited permitting, and that isn't going to happen (it takes 6-12 months to get a permit under normal circumstances!).
All this exurban sprawl to Alpharetta needs to stop. The only thing that has been accomplished is that people living elsewhere in the metro area are screwed because all the infrastructure is designed to facilitate a commute towards downtown, while now the center of mass for jobs is near (or outside) the Perimeter. It is absurd that people can live right next to downtown, yet are forced to suffer through an hour commute anyway. Anything that shifts development back inside the Perimeter is a good thing!
In my experience, the problems with Comcast have hardly ever been about poor connection quality; they've always been about deliberate sabotage (e.g. poisoning DNS, throttling Netflix, encrypting local cable channels, etc.) or hostile customer service (imposing sneaky BS fees, making customers go through Hell to get a CableCard instead of a set-top box, etc.)
It sounds to me like the ISPs position is that if they are going to be subject to net neutrality, they want the whole ball of wax of being a common carrier.
ISPs don't want to be common carriers. The reason given in the link is of course bullshit; the real reason is that being classified as common carriers would force them to divest themselves of their (relatively lucrative) content business.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice red herring, but accusing somebody of being a shill means that you think they're posting things other than their personal views.
It's still a counterexample to your previous claim.
Because "American" car companies are stuck using union labor, while Japanese ones aren't.
Why bother with that? There are plenty of other, smaller deserts that are nevertheless big enough to hold a significant fraction of those solar panels. There's the Kalahari in Africa, the Syro-Arabian in the Middle East, the Karakum and Gobi in Asia, Patagonian in South America, etc. I'm not convinced we need to do anything fancier in scope than "simply" building the power grids in the rest of the world out to first-world standards.
Not to mention, a non-negligible amount of solar cell area would fit on building roofs: there is 6000 square miles worth of residential roof area in the US alone. Once you include commercial and industrial roofs and extrapolate worldwide, I suspect we could easily fit 20%+ of the necessary solar panels before even thinking about the desert.
Vertical integration (i.e., both manufacturing the product and delivering it) is not necessarily a problem. Vertical integration where any part is a monopoly or oliopoly, however, is against the public interest and should not be allowed.
Replace "older parents" with "grandparents" and you'll see that this already happens reasonably frequently by accident, especially among the lower socioeconomic classes. Making it more "normal" and "planned" (and thereby reducing the amount of stress experienced by the parties involved) might be worthwhile.
Some people having slow connections instead of fast connections is clearly superior to everybody having slow connections.
The fault in causing the digital divide lies not with Google for being fast, but rather with every other ISP for being slow!
GPS is controlled by the US military. If North Korea tried launching a missile that used it, surely the US would turn it off in the area.
Sorry, "snail-mail." Apparently I've been at work too long...
Or better yet, why can't the manufacturer just email everybody a flash drive containing the update which they can then stick in the car's USB port at their leisure? No phone necessary, no possibility of wireless hacking, and the owner can apply the update at a time when it's convenient for them (avoiding the possibility of a bad update stranding somebody in the middle of a road trip or something).
Sure, the cost is probably higher than OTA updates, but it's lower than dealer updates and it maintains the manufacturers' incentive not to screw up in the first place.
No. Institutional investors -- funds managed by people in the same club with the CEOs -- have the same vested interest in perpetuating the graft and collusion.
Now fuck off, shill.
Excuse me. Please run `awk s/fact/idea/g` on my post.
If you want one, sign up for it. You'll get an invite within a couple of weeks because lots of people are interested, but they're not $1500 interested when it comes down to it.
Is your company hiring?
Nothing in your post explains why executive pay has risen from 50x average pay (in the 60s) to 500x average pay now.
Google held a "glass event" in my city the other day and I had a chance to try it out.
I found it awkward to use: the gesture interface is clunky, voice commands are obtrusive to people nearby, and it takes way too much attention and focus to use the screen. I found it harder to use Glass while walking around than it is to use an Android smartphone while walking around.
Also, the apps they had available to demo -- which I can only assume are some of the best existing on the platform right now, because why would you demo anything other than the best? -- were not particularly useful. The closest that came to being cool was a program that used the camera to take pictures of signs in foreign languages and then display them translated to English. I could see that being useful if you travel in foreign countries extensively, but even then the experience was clunky -- you had to pick which language you thought the sign was in and aim the camera directly at the middle of the sign for it to work. And even then the translation wasn't "stable:" there was one German word displayed along an arch instead of a straight line where the translation kept shifting between completely different words as the viewing angle changed slightly.
If you want to develop apps for Google Glass, it might be worth getting. But if you just want to use it, it's not ready yet. Personally, I think it's actually a regression in functionality compared to what people like Steve Mann and Thad Starner had a decade ago, because it lacks both a reasonable input interface (e.g. a twiddler) and software that actually does something that a smartphone can't.
The other problem is that the stockholders mostly aren't people. Instead, they're large mutual funds managed by a single person who is in the CEO/director good ol' boys club too.
The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay "feels really crappy" is not a problem. The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay destabilizes society by destroying the middle class is a problem!
We have that -- at least for the "like for linux distros" part, if not the "store" part. It's called F-Droid.
That's being worked on too; it's called Replicant.
"Linux Desktop Digital Freedom/Digital Privacy expectations" are a lose for telecoms. Users winning and telecoms winning are mutually-exclusive possibilities. Therefore, your initial assertion is wrong.
Decatur and the northeastern half of the City of Atlanta are well-off, along with Roswell and Alpharetta. Metro Atlanta is a pretty big tech hub (mostly the midtown and buckhead neighborhoods in Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Roswell and Alpharetta, plus some in Duluth).
Alas, the City of Atlanta's government is too incompetent regardless of how much lip service they'll pay to it. Google wants expedited permitting, and that isn't going to happen (it takes 6-12 months to get a permit under normal circumstances!).
All this exurban sprawl to Alpharetta needs to stop. The only thing that has been accomplished is that people living elsewhere in the metro area are screwed because all the infrastructure is designed to facilitate a commute towards downtown, while now the center of mass for jobs is near (or outside) the Perimeter. It is absurd that people can live right next to downtown, yet are forced to suffer through an hour commute anyway. Anything that shifts development back inside the Perimeter is a good thing!
In my experience, the problems with Comcast have hardly ever been about poor connection quality; they've always been about deliberate sabotage (e.g. poisoning DNS, throttling Netflix, encrypting local cable channels, etc.) or hostile customer service (imposing sneaky BS fees, making customers go through Hell to get a CableCard instead of a set-top box, etc.)
"Beginning to?!"
ISPs don't want to be common carriers. The reason given in the link is of course bullshit; the real reason is that being classified as common carriers would force them to divest themselves of their (relatively lucrative) content business.