Saying that the dosage is just what you would have absorbed normally in 12 months is like saying that a drowning victim only consume the same amount of water they would have in three days.
Bad analogy. The dosage is nowhere near enough for acute effects (radiation poisoning).
Strange, because Japan has reported a number of people being treated for radiation poisoning.
...and you need about 10 incandescent bulbs for every one CFL bulb, so you really need 1.1kW-h (it's not kw/hour, BTW) of energy for the incandescent. And at 60 watts vs. 15 watts, you will make back that.6 kW-h after less than 15 hours of use. Hell, even if I go by your completely wrong 1.7 vs..11 comparison, it will only take about 40 hours to break even. Any more mathematically challenged bullshit you'd like to throw this way?
Actually, the 1.7 kw is only the direct manufacturing energy. The full Canadian study included production energy, including the obtaining the raw materials for the bulbs, shipping energy (CFLs weigh more than incandescents), increased energy used in producing the packaging (with and without using recycled paper in the packaging), actual energy usage of the bulbs, disposal energy, particularly reclaiming the mercury.
The study also found that the wattage claimed by the bulbs and useful life are grossly misstated. Most Chinese made, bargain priced bulbs last twice as long as an incandescent, but actually use 40 watts and not the 13 watts advertised. Their (Canada's) explanation has to do with the certification process for CFLs. Like other electronic devices, actual devices must be tested. However, unlike, for instance with RF testing, where a change in internal components means the entire device must be retested, lighting products can swap components regularly. So, what is originally tested, is not the same thing on the shelf at Walmart. Very often, to keep costs down, lower quality capacitors are substituted. This leads to shorter bulb life and higher wattage. So, it is still true that they last longer and they use less power to light, but not at the levels listed on the packaging. (You can get bulbs that meet the packaging statements, but they cost significantly more than the $1.25/bulb price of most CFLs).
Again, the study done by Canada and confirmed by New Zealand shows that CFLs have a higher carbon footprint than incandescents when the figures used start with obtaining of raw materials and ends with disposal of the bulb. Not bullshit, as you claim, but just actual data.
But, maybe the scientists in those two countries don't know what they're talking about. You are free to spend tons of money to come up with your own data.
Yes, we all live with background radiation spread over a long time. However, to take all of the background radiation one is exposed to over a year or two and give it as a single concentrated dose does not have the same effect on cells. Your x-ray comment is exactly what I'm talking about. There are restrictions on how many x-rays you can have over a given period of time specifically because the concentrated does is more harmful than the the same amount spread over a year. Shoot, stay out in the sun a few extra hours is enough radiation to burn the skin (and years later cause skin cancer). And yet, those few extra hours in the sun that led to the sun burn is only a fraction of the radiation one is exposed to in a year. And then the type of radiation released from the nuclear plant was also significantly more damaging than x-rays are.
Once again...it proves that you should say this little phrase before posting any photo online. Would your mother approve? If the answer is no, then don't do it.
Actually, the correct statement before doing something in public, would be to ask yourself if your mother would approve? If the answer is no, then don't do it. The heck with just posting it online, if it is something that you would be embarrassed to have posted or there would be negative consequences if posted, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. In the case of this story, is the problem that her picture was taken, posted and then tagged or is the problem that she was out drinking instead of caring for the child?
They used the wrong defense. They should have argued that the original poster of the picture had no permission to use their picture for personal gain in the first place. Is it okay for me to scan in this month's Playboy and post the pictures as long as I tag them with the playmate's name?
a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months
I understand the US industry group not wanting to panic people about nuclear power as what is going on in Japan already has a negative impact on their industry, but they should be promoting how safe nuclear power is (ie even after a massive earthquake, the system worked mostly as it should) instead of the B.S. like the above.
Saying that the dosage is just what you would have absorbed normally in 12 months is like saying that a drowning victim only consume the same amount of water they would have in three days. Radiation is more than just how much you receive over a long period. It also has to deal with the amounts received in a short period, too.
If you go far enough north, like in Canada, it's dark when the kids leave for school and when they come home, even with the daylight savings time. We seem to do alright with it. Some places like Finland have it even worse.
If you go far enough north, like Canada, it won't make a difference with DST, kids will still be going to school and coming home in the dark. Just because there is no difference there, does not mean it is desirable below Canada where it does make a difference.
Why don't they average it out to half an hour and just leave it there? Instead of swapping an hour twice a year, swap half an hour one time and don't bother doing it again.
Maybe because moving just half an hour will have the US half an hour off the time zones from the rest of the world.
"What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."
I assume by "ice-cream-cone bulb" you mean compact fluorescent. The numbers show (at least in Canada) that they save electricity for the consumer but use significantly more electricity to produce and dispose of than incandescents (it takes 1.7kw/hour to produce a CFL vs.11kw/hour). Canada, New Zealand, and others are now rethinking their ban on incandescent bulbs as CFLs actually have a heavier carbon footprint than 60 watt incandescents.
look, we all know it makes sense to have sunlight in the evening. but why not simply start work earlier? get up at 5 instead of 6, go to bed at 22 instead of 23, problem solved.
You know, those of us who want the extra daylight could just get up an hour earlier and go into work earlier.
And if you work are in management in an office building that might work. But if you work in a factory or a retail venue, that isn't an option. And, what about sending the kids to school?
A better solution would be that people just get up when they need to. If the switch over is a problem, then start a week early adjusting your alarm 10 minutes a day so by the time the clocks do change, you're in synch with them.
Of course, some people don't have friendly employers and require that the government mandate the hours that they work.. but it sounds like a pretty hackish solution..
It's funny that people are opposed to the "government imposed" daylight savings time, but don't seem to mind the government imposed timezones them self. You would think that timezones would follow straight lines, but they don' t they follow the border of states. Darn government interfering with everything.
Personally, I think it's a good idea not having a bunch of kids standing in the dark waiting for a school bus during the winter. It's also nice to still have some light to get things done around the house after work. But what do I know?
Is id Software still a player in the game market? I mean there is Doom and Quake, but they are really old. Are they still developing? If not, then why is their opinion on the merits of DirectX or OpenGL that important.
Personally, I've worked on a few commercial and shareware games that had the choice of DirectX or OpenGL and although DirectX was somewhat easier to code for, the decision was to use OpenGL. My understanding of the issue was that the somewhat increased development time was offset by including the potentially broader non-Microsoft market. While it is true that other operating systems have just a fraction of the market share that Windows has, it is really an untapped market and being a player in that market, with minimal competition was seen as beneficial.
(Because of NDAs I am not at liberty to state what these games were, so don't even ask).
If things like HTML5 become the next great thing, that will further erode what today is considered the PC desktop and laptop markets.
How so? Don't most people use desktops and laptops to access HTML5 stuff?
Consoles killed the pc game market
They didn't. The PC game market is very much alive. Many companies are thriving there. The biggest are raking in billions.
and now it appears that all of these web OSs (iOS, Android, etc.) are trying to finish of the pc platform all together. As arm chips start replacing more and more intel processors in PCs, consoles will be the only serious game platform left.
You're not making any sense here. Are ARM chips in PCs bad for gaming because ARM chips can't handle games? Or are iOS and Android (that tend to run on ARM processors) killing PC gaming because they are good at games?
Either way you're wrong. ARM processors are perfectly capable of running games, and mobile platforms are a very interesting new gaming market. But they have very little to do with PC gaming. Considering their casual nature, they're a bigger threat to consoles, if they're a threat at all. But I just think it's another cool new market, and that's a good thing.
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft know this and that's why they haven't come up with anything new platform wise.
That also makes no sense. Why would they not come up with a new platform, when there's clearly a demand for higher graphics capacity (which PCs offer), while consoles are, as you suggest, able to defeat PCs? Here's what I think: they're not able to defeat PCs, and have dug themselves into quite an expensive hole fighting each other. Now they need money to get out of there, and releasing a new platform would only cost them more money. Meanwhile iOS/Android are threatening the DS/PSP market, so that requires their attention. In the mean time, PC gaming will continue to thrive.
I agree that the Arm architecture does not prohibit games. But, the Arm processors being stuck in the current trend of laptops and pads don't have the horsepower required to run the games the original post was about. Besides, Arm is a low cost, low power alternative to intel's chips. It doesn't make sense to put a high end graphics card in such a computer. Put differently, why would anybody put a $400+ graphics card in a $200 computer designed for surfing the internet? Even if the card met the requirements for the new games, does the rest of the system (ie. dma, bus width/speed, etc.)
Companies may be making billions of PC games, but then they must not be reporting it on taxes. At $50/game, they would need to sell 20 million copies to make just 1 billion. Don't get me wrong, I think the PC can be a fine game platform, even superior in many ways to the current consoles. However, it is a niche market compared to all of the consoles out there. Put differently, why are their relatively few games for iOS compared to Windows? It's not be cause of the technology, it's marketing and market share. If I can sell more games for the PS3 because a) people already have one and b) they don't have to upgrade anything to play the game, then that's what I'm going to develop for.
Microsoft could have released the kinex for the pc market. They chose the console, instead? I'm sure they analyzed both markets and the XBox 360 was the better choice financially.
It wasn't too long ago (prior to the PS3/XBox360) that to play the newest game on a PC, you had to also have the latest video card -- and the card you purchased last fall wasn't powerful enough to play the game you wanted this spring. For PCs to become a viable game platform, they have to pick on a standard and not keep moving the envelope. Microsoft did that with the XBox 360. When it came out it was equivelant to what was available in a high end PC. Now, a few years later, it's not, but game developers keep deve
While this article talks about how consoles are getting stale and developers are looking towards PCs because of better graphics, the actual PC manufactures are all stripping down their offerings so they can claim they are cloud computing, etc. If things like HTML5 become the next great thing, that will further erode what today is considered the PC desktop and laptop markets.
Consoles killed the pc game market and now it appears that all of these web OSs (iOS, Android, etc.) are trying to finish of the pc platform all together. As arm chips start replacing more and more intel processors in PCs, consoles will be the only serious game platform left. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft know this and that's why they haven't come up with anything new platform wise.
Whether the term "democrat" would appear or not is just plain stupid. But, it is a fact that the United States is a Federal Republic. Of course, the former Soviet Union was a Unitary Republic, but I doubt they'll want to teach that in Utah.
My God some people are luddites, sure you don't see any benefit to some way of using technology and hence when somebody else does a damn trial (you know spends some money and tries something out to see if it will be beneficial or not) you ignore the results because they disagree with your belief.
And no it's not a government funded university, heck it's not a university it's just a college.
Oh and it's not about replacing textbooks.
First, in most parts of the world college and university are synonymous. Second, if it is not about replacing text books, then what advantage does an ipad bring over, say a mac or even a pc? I love my ipad, it even is a decent e-reader (but not very easy on the eyes). However, I would not want to type a term paper on it or anything much more than a paragraph or two.
Finally, in the US, anyway, many colleges and universities (yes, the US has both) have issued laptops to students (for a fee, of course). Their reasoning was to level the playing field so to speak. However, they have also found out that they are problematic in the classroom since students spend a lot of time surfing the web, messaging, playing games, etc.
Now, one may argue that the student has the responsibility to focus on the class and if they are using the computer for other stuff, that is there problem. That would be true, except these same colleges and universities have found out that it is also a distraction to those sitting around the rogue student. Some have even started to block internet traffic in classrooms because of the problem, but that is a whole different situation.
So, before calling people names, maybe it would be better to actually look into the pros and cons. If you know of some real advantage an ipad has over a laptop in college, I'd be interested in hearing that. If the purpose is not to replace text books, then the small size of the ipad is not an advantage as you still need to lug around textbooks and notepads in a bookbag.
If it was really about textbooks why wouldn't they use a nook or a kindle for half the cost? Assuming the university gets government funding, somebody should look into what can be cut, since they obviously have more money than they know what to do with.
Your car just got its blinkers controls removed, but don't worry, the feature is still there. It just got moved to the gloves compartment... Don't worry, people will figure this out, and it will be as easy as before!
Actually that analogy has nothing to do with it. In your analogy, they controls are still there but moved and hidden. In Gnome, the actual controls are not there anymore, but you can still accomplish the same thing. A more accurate analogy would be that they removed the starter button from the floorboard, but you can still start the car by turning the key.
Slashdot Mirror
Google is your friend. I figure that people who are smart enough to comment on slashdot know how to do a search on Google.
Saying that the dosage is just what you would have absorbed normally in 12 months is like saying that a drowning victim only consume the same amount of water they would have in three days.
Bad analogy. The dosage is nowhere near enough for acute effects (radiation poisoning).
Strange, because Japan has reported a number of people being treated for radiation poisoning.
...and you need about 10 incandescent bulbs for every one CFL bulb, so you really need 1.1kW-h (it's not kw/hour, BTW) of energy for the incandescent. And at 60 watts vs. 15 watts, you will make back that .6 kW-h after less than 15 hours of use. Hell, even if I go by your completely wrong 1.7 vs. .11 comparison, it will only take about 40 hours to break even. Any more mathematically challenged bullshit you'd like to throw this way?
Actually, the 1.7 kw is only the direct manufacturing energy. The full Canadian study included production energy, including the obtaining the raw materials for the bulbs, shipping energy (CFLs weigh more than incandescents), increased energy used in producing the packaging (with and without using recycled paper in the packaging), actual energy usage of the bulbs, disposal
energy, particularly reclaiming the mercury.
The study also found that the wattage claimed by the bulbs and useful life are grossly misstated. Most Chinese made, bargain priced bulbs last twice as long as an incandescent, but actually use 40 watts and not the 13 watts advertised. Their (Canada's) explanation has to do with the certification process for CFLs. Like other electronic devices, actual devices must be tested. However, unlike, for instance with RF testing, where a change in internal components means the entire device must be retested, lighting products can swap components regularly. So, what is originally tested, is not the same thing on the shelf at Walmart. Very often, to keep costs down, lower quality capacitors are substituted. This leads to shorter bulb life and higher wattage. So, it is still true that they last longer and they use less power to light, but not at the levels listed on the packaging. (You can get bulbs that meet the packaging statements, but they cost significantly more than the $1.25/bulb price of most CFLs).
Again, the study done by Canada and confirmed by New Zealand shows that CFLs have a higher carbon footprint than incandescents when the figures used start with obtaining of raw materials and ends with disposal of the bulb. Not bullshit, as you claim, but just actual data.
But, maybe the scientists in those two countries don't know what they're talking about. You are free to spend tons of money to come up with your own data.
Yes, we all live with background radiation spread over a long time. However, to take all of the background radiation one is exposed to over a year or two and give it as a single concentrated dose does not have the same effect on cells. Your x-ray comment is exactly what I'm talking about. There are restrictions on how many x-rays you can have over a given period of time specifically because the concentrated does is more harmful than the the same amount spread over a year. Shoot, stay out in the sun a few extra hours is enough radiation to burn the skin (and years later cause skin cancer). And yet, those few extra hours in the sun that led to the sun burn is only a fraction of the radiation one is exposed to in a year. And then the type of radiation released from the nuclear plant was also significantly more damaging than x-rays are.
Once again...it proves that you should say this little phrase before posting any photo online.
Would your mother approve? If the answer is no, then don't do it.
Actually, the correct statement before doing something in public, would be to ask yourself if your mother would approve? If the answer is no, then don't do it. The heck with just posting it online, if it is something that you would be embarrassed to have posted or there would be negative consequences if posted, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. In the case of this story, is the problem that her picture was taken, posted and then tagged or is the problem that she was out drinking instead of caring for the child?
They used the wrong defense. They should have argued that the original poster of the picture had no permission to use their picture for personal gain in the first place. Is it okay for me to scan in this month's Playboy and post the pictures as long as I tag them with the playmate's name?
If just linking is a crime, then I would argue entrapment by the ISP as they set up the conditions to link in the first place.
a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months
I understand the US industry group not wanting to panic people about nuclear power as what is going on in Japan already has a negative impact on their industry, but they should be promoting how safe nuclear power is (ie even after a massive earthquake, the system worked mostly as it should) instead of the B.S. like the above.
Saying that the dosage is just what you would have absorbed normally in 12 months is like saying that a drowning victim only consume the same amount of water they would have in three days. Radiation is more than just how much you receive over a long period. It also has to deal with the amounts received in a short period, too.
If you go far enough north, like in Canada, it's dark when the kids leave for school and when they come home, even with the daylight savings time. We seem to do alright with it. Some places like Finland have it even worse.
If you go far enough north, like Canada, it won't make a difference with DST, kids will still be going to school and coming home in the dark. Just because there is no difference there, does not mean it is desirable below Canada where it does make a difference.
Your math needs work.
A 60W incandesent replaced with a 16W CFL will make up that 1.6KW extra power used to make it in the first 36 hours of use.
It's not my math, it is the governments of Canada and New Zealand math.
Grade school students wouldn't have the option the OP suggested. Plus there are safety issues if they are all going to school in the dark.
Why don't they average it out to half an hour and just leave it there? Instead of swapping an hour twice a year, swap half an hour one time and don't bother doing it again.
Maybe because moving just half an hour will have the US half an hour off the time zones from the rest of the world.
You have no idea what you are talking about:
"What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/108/open_lightbulbs.html
I assume by "ice-cream-cone bulb" you mean compact fluorescent. The numbers show (at least in Canada) that they save electricity for the consumer but use significantly more electricity to produce and dispose of than incandescents (it takes 1.7kw/hour to produce a CFL vs .11kw/hour). Canada, New Zealand, and others are now rethinking their ban on incandescent bulbs as CFLs actually have a heavier carbon footprint than 60 watt incandescents.
look, we all know it makes sense to have sunlight in the evening. but why not simply start work earlier? get up at 5 instead of 6, go to bed at 22 instead of 23, problem solved.
Well, DST effectively does that, doesn't it?
That doesn't work for people in say retail who don't get those hours. or for people at restaurants, who work regular shifts.
by forcing everyone to do it lockstep the government makes sure it actually gets done.
Because 99% of business will say you still have to work 8am to 5pm look at all the problems of doing things like telecommute.
Doesn't work very well for school students, either.
You know, those of us who want the extra daylight could just get up an hour earlier and go into work earlier.
And if you work are in management in an office building that might work. But if you work in a factory or a retail venue, that isn't an option. And, what about sending the kids to school?
A better solution would be that people just get up when they need to. If the switch over is a problem, then start a week early adjusting your alarm 10 minutes a day so by the time the clocks do change, you're in synch with them.
Of course, some people don't have friendly employers and require that the government mandate the hours that they work.. but it sounds like a pretty hackish solution..
It's funny that people are opposed to the "government imposed" daylight savings time, but don't seem to mind the government imposed timezones them self. You would think that timezones would follow straight lines, but they don' t they follow the border of states. Darn government interfering with everything.
Personally, I think it's a good idea not having a bunch of kids standing in the dark waiting for a school bus during the winter. It's also nice to still have some light to get things done around the house after work. But what do I know?
Is id Software still a player in the game market? I mean there is Doom and Quake, but they are really old. Are they still developing? If not, then why is their opinion on the merits of DirectX or OpenGL that important.
Personally, I've worked on a few commercial and shareware games that had the choice of DirectX or OpenGL and although DirectX was somewhat easier to code for, the decision was to use OpenGL. My understanding of the issue was that the somewhat increased development time was offset by including the potentially broader non-Microsoft market. While it is true that other operating systems have just a fraction of the market share that Windows has, it is really an untapped market and being a player in that market, with minimal competition was seen as beneficial.
(Because of NDAs I am not at liberty to state what these games were, so don't even ask).
If things like HTML5 become the next great thing, that will further erode what today is considered the PC desktop and laptop markets.
How so? Don't most people use desktops and laptops to access HTML5 stuff?
Consoles killed the pc game market
They didn't. The PC game market is very much alive. Many companies are thriving there. The biggest are raking in billions.
and now it appears that all of these web OSs (iOS, Android, etc.) are trying to finish of the pc platform all together. As arm chips start replacing more and more intel processors in PCs, consoles will be the only serious game platform left.
You're not making any sense here. Are ARM chips in PCs bad for gaming because ARM chips can't handle games? Or are iOS and Android (that tend to run on ARM processors) killing PC gaming because they are good at games?
Either way you're wrong. ARM processors are perfectly capable of running games, and mobile platforms are a very interesting new gaming market. But they have very little to do with PC gaming. Considering their casual nature, they're a bigger threat to consoles, if they're a threat at all. But I just think it's another cool new market, and that's a good thing.
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft know this and that's why they haven't come up with anything new platform wise.
That also makes no sense. Why would they not come up with a new platform, when there's clearly a demand for higher graphics capacity (which PCs offer), while consoles are, as you suggest, able to defeat PCs? Here's what I think: they're not able to defeat PCs, and have dug themselves into quite an expensive hole fighting each other. Now they need money to get out of there, and releasing a new platform would only cost them more money. Meanwhile iOS/Android are threatening the DS/PSP market, so that requires their attention. In the mean time, PC gaming will continue to thrive.
I agree that the Arm architecture does not prohibit games. But, the Arm processors being stuck in the current trend of laptops and pads don't have the horsepower required to run the games the original post was about. Besides, Arm is a low cost, low power alternative to intel's chips. It doesn't make sense to put a high end graphics card in such a computer. Put differently, why would anybody put a $400+ graphics card in a $200 computer designed for surfing the internet? Even if the card met the requirements for the new games, does the rest of the system (ie. dma, bus width/speed, etc.)
Companies may be making billions of PC games, but then they must not be reporting it on taxes. At $50/game, they would need to sell 20 million copies to make just 1 billion. Don't get me wrong, I think the PC can be a fine game platform, even superior in many ways to the current consoles. However, it is a niche market compared to all of the consoles out there. Put differently, why are their relatively few games for iOS compared to Windows? It's not be cause of the technology, it's marketing and market share. If I can sell more games for the PS3 because a) people already have one and b) they don't have to upgrade anything to play the game, then that's what I'm going to develop for.
Microsoft could have released the kinex for the pc market. They chose the console, instead? I'm sure they analyzed both markets and the XBox 360 was the better choice financially.
It wasn't too long ago (prior to the PS3/XBox360) that to play the newest game on a PC, you had to also have the latest video card -- and the card you purchased last fall wasn't powerful enough to play the game you wanted this spring. For PCs to become a viable game platform, they have to pick on a standard and not keep moving the envelope. Microsoft did that with the XBox 360. When it came out it was equivelant to what was available in a high end PC. Now, a few years later, it's not, but game developers keep deve
While this article talks about how consoles are getting stale and developers are looking towards PCs because of better graphics, the actual PC manufactures are all stripping down their offerings so they can claim they are cloud computing, etc. If things like HTML5 become the next great thing, that will further erode what today is considered the PC desktop and laptop markets.
Consoles killed the pc game market and now it appears that all of these web OSs (iOS, Android, etc.) are trying to finish of the pc platform all together. As arm chips start replacing more and more intel processors in PCs, consoles will be the only serious game platform left. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft know this and that's why they haven't come up with anything new platform wise.
You left out the former Soviet Union. It was a republic, too.
Whether the term "democrat" would appear or not is just plain stupid. But, it is a fact that the United States is a Federal Republic. Of course, the former Soviet Union was a Unitary Republic, but I doubt they'll want to teach that in Utah.
My God some people are luddites, sure you don't see any benefit to some way of using technology and hence when somebody else does a damn trial (you know spends some money and tries something out to see if it will be beneficial or not) you ignore the results because they disagree with your belief.
And no it's not a government funded university, heck it's not a university it's just a college.
Oh and it's not about replacing textbooks.
First, in most parts of the world college and university are synonymous. Second, if it is not about replacing text books, then what advantage does an ipad bring over, say a mac or even a pc? I love my ipad, it even is a decent e-reader (but not very easy on the eyes). However, I would not want to type a term paper on it or anything much more than a paragraph or two.
Finally, in the US, anyway, many colleges and universities (yes, the US has both) have issued laptops to students (for a fee, of course). Their reasoning was to level the playing field so to speak. However, they have also found out that they are problematic in the classroom since students spend a lot of time surfing the web, messaging, playing games, etc.
Now, one may argue that the student has the responsibility to focus on the class and if they are using the computer for other stuff, that is there problem. That would be true, except these same colleges and universities have found out that it is also a distraction to those sitting around the rogue student. Some have even started to block internet traffic in classrooms because of the problem, but that is a whole different situation.
So, before calling people names, maybe it would be better to actually look into the pros and cons. If you know of some real advantage an ipad has over a laptop in college, I'd be interested in hearing that. If the purpose is not to replace text books, then the small size of the ipad is not an advantage as you still need to lug around textbooks and notepads in a bookbag.
If it was really about textbooks why wouldn't they use a nook or a kindle for half the cost? Assuming the university gets government funding, somebody should look into what can be cut, since they obviously have more money than they know what to do with.
Your car just got its blinkers controls removed, but don't worry, the feature is still there. It just got moved to the gloves compartment... Don't worry, people will figure this out, and it will be as easy as before!
Actually that analogy has nothing to do with it. In your analogy, they controls are still there but moved and hidden. In Gnome, the actual controls are not there anymore, but you can still accomplish the same thing. A more accurate analogy would be that they removed the starter button from the floorboard, but you can still start the car by turning the key.