Well, open source (free software?;p ) operating systems form over half of smartphone sales. It should remain roughly like that even when Samsung will really start to push their bada OS (I guess it will become #2 very quickly)
Or buy used. Both the core of "they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper" - people have control over what happens to physical media.
To be fair, landing on Eros, an asteroid 5 orders of magnitude more massive, with ~60 times stronger surface gravity and 2 orders of magnitude greater escape velocity than Itokawa, was made by a spacecraft...not meant to do it. Those bodies have miniscule gravities - you could launch yourself from Itokawa, into escape velocity, just by trying to walk (from Eros a strong jump is required). So no airbags / etc. is really not much of a surprise. How impressive the Hayabusa achievements are doesn't revolve around landing per se. And actually, Hayabusa wasn't even meant to land - just to touch the surface by its collection device. Landing was itself a small screwup.
Also...you know, speed isn't damaging in itself - just excessive acceleration (like lithobraking;p ) is; and JAXA knew perfectly well what their rocket is capable of during launch / knew what the acceleration will be. Structural engineers won't examine anything, the probe burned up in our atmosphere; only the small return capsule (meant / designed for experienced deceleration) survived (well, how the heatshield coped is certainly being examined).
A cup is really no more "meaningful to humans" than a liter. Or rather, both only as much as people are used to them, anyway - they freely operate with half a liter/etc (and "cups" at the same time, when it makes sense); plus it has a nice direct relation with kilogram (SI base unit anyway, maybe makes people quicker to get what "kilo" means;) ). Similarly with meter; it is in the range where humans operate btw (you mean "parts of human body"? Sure you can find them, my legs are approximately 1 m, nicely divided in half; but it's useless anyhow)
Dividing by 3 probably not that important, too - a third of a meter is of course 1/3 m; if you insist on decimals, it doesn't really matter anyway - it is not a factor when precisely measuring random stuff; and we tend to engineer things in a way which doesn't describe them by many repeating decimals... (a thing to which any system of units is susceptible, if you don't avoid it). Plus abandoning base 10 would be probably a lot harder than you think - it is inevitably intuitive to humans. We could, I guess, modify all embryos - so that what is called polydactylism (one form of it anyway, 6 fingers on each limb) would become normal in a few decades...but I somehow doubt people would go for it;p (and even if - why 12? Why not 8 or 16? Imagine how badass future generations would be "with computers"!;) )
I'd say SI is firmly in the range of "good enough"; it doesn't seem to have any pitfalls which would make life harder. It being used by virtually whole world isn't a coincidence...
The machine and the network, which you both used to post the above, wouldn't exist if not for the understanding of physics that wasn't there even a century ago. Even in the timeframe of humanity that's almost a blink of an eye / saying that LHC "is not really going to do anything for humanity or anything of substance to use" is ridiculous (accidentally, the organisation behind it already spawned the medium you used to post and LHC partly fuelled another spike in networking/processing/etc. technologies; not only there of course, they need to do some insane things with sensors for example, or with forcing electromagnets to behave...might be useful for those pesky ION drives, y'know)
ISS costs break-ups omit that "Mir 2" part is proportionally much cheaper and that "Alpha" part was designed to make the Shuttle seem useful.
FYI, ION engines would have a hard time reaching even closest stars in 10,000 years. "This particle in the LHC project but we don't have much use for it besides in science/history books" thing OTOH can most likely contribute to reaching another galaxy in that timeframe (if that's even possible in our Universe of course). And you know, LHC is also an international project...plus, in the timeframe of 10,000 years, it's insanely more efficient to keep the Earth habitable (but it's understandable how you're convinced we will have to "evacuate" in a few thousand years - after all, you're most likely from a place which is almost as bad as it gets in spoiling the place) Also, I don't really see an interstellar civilisation having a strong, centrallised governing structure, under one deity and exporting its problems "abroad" (generally needing "the enemy" to shine); OTOH a union of mostly independent and quite different entities with free trade between them, compatible codes of conduit and common policy in how to deal with entities outside of their sphere...
Or probably just opened two subthreads at roughly the same time - and it's you who posted similar points in a row!;p (I don't really look at the names of posters)
"Died"? More like merged with one other team (and probably a provider of SoCs for some future top N device - "smartphone Atom" a generation or two away from now might be, perhaps, bearable...), hence the name change - not really a neccessary thing, but I gues "expected" during such mergers.
But they didn't work out that such solutions, of pushing "crop prices, weather reports, etc that update once a day" via SMS or closely related means, are already widely deployed?
Look what Enlightenment can do, in software, on very "slow" machines (accidentally, it seems Samsung took some components from it, in creating their bada OS - which is targeted also at the mainstream, not expensive ("lesser" hardware) devices; and should be quickly #2 smartphone OS)
It's a drop shadow + older phone hardware + Apple priorities; they want to sell people new phone, that's all.
Hm? Netbooks sure got quite popular, but ~15 inch laptop (used mostly as a "desktop replacement", though not strictly at the same desk all the time) seems to be much more the rule, still.Certainly when looking at people who get only one machine, and those are relevant here.
BTW, trying to push a little "slow" machines works quite fine if you have half a clue.
But also a changing way of quantifying resources, human ones too. One one hand it's probably a bit inneficient (overall) to allow direct human "sacrifices"; on the other - who knows how many were "claimed" by directing resources to such costly projects today. To complicate matters, the ultimate goal of both Great Wall and many projects from that list was to, at the least, maintain stability and prosperity of societies; so also "saving" lifes. And our infrastructure, even in this "faster" times, is also built over many generations.
Dismissing the familiarities is silly. Especially considering we do much more.
Hardly any "work" required to have better cameras - most phone manufacturers just take ready 3rd party modules. And nobody has to convince you, I guess, that Apple doesn't really have a presence in digicam development? Some, Samsung or Sony for example (they are one of the few manufacturers of those modules), might easily have something comparable already. We just wouldn't know so well, without the great hoopla once a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, open source (free software? ;p ) operating systems form over half of smartphone sales. It should remain roughly like that even when Samsung will really start to push their bada OS (I guess it will become #2 very quickly)
PS. "Transparent" in the context of the story at least, console physical media.
It's fairly transperent in comparison to some of the DRM the world has seen; carried over (say, to new owner) directly by the physical media itself.
Or buy used. Both the core of "they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper" - people have control over what happens to physical media.
To be fair, landing on Eros, an asteroid 5 orders of magnitude more massive, with ~60 times stronger surface gravity and 2 orders of magnitude greater escape velocity than Itokawa, was made by a spacecraft...not meant to do it. Those bodies have miniscule gravities - you could launch yourself from Itokawa, into escape velocity, just by trying to walk (from Eros a strong jump is required). So no airbags / etc. is really not much of a surprise. How impressive the Hayabusa achievements are doesn't revolve around landing per se.
And actually, Hayabusa wasn't even meant to land - just to touch the surface by its collection device. Landing was itself a small screwup.
Also...you know, speed isn't damaging in itself - just excessive acceleration (like lithobraking ;p ) is; and JAXA knew perfectly well what their rocket is capable of during launch / knew what the acceleration will be. Structural engineers won't examine anything, the probe burned up in our atmosphere; only the small return capsule (meant / designed for experienced deceleration) survived (well, how the heatshield coped is certainly being examined).
A cup is really no more "meaningful to humans" than a liter. Or rather, both only as much as people are used to them, anyway - they freely operate with half a liter/etc (and "cups" at the same time, when it makes sense); plus it has a nice direct relation with kilogram (SI base unit anyway, maybe makes people quicker to get what "kilo" means ;) ). Similarly with meter; it is in the range where humans operate btw (you mean "parts of human body"? Sure you can find them, my legs are approximately 1 m, nicely divided in half; but it's useless anyhow)
Dividing by 3 probably not that important, too - a third of a meter is of course 1/3 m; if you insist on decimals, it doesn't really matter anyway - it is not a factor when precisely measuring random stuff; and we tend to engineer things in a way which doesn't describe them by many repeating decimals... (a thing to which any system of units is susceptible, if you don't avoid it). Plus abandoning base 10 would be probably a lot harder than you think - it is inevitably intuitive to humans. We could, I guess, modify all embryos - so that what is called polydactylism (one form of it anyway, 6 fingers on each limb) would become normal in a few decades...but I somehow doubt people would go for it ;p (and even if - why 12? Why not 8 or 16? Imagine how badass future generations would be "with computers"! ;) )
I'd say SI is firmly in the range of "good enough"; it doesn't seem to have any pitfalls which would make life harder. It being used by virtually whole world isn't a coincidence...
You didn't really need to put "moving" in there... ;p
The machine and the network, which you both used to post the above, wouldn't exist if not for the understanding of physics that wasn't there even a century ago. Even in the timeframe of humanity that's almost a blink of an eye / saying that LHC "is not really going to do anything for humanity or anything of substance to use" is ridiculous (accidentally, the organisation behind it already spawned the medium you used to post and LHC partly fuelled another spike in networking/processing/etc. technologies; not only there of course, they need to do some insane things with sensors for example, or with forcing electromagnets to behave...might be useful for those pesky ION drives, y'know)
ISS costs break-ups omit that "Mir 2" part is proportionally much cheaper and that "Alpha" part was designed to make the Shuttle seem useful.
FYI, ION engines would have a hard time reaching even closest stars in 10,000 years. "This particle in the LHC project but we don't have much use for it besides in science/history books" thing OTOH can most likely contribute to reaching another galaxy in that timeframe (if that's even possible in our Universe of course). And you know, LHC is also an international project...plus, in the timeframe of 10,000 years, it's insanely more efficient to keep the Earth habitable (but it's understandable how you're convinced we will have to "evacuate" in a few thousand years - after all, you're most likely from a place which is almost as bad as it gets in spoiling the place)
Also, I don't really see an interstellar civilisation having a strong, centrallised governing structure, under one deity and exporting its problems "abroad" (generally needing "the enemy" to shine); OTOH a union of mostly independent and quite different entities with free trade between them, compatible codes of conduit and common policy in how to deal with entities outside of their sphere...
Still, all of this is ultimatelly a reflection of given society; it's at the least telling where it tries, perhaps, to go.
Perhaps not really "a while" - previous devices of the line were released roughly once a year.
Or probably just opened two subthreads at roughly the same time - and it's you who posted similar points in a row! ;p (I don't really look at the names of posters)
IF you put it in your hand with glows on, it doesn't register anything.
No such thing happens with a resistive screen; which also works perfectly with long fingernails.
(really, which of our posts is more "true" / did you really miss in parent post that Nokia offers capacitive too?)
Is something stopping you from releasing that Qt app for Maemo also on Symbian?
Wouldn't it better (on so many levels... ;p ) to say that it jumped straight to step i5? ;)
"Died"? More like merged with one other team (and probably a provider of SoCs for some future top N device - "smartphone Atom" a generation or two away from now might be, perhaps, bearable...), hence the name change - not really a neccessary thing, but I gues "expected" during such mergers.
Not low, that's where S40 will be for a long time (even where S30 is still - check out 1280 or the most basic C1, very recent devices)
But they didn't work out that such solutions, of pushing "crop prices, weather reports, etc that update once a day" via SMS or closely related means, are already widely deployed?
Look what Enlightenment can do, in software, on very "slow" machines (accidentally, it seems Samsung took some components from it, in creating their bada OS - which is targeted also at the mainstream, not expensive ("lesser" hardware) devices; and should be quickly #2 smartphone OS)
It's a drop shadow + older phone hardware + Apple priorities; they want to sell people new phone, that's all.
Hm? Netbooks sure got quite popular, but ~15 inch laptop (used mostly as a "desktop replacement", though not strictly at the same desk all the time) seems to be much more the rule, still.Certainly when looking at people who get only one machine, and those are relevant here.
BTW, trying to push a little "slow" machines works quite fine if you have half a clue.
It must be ok if filthy liberal commie places have a problem with all that stuff.
To be fair, it might have been just as well made by children - at least when it comes to visible parts ;p
Also, the seal device was actually hung on a wall in Soviet Union, by the US ambassador there. The interesting part made by no other but...Theremin.
But also a changing way of quantifying resources, human ones too. One one hand it's probably a bit inneficient (overall) to allow direct human "sacrifices"; on the other - who knows how many were "claimed" by directing resources to such costly projects today. To complicate matters, the ultimate goal of both Great Wall and many projects from that list was to, at the least, maintain stability and prosperity of societies; so also "saving" lifes. And our infrastructure, even in this "faster" times, is also built over many generations.
Dismissing the familiarities is silly. Especially considering we do much more.
Hardly any "work" required to have better cameras - most phone manufacturers just take ready 3rd party modules. And nobody has to convince you, I guess, that Apple doesn't really have a presence in digicam development?
Some, Samsung or Sony for example (they are one of the few manufacturers of those modules), might easily have something comparable already. We just wouldn't know so well, without the great hoopla once a year.
Hm, otoh - what happened with NASA funding just after first photographs of a man on the Moon?
BTW, we still seem to have a bit of "great wall of China type projects", also in Europe (accidentally, the top one...)
Clearly, old people are just pissing eveyrone off...
Do we really want to hand them over the glory of space exploration in such case>