Oh, but not anymore/there were often differences between the population that stayed and the one that emigrated (nevermind an argument "the mix is more than sum of its parts", it's hard to quantify it in any way...).
Actually, often those very differences were the reason for migration.
Which in some cases ended up quite good for the US, for example immigration of people that on one hand were excluded from success (because in the past more than now success didn't depend on you, much more on the social role in which you were placed), which didn't neccesarilly change after migrating...but on the other they were quite motivated/etc. (even now changing continents is quite a big deal...). Heck, one of the reasons Poland is now so messed up is that intellectuals who weren't forcibly moved to Syberia in XIX/beginning of XX century or simply later killed by Soviets & Nazis...emigrated, also to US.
Though...there's still some fallout you have from those differences/reasons for migration...most notably, I think, because large part of it was religiously motivated. Now, granted, in many cases we would brand those who emmigrated as closer to us on moral/etc. terms, but the truth is...basically EVERY religious group from back then could be described today as religious nutjobs. For some reason (easier isolation of such groups from external influence?) "nutjob" views largery survived in the US, while Europe, thankfully, menaged to get rid of them, largery... (though not completely; using previous example - they're still, unfortunatelly, prevailing in Poland; but it's worth to note that they're much less extreme and out of touch with reality than those among immigrant Poles in US - when interacting with them, I have the impression I'm talking to my grandparents, in regards to moral views/politics/etc.)
Middle-range ones are getting there, E50 for example, which can be had for 100 now, new, without contract. Or practically free with one.
As for the TRUE low-end...remember that's not a typical phone that people in the western world get with their contracts; they're getting middle-range. Low-end means Nokia 1100, 1200, 1208, etc. And I kinda like them the way they are... (exceptionally good not only if all you need is phonecalls & sms, also for second/emergency phone/backpacking)
Bragging rights are good too (unless you come from some weird universe in which thoughtfull CEOs/etc. make decisions based purely on reason), I guess; and it's not like Airbus can't recoup the costs in huge profits from other products.
Especially since they probably will be big in China (Japan was a lost cause even before Airbus started to compete with Boeing...)
And it's not like it won't take several years for orders to speed up a bit, especially given todays economic situation (like with 747...)
According to Secunia it had the smallest number of volnurabilities, plus Opera Software somehow likes too boast about security...would be a good contendant and verification of their claims (and don't say that Opera has negligible share, IN YOUR MARKET, there are many where it's quite big (which accidentally are often the healthy ones not dominated by EI/with IE below 50% for some time)
Though I suspect inertia in software will be a deciding factor, kinda like one of the answers for "why Plan 9 didn't take off?" goes...even if me, definatelly non-programmer (webapps/scripting languages don't count...at least in this discussion), can imagine future direction in hardware which would merit new OS approach (memristors/blurring completelly the disctinction between RAM and storage? Or even "processing RAM", kinda like small onchip vram in x360 does fsaa in hardware, but to the level of full cpu - blurring the distinction between ram & cpu)
Hey, perhaps that's what holding back singularity/AI...;)
Too bad USB also took over things for which it definatelly wasn't designed for; and out of all those things, webcams were hurt the most IMHO - a lot of people still have the impression that you can't get good quality video out of them.
And sad thing is...I can bet that in 2 years or so many MS-fanbots will point to KDE4 while saying "see? Linux doesn't innovate, it just rips off Windows!"...
Things is, it's very time-consuming to restore the desktop in such usage scenario; I have usually at least few dozen webpages opened in tabs, few "ongoing" IM conversations, few documents opened, downloads in the background (which take very long time to restart properly...) - it's much, much faster to simply keep those things minimised when playing a game; that's what multitasking is for...
And hibernation to a file never seems to work properly most of the time when it's really needed, after some long & heavy usage. Too bad running Windows under VM only for games isn't really a viable option, and running Linux like that feels...wrong.
Definatelly not all. But large part of us HAD TO praise the soviet motherland for half of a century, so forgive us if we're not the first in line in thanking you...especially since few relativelly small things (like serious air support during ww2 Warsaw uprising, preventing massive election frauds throughout central Europe after ww2 (yes, we basically ELECTED OUSTING OF THE SOVIETS...so what, who cares about preserving democracy...oh, wait), or political support for Hungary and Czechoslovakia during their uprisings in 50's and 60's) might have, perhaps, done the trick...
I would like to for such standard to go even "lower", towards current netbooks as the base - there's already quite a lot of them, and the Poulsbo/new integrated Atom ones won't be significantly more powerfull.
But...there's either no need for it or it won't bring anything noteworthy to the table - definatelly not any big release, just casual games at most. And you can already find a lot of them that run nice, and also a lot of really good, older "big" releases.
Yes, I'm also considering it. Though I do care about battery life a lot, and it seems X4* can go longer; amount of RAM it can take will be perfectly enough, and I'll replace HDD with SD cards IDE adapter.
Plus for some reason X4* looks much nicer to me, I guess screen hinges is what makes all the difference;p
Not really an option I'm afraid (plus I'd have to make sure that its clit/size/form factor/keyboard suits me (there will be a lot of writing on my netbook), but that's doable) - Sony Vaios have ridiculous markups where I live, so Vaio P ended up around four times more expensiove than ordinary netbook, not two times that I mentioned would be OK. Might as well simply get X-series if Vaio P is the "only" choice...
Granted, it's just what I've seen so by no means representative, but...while ALL desks with touchpad-only laptops had a mouse next to them, there was one small group without it, just a laptop. They had one thing in common - Thinkpads.
That wasn't much of an argument at all, just a sidenote. Though mouse is indeed better when you have some flat surface, it's not really portable, only luggable (from one flat surface to the next...), so, for me and significant enough number of other people, clit is the best trully portable (integrated in the machine) thing.
If only those were old displays...majority of cheapeast (those which most people buy) LCDs still come only with D-sub; even more frustrating since it's just because of artificial pricing points (after all, including D-sub costs more than purely digital interface, AFAIK)
Not disagreeing with you, just noting that it's even worse/they have even less incentive to equip "those damned cheap, low-margin netbooks" with anything above d-sub...
Most people probably wouldn't even take a closer look at a laptop that's visibly missing a touchpad (nevermind that most of them also use their laptop with a mouse attached...). It's "just the way things are", laptops have touchpads and that's it; so also no point in convincing them to try a clit (which needs a day to get used to, but after that it's fabulous), they won't.
And I guess suits at Lenovo thought that netbook with clit would cannibalise the sales of X-series, which might be true, most people don't need the kind of power that X-series has in their portable computer.
But they forgot that the same lack of need for power means that most people can't justify the price of X-series, so they won't buy it anyway.
I guess if next netbook from Lenovo won't have a clit I'll have to hunt down some old, used X40/41...
I guess the suits thought it would cannibalise the sales of X-series.
But...most people don't need that much power in a portable computer, can't justify buying it. So I'm waiting for the succesor of Lenovo S10...if it won't have a clit, I'll just have to hunt down some used X40/41. No new sale from me.
OK, so you like touchpad, great. It works for you, and that's all that matters...for you. (as a sidenote, you seem to be in the minority - most people with touchpad-only laptops use mouse if they can; certainly on every desk that I've seen where there's touchpad-only laptop, there's also a mouse; some people even have "travel mouse"; I even witnessed somebody trying to use a mouse on a flat area next to the touchpad, while sitting on a park bench...ridiculous!)
HOWEVER...I, and many other people, really like clit in a trully portable (not luggable) computer, even though I used it only for one day on a Thinkpad of my buddy - at the end of the day I was able to play enjoyably in UT and Diablo2 (granted, I usually play as a necromancer so there's less clicking, but still...). Not doable on a touchpad, and while mouse is best in this case, it's not really portable...
BUT...I can't buy even ONE netbook with clit. One is all we need...:/
If next Lenovo netbook comes with this platform (lower power usage and place for 9-12 cell battery, please?) and also with clit instead of touchpad, I'll be waiting overnight for first shipment. Heck, I will gladly pay 50% more than the typical price of "ordinary" netbook for that, probably even 100% more (though in the latter case it could also have X-series style case (not really needed, netbooks are tough enough thanks to their small size) and keyboard)
Actually...a black hole forming from Mars wouldn't be very enjoyable for us also - the accretion of matter would emit vast amounts of radiation.
It probably wouldn't influence the Earth itself much, but I suspect sterilisation/wiping of many forms of life (think gamma ray burst...not very powerfull one, but at our doorstep)
Apparently current estimates place total number of people who have ever lived at around 100 billion. (out of which 6 billion is still quite high, though nowhere near popular myth "there are currently more poeple alive than have lived in the past":p )
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Oh, but not anymore/there were often differences between the population that stayed and the one that emigrated (nevermind an argument "the mix is more than sum of its parts", it's hard to quantify it in any way...).
Actually, often those very differences were the reason for migration.
Which in some cases ended up quite good for the US, for example immigration of people that on one hand were excluded from success (because in the past more than now success didn't depend on you, much more on the social role in which you were placed), which didn't neccesarilly change after migrating...but on the other they were quite motivated/etc. (even now changing continents is quite a big deal...). Heck, one of the reasons Poland is now so messed up is that intellectuals who weren't forcibly moved to Syberia in XIX/beginning of XX century or simply later killed by Soviets & Nazis...emigrated, also to US.
Though...there's still some fallout you have from those differences/reasons for migration...most notably, I think, because large part of it was religiously motivated. Now, granted, in many cases we would brand those who emmigrated as closer to us on moral/etc. terms, but the truth is...basically EVERY religious group from back then could be described today as religious nutjobs. For some reason (easier isolation of such groups from external influence?) "nutjob" views largery survived in the US, while Europe, thankfully, menaged to get rid of them, largery... (though not completely; using previous example - they're still, unfortunatelly, prevailing in Poland; but it's worth to note that they're much less extreme and out of touch with reality than those among immigrant Poles in US - when interacting with them, I have the impression I'm talking to my grandparents, in regards to moral views/politics/etc.)
Plus, taking further the example of mp3 players that original poster used - in many places iPods are almost nonexistent.
Middle-range ones are getting there, E50 for example, which can be had for 100 now, new, without contract. Or practically free with one.
As for the TRUE low-end...remember that's not a typical phone that people in the western world get with their contracts; they're getting middle-range. Low-end means Nokia 1100, 1200, 1208, etc. And I kinda like them the way they are... (exceptionally good not only if all you need is phonecalls & sms, also for second/emergency phone/backpacking)
Are DVDs where you live released at the same time as cinema release?
Bragging rights are good too (unless you come from some weird universe in which thoughtfull CEOs/etc. make decisions based purely on reason), I guess; and it's not like Airbus can't recoup the costs in huge profits from other products.
Especially since they probably will be big in China (Japan was a lost cause even before Airbus started to compete with Boeing...)
And it's not like it won't take several years for orders to speed up a bit, especially given todays economic situation (like with 747...)
According to Secunia it had the smallest number of volnurabilities, plus Opera Software somehow likes too boast about security...would be a good contendant and verification of their claims (and don't say that Opera has negligible share, IN YOUR MARKET, there are many where it's quite big (which accidentally are often the healthy ones not dominated by EI/with IE below 50% for some time)
Though I suspect inertia in software will be a deciding factor, kinda like one of the answers for "why Plan 9 didn't take off?" goes...even if me, definatelly non-programmer (webapps/scripting languages don't count...at least in this discussion), can imagine future direction in hardware which would merit new OS approach (memristors/blurring completelly the disctinction between RAM and storage? Or even "processing RAM", kinda like small onchip vram in x360 does fsaa in hardware, but to the level of full cpu - blurring the distinction between ram & cpu)
Hey, perhaps that's what holding back singularity/AI... ;)
Too bad USB also took over things for which it definatelly wasn't designed for; and out of all those things, webcams were hurt the most IMHO - a lot of people still have the impression that you can't get good quality video out of them.
And sad thing is...I can bet that in 2 years or so many MS-fanbots will point to KDE4 while saying "see? Linux doesn't innovate, it just rips off Windows!"...
Things is, it's very time-consuming to restore the desktop in such usage scenario; I have usually at least few dozen webpages opened in tabs, few "ongoing" IM conversations, few documents opened, downloads in the background (which take very long time to restart properly...) - it's much, much faster to simply keep those things minimised when playing a game; that's what multitasking is for...
And hibernation to a file never seems to work properly most of the time when it's really needed, after some long & heavy usage. Too bad running Windows under VM only for games isn't really a viable option, and running Linux like that feels...wrong.
Definatelly not all. But large part of us HAD TO praise the soviet motherland for half of a century, so forgive us if we're not the first in line in thanking you...especially since few relativelly small things (like serious air support during ww2 Warsaw uprising, preventing massive election frauds throughout central Europe after ww2 (yes, we basically ELECTED OUSTING OF THE SOVIETS...so what, who cares about preserving democracy...oh, wait), or political support for Hungary and Czechoslovakia during their uprisings in 50's and 60's) might have, perhaps, done the trick...
I would like to for such standard to go even "lower", towards current netbooks as the base - there's already quite a lot of them, and the Poulsbo/new integrated Atom ones won't be significantly more powerfull.
But...there's either no need for it or it won't bring anything noteworthy to the table - definatelly not any big release, just casual games at most. And you can already find a lot of them that run nice, and also a lot of really good, older "big" releases.
Yes, I'm also considering it. Though I do care about battery life a lot, and it seems X4* can go longer; amount of RAM it can take will be perfectly enough, and I'll replace HDD with SD cards IDE adapter.
Plus for some reason X4* looks much nicer to me, I guess screen hinges is what makes all the difference ;p
Not really an option I'm afraid (plus I'd have to make sure that its clit/size/form factor/keyboard suits me (there will be a lot of writing on my netbook), but that's doable) - Sony Vaios have ridiculous markups where I live, so Vaio P ended up around four times more expensiove than ordinary netbook, not two times that I mentioned would be OK. Might as well simply get X-series if Vaio P is the "only" choice...
Well...not really.
Granted, it's just what I've seen so by no means representative, but...while ALL desks with touchpad-only laptops had a mouse next to them, there was one small group without it, just a laptop. They had one thing in common - Thinkpads.
That wasn't much of an argument at all, just a sidenote. Though mouse is indeed better when you have some flat surface, it's not really portable, only luggable (from one flat surface to the next...), so, for me and significant enough number of other people, clit is the best trully portable (integrated in the machine) thing.
Well, isn't it just great then that ALL of netbooks have touchpads?
What we'd like to have is just one model with clit...ONE. It would be enough...
If only those were old displays...majority of cheapeast (those which most people buy) LCDs still come only with D-sub; even more frustrating since it's just because of artificial pricing points (after all, including D-sub costs more than purely digital interface, AFAIK)
Not disagreeing with you, just noting that it's even worse/they have even less incentive to equip "those damned cheap, low-margin netbooks" with anything above d-sub...
Most people probably wouldn't even take a closer look at a laptop that's visibly missing a touchpad (nevermind that most of them also use their laptop with a mouse attached...). It's "just the way things are", laptops have touchpads and that's it; so also no point in convincing them to try a clit (which needs a day to get used to, but after that it's fabulous), they won't.
And I guess suits at Lenovo thought that netbook with clit would cannibalise the sales of X-series, which might be true, most people don't need the kind of power that X-series has in their portable computer.
But they forgot that the same lack of need for power means that most people can't justify the price of X-series, so they won't buy it anyway.
I guess if next netbook from Lenovo won't have a clit I'll have to hunt down some old, used X40/41...
I guess the suits thought it would cannibalise the sales of X-series.
But...most people don't need that much power in a portable computer, can't justify buying it. So I'm waiting for the succesor of Lenovo S10...if it won't have a clit, I'll just have to hunt down some used X40/41. No new sale from me.
OK, so you like touchpad, great. It works for you, and that's all that matters...for you. (as a sidenote, you seem to be in the minority - most people with touchpad-only laptops use mouse if they can; certainly on every desk that I've seen where there's touchpad-only laptop, there's also a mouse; some people even have "travel mouse"; I even witnessed somebody trying to use a mouse on a flat area next to the touchpad, while sitting on a park bench...ridiculous!)
HOWEVER...I, and many other people, really like clit in a trully portable (not luggable) computer, even though I used it only for one day on a Thinkpad of my buddy - at the end of the day I was able to play enjoyably in UT and Diablo2 (granted, I usually play as a necromancer so there's less clicking, but still...). Not doable on a touchpad, and while mouse is best in this case, it's not really portable...
BUT...I can't buy even ONE netbook with clit. One is all we need... :/
If next Lenovo netbook comes with this platform (lower power usage and place for 9-12 cell battery, please?) and also with clit instead of touchpad, I'll be waiting overnight for first shipment. Heck, I will gladly pay 50% more than the typical price of "ordinary" netbook for that, probably even 100% more (though in the latter case it could also have X-series style case (not really needed, netbooks are tough enough thanks to their small size) and keyboard)
...everywhere?
Actually...a black hole forming from Mars wouldn't be very enjoyable for us also - the accretion of matter would emit vast amounts of radiation.
It probably wouldn't influence the Earth itself much, but I suspect sterilisation/wiping of many forms of life (think gamma ray burst...not very powerfull one, but at our doorstep)
...plus most cases were probably simply not diagnosed correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived
Apparently current estimates place total number of people who have ever lived at around 100 billion. (out of which 6 billion is still quite high, though nowhere near popular myth "there are currently more poeple alive than have lived in the past" :p )