PLATO terminals were cool, but they cost about one human teacher annual salary at the time, and needed a mainframe costing 100 human teacher years behind them, plus telecom links that were obscenely expensive by current standards. They were barely economically feasible only if you assumed large cost drops from volume production.
Comparing PLATO to modern internet distance learning is like comparing the Wright flyer to a modern jet aircraft.
MY date format is ISO 8601
on
Happy Pi Day
·
· Score: 1
... this is your get-out-of-jail-free card, since they are unilaterally changing the terms of your current contract.
If you have multiple providers in your area, this is a really good time to research your alternatives.
If you have alternatives, call AT&T up and tell them you want to switch. They are likely to be more accommodating than usual when they realize they aren't going to get their penalty money.
The stuff they mailed to my home (Washington DC suburb) did not say "we don't throttle". Their terms of service said specifically that they reserved the right to throttle (What? You didn't at least skim them before signing up? Hand in your geek card.).
I signed my mother-in-law up for their service anyway - she's a light user, and their service is cheap compared to the other two Great Satans of telecom in the area, Comcast and Verizon. We got a home+mobile pair for $60/month - $30/month for faster-than-3G-when-it-works-mobile isn't bad.
If you hit the Expand All link, you'll see details for each provider in your chosen area. Over to the left, there are links where you can up/downvote the info for each provider.
For my area, the providers were correct, but the speeds listed were for their fastest and most expensive service options - 100 Mbps for Verizon FIOS and Comcast DOCSIS 3, when the service most people choose is 10 Mbps or so.
This is written by people who understand the difference between reliable base-load sources and less-predictable renewables like wind and solar. Their plan recognizes the need for energy storage to balance out the erratic sources - that's the "270 new 1300MW hydroelectric power plants", which you need for pumped storage. There's a social and political barrier for you - we have enough trouble in the US running new power lines, and this plan requires the construction of hundreds of new dams!?
I also don't understand some of their trade-offs. Mining uranium is bad, but flooding 270 new valleys is OK?
I suspect a lot of people don't curse at their computers because they believe themselves to be completely incompetent with them - whenever something goes wrong, they think it must have been their fault.
Google has always been about engineering excellence, with market dominance being a welcome side effect. When it works, you get Gmail, when it doesn't work you get Wave.
Microsoft has always been about market dominance through engineering mediocrity and barriers to entry. This has led to the teetering tower of kludge whose pinnacle is Windows 7.
Microsoft CAN'T be engineering-driven the way Google is. Google can change its search engine implementation and strategy continuously and overnight. Microsoft can only change Windows in big increments, with lots of concern for backward compatibility.
1. We tax diesel fuel more heavily than gasoline, because most of the diesel users in the US are trucks, which are heavier and do more damage to the roads. This has unfairly discouraged diesel for smaller vehicles.
2. Any vehicle that doesn't use taxed fuel is not paying for the roads. Very small problem now, will get bigger as all-electric cars become more practical.
It just found your location, every few seconds, and recorded only the distance traveled (maybe in which state, for state highway funding purposes).
The hardware and the source code for the system would have to be published and open, so everyone could verify that the meter recorded NOTHING but distance traveled.
What are the chances the government would approve a system that COULDN'T be used for intrusive monitoring, though?
I have TWO sets of Yellow Pages dropped on my driveway from two different companies, covering the Washington DC metro area.
I also get THREE sets of local directories for my city (Bowie).
And two free local newspapers.
NONE of them have a simple way to opt out, because they make their money from being able to say "we dropped our stuff on N thousand driveways in the area".
I think the only way to get them to stop will be to have them arrested for littering.
Eventually (one year? five years?) the world economy will pick back up, and energy supplies will tighten back up again. When that happens, having spare base load electric generation capacity will be very valuable.
I live near Washington DC, and I'm pissed that the local utilities can't see this coming. I've grown used to having the lights come on when I flip a switch, dammit.
... long-haul trucking. A robo-truck could drive 24-7, stopping only for fuel and loading/unloading, and would never have an accident due to driver drowsiness or speeding to meet a deadline.
If a robo-driver costs, say, $100,000, it would pay for itself in a few years in avoided driver pay alone.
I agree with the primary idea above, but wish people would stop conflating languages and implementation details.
JavaScript/Java/Python/Lisp/PHP/C# are languages. Interpreted code is a method commonly used for early implementation of languages, and it is usually replaced by better methods as implementations mature.
Saying that language X is inherently slow because "it's interpreted" is wrong, but sounds superficially convincing enough to allow pointy-haired people to reject languages without really understanding the issues.
If someone you don't like makes money off of SMS messages, write a Trojan that sends them stuff, get people to download it, and viola! The SMS guys get raided!
Slashdot Mirror
PLATO terminals were cool, but they cost about one human teacher annual salary at the time, and needed a mainframe costing 100 human teacher years behind them, plus telecom links that were obscenely expensive by current standards. They were barely economically feasible only if you assumed large cost drops from volume production.
Comparing PLATO to modern internet distance learning is like comparing the Wright flyer to a modern jet aircraft.
YYYY-MM-DD. More here.
... this is your get-out-of-jail-free card, since they are unilaterally changing the terms of your current contract.
If you have multiple providers in your area, this is a really good time to research your alternatives.
If you have alternatives, call AT&T up and tell them you want to switch. They are likely to be more accommodating than usual when they realize they aren't going to get their penalty money.
The stuff they mailed to my home (Washington DC suburb) did not say "we don't throttle". Their terms of service said specifically that they reserved the right to throttle (What? You didn't at least skim them before signing up? Hand in your geek card.).
I signed my mother-in-law up for their service anyway - she's a light user, and their service is cheap compared to the other two Great Satans of telecom in the area, Comcast and Verizon. We got a home+mobile pair for $60/month - $30/month for faster-than-3G-when-it-works-mobile isn't bad.
One labeled "IOS" and one labeled "iOS".
The rest of the internet is outside, wondering what exactly goes on in those caves, and taking the occasional app or routing table that flies out.
If you hit the Expand All link, you'll see details for each provider in your chosen area. Over to the left, there are links where you can up/downvote the info for each provider.
For my area, the providers were correct, but the speeds listed were for their fastest and most expensive service options - 100 Mbps for Verizon FIOS and Comcast DOCSIS 3, when the service most people choose is 10 Mbps or so.
This is written by people who understand the difference between reliable base-load sources and less-predictable renewables like wind and solar. Their plan recognizes the need for energy storage to balance out the erratic sources - that's the "270 new 1300MW hydroelectric power plants", which you need for pumped storage. There's a social and political barrier for you - we have enough trouble in the US running new power lines, and this plan requires the construction of hundreds of new dams!?
I also don't understand some of their trade-offs. Mining uranium is bad, but flooding 270 new valleys is OK?
I suspect a lot of people don't curse at their computers because they believe themselves to be completely incompetent with them - whenever something goes wrong, they think it must have been their fault.
Why curse your own perceived incompetence?
And he is, except for one thing.
Google has always been about engineering excellence, with market dominance being a welcome side effect. When it works, you get Gmail, when it doesn't work you get Wave.
Microsoft has always been about market dominance through engineering mediocrity and barriers to entry. This has led to the teetering tower of kludge whose pinnacle is Windows 7.
Microsoft CAN'T be engineering-driven the way Google is. Google can change its search engine implementation and strategy continuously and overnight. Microsoft can only change Windows in big increments, with lots of concern for backward compatibility.
I can think of two in the US:
1. We tax diesel fuel more heavily than gasoline, because most of the diesel users in the US are trucks, which are heavier and do more damage to the roads. This has unfairly discouraged diesel for smaller vehicles.
2. Any vehicle that doesn't use taxed fuel is not paying for the roads. Very small problem now, will get bigger as all-electric cars become more practical.
It just found your location, every few seconds, and recorded only the distance traveled (maybe in which state, for state highway funding purposes).
The hardware and the source code for the system would have to be published and open, so everyone could verify that the meter recorded NOTHING but distance traveled.
What are the chances the government would approve a system that COULDN'T be used for intrusive monitoring, though?
From the "Finder has driven me up a wall" comment, you're a Windows user.
The iTools are far from perfect, but they're a lot more robust on Macs.
Apple TV uses a bad setting for DNS by default. See here for a description of the problem and solutions.
It's not Netflix's fault, surprisingly enough.
I have TWO sets of Yellow Pages dropped on my driveway from two different companies, covering the Washington DC metro area.
I also get THREE sets of local directories for my city (Bowie).
And two free local newspapers.
NONE of them have a simple way to opt out, because they make their money from being able to say "we dropped our stuff on N thousand driveways in the area".
I think the only way to get them to stop will be to have them arrested for littering.
At least, that's what the toy robot did in A Fistful of Yen.
Last time I opened a Mac laptop (2002 iBook, granted) there was NO significant open space inside.
This is probably true of laptops in general.
And it is a great entry-level stop-motion program (from another long-time customer).
Eventually (one year? five years?) the world economy will pick back up, and energy supplies will tighten back up again. When that happens, having spare base load electric generation capacity will be very valuable.
I live near Washington DC, and I'm pissed that the local utilities can't see this coming. I've grown used to having the lights come on when I flip a switch, dammit.
... long-haul trucking. A robo-truck could drive 24-7, stopping only for fuel and loading/unloading, and would never have an accident due to driver drowsiness or speeding to meet a deadline.
If a robo-driver costs, say, $100,000, it would pay for itself in a few years in avoided driver pay alone.
...back in the day when MacBasic, MacPascal, MacForth, etc., were the expected names of compilers, and MacLisp was by-Ghod already taken!
A remote with a keyboard.
I agree with the primary idea above, but wish people would stop conflating languages and implementation details.
JavaScript/Java/Python/Lisp/PHP/C# are languages. Interpreted code is a method commonly used for early implementation of languages, and it is usually replaced by better methods as implementations mature.
Saying that language X is inherently slow because "it's interpreted" is wrong, but sounds superficially convincing enough to allow pointy-haired people to reject languages without really understanding the issues.
Remember the iPod mini? Came out at $200 when the standard iPod (with much more storage) was $300, and they sold a LOT of them.
If they're doing the cover-the-spectrum strategy they did with iPods, they could end up with a lineup like this:
* 9.7" iPad - $500
* 7" iPad - $350
* iPod touch - $200
If someone you don't like makes money off of SMS messages, write a Trojan that sends them stuff, get people to download it, and viola! The SMS guys get raided!
So that makes me an early adopter techno-luddite?