Let's face it, there's a very simple, logical explanation for the failure of the EV-1 and GM's unwillingness to support it: the cars couldn't be sold for the amount of money it took to build them. EV-1s were heavily subsidized by GM as part of an R&D and PR program. I remember reading at the time they were introduced that the actual cost of the vehicle was almost twice what GM was selling it for, and GM could hardly move any, even at half cost. Add to that their extremely limited range and the short life-cycle of their last-generation batteries, and it's no wonder they died a quiet death.
I have heard that the Smithsonian has about four times more material to display than they have room for displaying. Removing this particular item, whose main interest was as a counterexample of how not to build an electric car, isn't some evil plot of our hybrid car-selling overlords.
as the LED lamps essentially do not need to be replaced. Incandescent lamps not only use more electricity, they have a much shorter life. The city will be saving $1200 a year in electricity, plus the cost of replacing the lamps every couple of years.
I am really pleased to see these taking off--better for the environment on two fronts (longer life, lower power consumption) and nifty tech that I used to fiddle around with as a kid. Anyone else remember the books you could get at Radio Shack that had electronic projects to build? Man, I loved building LED displays.
in their attempt to break into the on-line payments business?
I recently (re)opened an account to buy a pinball machine on eBay (Stern Stars, a cool old machine), but it is only tied to my credit card. I'm very familiar (through personal experience) with PayPal's inability to handle fraud (the reason I closed my original, bank-linked account) and their lose-lose-win schemes (on a contested purchase, the buyer loses their money, the seller loses the item, and PayPal gets the big win by keeping any contested funds). I would probably have closed the account again, but my wife wanted to purchase some baby periphenalia from a home-based business that only accepts checks or PayPal. I'm thinking this article is areminder to close my PayPal account.
Frankly, I will be very, very happy once Google's tool is available and I have a viable on-line payments alternative to PayPal.
First "Using jet engines to cool servers" and now "A New Search for Spock", ummmm... I mean, "A New Hope for Myspace", ahhh, that is "Searching for Bobby..." eh, nevermind.
Sheesh, Zonk -- could we at least take, say, three seconds to think before writing the article title. How about "Using jet engine technology..." instead of "Using jet engines..."
Little clue: Jet exhaust is... well, let's just call it "a little warm for cooling a server" and leave it at that. The article title gave me this picture of a Rolls jet engine (http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/how_ things_work/default.jsp) sucking JP4 and blowing 1000's of cubic feet per second of very hot air into the server room here at work.
The barrier to entry in search is moderately high (you have to be able to afford the hardware to do your indexing) but there will always be people willing to invest in search. It's easily monetized (love that word, eh?), there's no cost for users to switch to new competitive product, and there's no magic bullet that gives you both accurate results and the ability to weed out aggregators and shady SEOs. As long as developers can come up with new search algorithms that give better results, there's the chance that the "next Google" could be launched.
I like and use Google, but that's because the results are usually valuable to me and the ads are minimally intrusive. Currently, the one issue I have is Google's inability to prevent aggregators from showing up in search results. I've never found anything useful through aggregator pages, and I'd like Google to filter them out.
Anyway, the ability of new companies to explore search is something that's good for SE users. New search startups can be launched and attempt to improve search. Google is forced to innovate. Where's the downside?
While the things you describe (consumerism, living for the future, etc) may happen to some in Western cultures, it's by no means universal. Neither I nor most of my friends live this kind of life, and while there are certainly a lot of Americans living the unexamined life, there are certainly plenty who do not.
In any event, most of your vaunted cultures pursuing "Eastern philosophy" have succumbed to the lure of the chance to escape living short lives in dirty hovels with unclean drinking water and no hope of leisure time. Whatever else you may say about Western civ, the technological progress it has enabled has pushed the standard of living higher in much of the world, and stands poised to help out the rest of the world too. Neither technology nor economics is a zero-sum game.
which people have attempted to implement again and again with tyrannical results must be flawed on some basic level. Saying "That's not what he meant" when the outcome of attempts to apply his philosophy are consistently dehumanizing is meaningless. IMO, marxists are insane by the old definition: They keep trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Not that there would be anything wrong with Marx's ideas in a perfect world, he just failed to take into account the world that we really live in.
Unfortunately for radicals on both sides (Marxists and Capitalists) the only workable solution in a world populated by flawed humans is a balance between the "100% free market with no government controls" and "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" points of view. Those of us who are rational realize that a system based on greed must be regulated since enlightened self interest isn't a sufficient control for everyone, and that a system that fails to reward based on merit inevitably leads to stagnation.
As with most things in life, there are shades of grey here.
It's not directly related to IT outsourcing, but I wonder why people even use these big banks?
My financial institution will never outsource their workers, because I do my banking with a four-branch Credit Union (SFCU). Deposits are insured by the FDIC, but unlike B of A, Wells Fargo, or Citi (my former, evil, bank) you can actually get real customer service from a teller, talk to knowledgeable tellers in a branch, or even talk on the phone to someone who speaks and understands American English. My checking account pays dividends, there's no monthly or per-check fees, and the CU will even reimburse me for up to four ATM charges if I need to get cash from a non-CU ATM.
If you don't like outsourcing, or dealing with outsourced customer support people, don't rant in an on-line forum. Vote with your money and take your business elsewhere. Corporations don't listen to Slashdot discussion, but when enough customers leaving giving "I couldn't understand the person I talked to on the phone" they at least know there's an issue. Don't buy a Dell, don't bank with B of A. Support small, local businesses.
would have a proprietary battery that would only fit into Sony cars:-)
Seriously, compatibility has always struck me as the weak point of the battery-swap idea. You would have to get all the car manufacturers in the world to agree to a standard size, shape, connection, and electric properties. This would prevent Ford (for instance) from saying "The new Escape has a battery that lasts four times longer than the competition" and would discourage battery improvements, because when you dropped your "improved" battery at the station, who is to say if you'd get the same "improved" type in exchange?
Indeed, there's a similar problem for recharging battery-powered cars, as you'd have to have standard charging paddles. But at least you could upgrade your batteries (or the charging equipment) and keep the old charging system.
The big benefit that gas currently has (aside from high energy density) is it's a physical substance that's easily used by "common" physical interfaces. A BMW, Ford, and Renault may all have different length/shape/diameter filling tubes, but as long as it's "close enough" you can get the end of the pump nozzle into the hole.
There's definitely a place for teaching kids how to find the answers, but the current educational model sometimes focuses too much on that and leaves any instruction in actual facts completely out. (I was a teacher, so I know whereof I speak)
As an example, basic math facts (multiplication and division of single digit integers) should be memorized. If you commit 5 x 5 to memory, the next time that you come across a math problem that entails this multiplication, you won't have to "discover" that 5 x 5 = 25.
"Discovery" is the current hot fad these days, but there are some things that either aren't easily discovered, or where the process of discovery doesn't make sense.
I think it's interesting that MS sells a lot of software (Office, for example) that has less-than-great documentation, and that this is also a complaint people have with OSS. Currently there's a market for commercial documentation for both types of software--my local Borders has lots of books on both Linux and Windows Server. But eventually I expect that OSS documentation will improve to the point where it's better than what is provided in proprietary software, since there are people both willing and able to contribute to the documentation effort in OSS.
True story: I was once offered a full-time job where the owner of the company essentially told me he was looking to hire a Microsoft Office expert to provide office suite "consulting" to his staff. I didn't take it (as a technical writer, I want to actually write) but it said a lot about the state of usability and documentation for Office.
The frustration around these "studies" isn't defensiveness, it's that they're drawing conclusions based on... what? Random number pulled from a powerball machine? Paw prints their cat left on the hood of their car? Stats taken from a Diebold machine? Tea leaves in the dregs of a cuppa Earl Grey? We'll never know.
Saying that poor docs are the issue sounds correct to me (anecdotally) but there's nothing in the article to confirm this is more than FUD. The documentation issue is improving (it's still not good, or consistent, but getting better). That said, it's still easier to resolve issues by googling than by looking through TFM.
No information on how these "results" were obtained (self-reported?) or anything else that would allow people to figure out if their statistics are biased or not.
So the study wasn't funded by Microsoft? What does that tell us? If this was research done by asking Windows admins which OS they found had the greatest uptime, wouldn't you expect results along these lines? Of course, we can't know how or why these results were obtained, because the article is essentially four paragraphs saying Windows roxors, Linux is the suxor!
I'm not new here, but the hype in the article titles and the lack of content is starting to be annoying. Is it just me, or is it getting worse?
but, as far as I know, the government is not only elected by the voters, it consists entirely of citizens.
It may sound like a left-field libral statement, but working for the country isn't working for the "dirt" of the country, it's working for the people who make up the country. There are a lot of folks (at the local level in smaller cities at least) who do believe that this kind of service (serving as mayor, working for the Dept. of Building Safety) provides something useful to people. Even at the federal level, a lot of folks at least start out with the idea that they will be serving their fellow citizens. I know of a good number of vets who had that same idea about being in the military. (Though as another poster mentioned, there were also a good number in it for the GI Bill)
From your post it sounds like you don't believe that there can ever be a justification for war. I suppose you'd deny it was worth fighting to prevent another 6 million Jews killed in the 40s? Peace in our time, right Neville? Or perhaps that when England invaded the US in 1814 we should have let them burn the entire country, rather than just Washington DC?
There are a lot of people who believe that it's possible to serve their fellow citizens by serving in the military (But probably not a lot reading slashdot, oh the horror of such a politically incorrect thought! Close your minds now, slashdotters). Whether those people serving in that way agree with a particular political decision that our duly elected leaders make is another issue entirely. Confusing the two (as you do) is nonsensical.
that most folks who go in the military don't do it to "serve an inept institution" or to serve an insitiution of any kind. Those who are serving for ideological reasons (even if "patriotism" only plays a small part in the decision) believe they're serving the country as a whole and the ideals it stands for. That's why we say "serving our country" not "serving the military."
Everyone who has been in the service knows that there are always a few idiots up in the higher levels of the chain of command. Also that the civilian employees of the DoD aren't always interested in looking out for the interests of the military personnel that they are supposed to be serving. Dealing with the civilian DoD folks was a constant frustration during my time at Fort Bragg. Not that those folks are all bad, but the service they gave me when I was in the 82nd was second only to the service I get from the DMV -- surly and uncooperative.
When they were trying to sell chips with a lower clock speed as equivalent to Intel chips with higher clock speeds. So, for instance, AMD claimed the 2800 was as fast as a Pentium running at 2.8 GHz. (Whether the claims were true or not is a different issue). Now Intel has a problem, because the clock speeds are less important on a dual-core chip. Or rather than less important, say not equivalent to a single-core chip.
If there were a way to claim duos had processor speed x 2 as their clock speed, Intel would do it and the chips would sell. They could be selling Pentium IV chips running at 4.8 GHz and a lot of people would be saying "Whoa, that's one fast CPU" because the number would be a straightforward comparison to older chips. Unfortunately for Intel, it's more complicated than speed x 2 and consumers are confused.
Apparently, the competing systems require different lasers (or perhaps it's different read/write heads?) so a "combo" drive would require two lasers and licensing fees to both groups, making it almost as expensive as buying two separate drives. With standard DVD it was easier to make combos, because it was merely a format difference, not a hardware difference.
Where the lunar tunnels had neutral buoyancy balloons in them that were partially filled with a hole-plugging goo. The suction from a breach drew the balloon to the hole, where it was burst by being forced through the hole by the pressure differential. The goo (and balloon material) formed a temporary patch
Doesn't matter if you're in IT or going to be a consumer of IT services. The ability to perform an analysis, apply logical problem-solving steps, and then adjust behavior based on the outcome is key. If you're in IT, it's key because helpdesk jobs where you read the on-screen prompts don't have a future. If you're an IT service consumer, it will help you provide an intelligent description of the problem and what steps you taken to resolve it, making your experience with IT much more pleasant.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me guess, one wing is red, one blue, one green, and one yellow, and each wing has a tiny spot that looks strangely like the letters "m" and "s"
Let's face it, there's a very simple, logical explanation for the failure of the EV-1 and GM's unwillingness to support it: the cars couldn't be sold for the amount of money it took to build them. EV-1s were heavily subsidized by GM as part of an R&D and PR program. I remember reading at the time they were introduced that the actual cost of the vehicle was almost twice what GM was selling it for, and GM could hardly move any, even at half cost. Add to that their extremely limited range and the short life-cycle of their last-generation batteries, and it's no wonder they died a quiet death.
I have heard that the Smithsonian has about four times more material to display than they have room for displaying. Removing this particular item, whose main interest was as a counterexample of how not to build an electric car, isn't some evil plot of our hybrid car-selling overlords.
You can take off your tinfoil hats now.
as the LED lamps essentially do not need to be replaced. Incandescent lamps not only use more electricity, they have a much shorter life. The city will be saving $1200 a year in electricity, plus the cost of replacing the lamps every couple of years.
I am really pleased to see these taking off--better for the environment on two fronts (longer life, lower power consumption) and nifty tech that I used to fiddle around with as a kid. Anyone else remember the books you could get at Radio Shack that had electronic projects to build? Man, I loved building LED displays.
in their attempt to break into the on-line payments business?
I recently (re)opened an account to buy a pinball machine on eBay (Stern Stars, a cool old machine), but it is only tied to my credit card. I'm very familiar (through personal experience) with PayPal's inability to handle fraud (the reason I closed my original, bank-linked account) and their lose-lose-win schemes (on a contested purchase, the buyer loses their money, the seller loses the item, and PayPal gets the big win by keeping any contested funds). I would probably have closed the account again, but my wife wanted to purchase some baby periphenalia from a home-based business that only accepts checks or PayPal. I'm thinking this article is areminder to close my PayPal account.
Frankly, I will be very, very happy once Google's tool is available and I have a viable on-line payments alternative to PayPal.
Is it "whacky article title day"?
First "Using jet engines to cool servers" and now "A New Search for Spock", ummmm... I mean, "A New Hope for Myspace", ahhh, that is "Searching for Bobby..." eh, nevermind.
Sheesh, Zonk -- could we at least take, say, three seconds to think before writing the article title. How about "Using jet engine technology..." instead of "Using jet engines..."
_ things_work/default.jsp) sucking JP4 and blowing 1000's of cubic feet per second of very hot air into the server room here at work.
Little clue: Jet exhaust is... well, let's just call it "a little warm for cooling a server" and leave it at that. The article title gave me this picture of a Rolls jet engine (http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/how
Oh the humanity!
and that's a good thing.
The barrier to entry in search is moderately high (you have to be able to afford the hardware to do your indexing) but there will always be people willing to invest in search. It's easily monetized (love that word, eh?), there's no cost for users to switch to new competitive product, and there's no magic bullet that gives you both accurate results and the ability to weed out aggregators and shady SEOs. As long as developers can come up with new search algorithms that give better results, there's the chance that the "next Google" could be launched.
I like and use Google, but that's because the results are usually valuable to me and the ads are minimally intrusive. Currently, the one issue I have is Google's inability to prevent aggregators from showing up in search results. I've never found anything useful through aggregator pages, and I'd like Google to filter them out.
Anyway, the ability of new companies to explore search is something that's good for SE users. New search startups can be launched and attempt to improve search. Google is forced to innovate. Where's the downside?
Is that you?
While the things you describe (consumerism, living for the future, etc) may happen to some in Western cultures, it's by no means universal. Neither I nor most of my friends live this kind of life, and while there are certainly a lot of Americans living the unexamined life, there are certainly plenty who do not.
In any event, most of your vaunted cultures pursuing "Eastern philosophy" have succumbed to the lure of the chance to escape living short lives in dirty hovels with unclean drinking water and no hope of leisure time. Whatever else you may say about Western civ, the technological progress it has enabled has pushed the standard of living higher in much of the world, and stands poised to help out the rest of the world too. Neither technology nor economics is a zero-sum game.
which people have attempted to implement again and again with tyrannical results must be flawed on some basic level. Saying "That's not what he meant" when the outcome of attempts to apply his philosophy are consistently dehumanizing is meaningless. IMO, marxists are insane by the old definition: They keep trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Not that there would be anything wrong with Marx's ideas in a perfect world, he just failed to take into account the world that we really live in.
Unfortunately for radicals on both sides (Marxists and Capitalists) the only workable solution in a world populated by flawed humans is a balance between the "100% free market with no government controls" and "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" points of view. Those of us who are rational realize that a system based on greed must be regulated since enlightened self interest isn't a sufficient control for everyone, and that a system that fails to reward based on merit inevitably leads to stagnation.
As with most things in life, there are shades of grey here.
It's not directly related to IT outsourcing, but I wonder why people even use these big banks?
My financial institution will never outsource their workers, because I do my banking with a four-branch Credit Union (SFCU). Deposits are insured by the FDIC, but unlike B of A, Wells Fargo, or Citi (my former, evil, bank) you can actually get real customer service from a teller, talk to knowledgeable tellers in a branch, or even talk on the phone to someone who speaks and understands American English. My checking account pays dividends, there's no monthly or per-check fees, and the CU will even reimburse me for up to four ATM charges if I need to get cash from a non-CU ATM.
If you don't like outsourcing, or dealing with outsourced customer support people, don't rant in an on-line forum. Vote with your money and take your business elsewhere. Corporations don't listen to Slashdot discussion, but when enough customers leaving giving "I couldn't understand the person I talked to on the phone" they at least know there's an issue. Don't buy a Dell, don't bank with B of A. Support small, local businesses.
would have a proprietary battery that would only fit into Sony cars :-)
Seriously, compatibility has always struck me as the weak point of the battery-swap idea. You would have to get all the car manufacturers in the world to agree to a standard size, shape, connection, and electric properties. This would prevent Ford (for instance) from saying "The new Escape has a battery that lasts four times longer than the competition" and would discourage battery improvements, because when you dropped your "improved" battery at the station, who is to say if you'd get the same "improved" type in exchange?
Indeed, there's a similar problem for recharging battery-powered cars, as you'd have to have standard charging paddles. But at least you could upgrade your batteries (or the charging equipment) and keep the old charging system.
The big benefit that gas currently has (aside from high energy density) is it's a physical substance that's easily used by "common" physical interfaces. A BMW, Ford, and Renault may all have different length/shape/diameter filling tubes, but as long as it's "close enough" you can get the end of the pump nozzle into the hole.
There's definitely a place for teaching kids how to find the answers, but the current educational model sometimes focuses too much on that and leaves any instruction in actual facts completely out. (I was a teacher, so I know whereof I speak)
As an example, basic math facts (multiplication and division of single digit integers) should be memorized. If you commit 5 x 5 to memory, the next time that you come across a math problem that entails this multiplication, you won't have to "discover" that 5 x 5 = 25.
"Discovery" is the current hot fad these days, but there are some things that either aren't easily discovered, or where the process of discovery doesn't make sense.
Can't get enough Laura Croft?
Google is where we all go for answers these days.
I think it's interesting that MS sells a lot of software (Office, for example) that has less-than-great documentation, and that this is also a complaint people have with OSS. Currently there's a market for commercial documentation for both types of software--my local Borders has lots of books on both Linux and Windows Server. But eventually I expect that OSS documentation will improve to the point where it's better than what is provided in proprietary software, since there are people both willing and able to contribute to the documentation effort in OSS.
True story: I was once offered a full-time job where the owner of the company essentially told me he was looking to hire a Microsoft Office expert to provide office suite "consulting" to his staff. I didn't take it (as a technical writer, I want to actually write) but it said a lot about the state of usability and documentation for Office.
That's not a formula that computes :-)
The frustration around these "studies" isn't defensiveness, it's that they're drawing conclusions based on... what? Random number pulled from a powerball machine? Paw prints their cat left on the hood of their car? Stats taken from a Diebold machine? Tea leaves in the dregs of a cuppa Earl Grey? We'll never know.
Saying that poor docs are the issue sounds correct to me (anecdotally) but there's nothing in the article to confirm this is more than FUD. The documentation issue is improving (it's still not good, or consistent, but getting better). That said, it's still easier to resolve issues by googling than by looking through TFM.
No information on how these "results" were obtained (self-reported?) or anything else that would allow people to figure out if their statistics are biased or not.
So the study wasn't funded by Microsoft? What does that tell us? If this was research done by asking Windows admins which OS they found had the greatest uptime, wouldn't you expect results along these lines? Of course, we can't know how or why these results were obtained, because the article is essentially four paragraphs saying Windows roxors, Linux is the suxor!
I'm not new here, but the hype in the article titles and the lack of content is starting to be annoying. Is it just me, or is it getting worse?
but, as far as I know, the government is not only elected by the voters, it consists entirely of citizens.
It may sound like a left-field libral statement, but working for the country isn't working for the "dirt" of the country, it's working for the people who make up the country. There are a lot of folks (at the local level in smaller cities at least) who do believe that this kind of service (serving as mayor, working for the Dept. of Building Safety) provides something useful to people. Even at the federal level, a lot of folks at least start out with the idea that they will be serving their fellow citizens. I know of a good number of vets who had that same idea about being in the military. (Though as another poster mentioned, there were also a good number in it for the GI Bill)
From your post it sounds like you don't believe that there can ever be a justification for war. I suppose you'd deny it was worth fighting to prevent another 6 million Jews killed in the 40s? Peace in our time, right Neville? Or perhaps that when England invaded the US in 1814 we should have let them burn the entire country, rather than just Washington DC?
There are a lot of people who believe that it's possible to serve their fellow citizens by serving in the military (But probably not a lot reading slashdot, oh the horror of such a politically incorrect thought! Close your minds now, slashdotters). Whether those people serving in that way agree with a particular political decision that our duly elected leaders make is another issue entirely. Confusing the two (as you do) is nonsensical.
that most folks who go in the military don't do it to "serve an inept institution" or to serve an insitiution of any kind. Those who are serving for ideological reasons (even if "patriotism" only plays a small part in the decision) believe they're serving the country as a whole and the ideals it stands for. That's why we say "serving our country" not "serving the military."
Everyone who has been in the service knows that there are always a few idiots up in the higher levels of the chain of command. Also that the civilian employees of the DoD aren't always interested in looking out for the interests of the military personnel that they are supposed to be serving. Dealing with the civilian DoD folks was a constant frustration during my time at Fort Bragg. Not that those folks are all bad, but the service they gave me when I was in the 82nd was second only to the service I get from the DMV -- surly and uncooperative.
When they were trying to sell chips with a lower clock speed as equivalent to Intel chips with higher clock speeds. So, for instance, AMD claimed the 2800 was as fast as a Pentium running at 2.8 GHz. (Whether the claims were true or not is a different issue). Now Intel has a problem, because the clock speeds are less important on a dual-core chip. Or rather than less important, say not equivalent to a single-core chip.
If there were a way to claim duos had processor speed x 2 as their clock speed, Intel would do it and the chips would sell. They could be selling Pentium IV chips running at 4.8 GHz and a lot of people would be saying "Whoa, that's one fast CPU" because the number would be a straightforward comparison to older chips. Unfortunately for Intel, it's more complicated than speed x 2 and consumers are confused.
Apparently, the competing systems require different lasers (or perhaps it's different read/write heads?) so a "combo" drive would require two lasers and licensing fees to both groups, making it almost as expensive as buying two separate drives. With standard DVD it was easier to make combos, because it was merely a format difference, not a hardware difference.
Where the lunar tunnels had neutral buoyancy balloons in them that were partially filled with a hole-plugging goo. The suction from a breach drew the balloon to the hole, where it was burst by being forced through the hole by the pressure differential. The goo (and balloon material) formed a temporary patch
Inflatable model to be launched to space station?
Critical thinking.
Doesn't matter if you're in IT or going to be a consumer of IT services. The ability to perform an analysis, apply logical problem-solving steps, and then adjust behavior based on the outcome is key. If you're in IT, it's key because helpdesk jobs where you read the on-screen prompts don't have a future. If you're an IT service consumer, it will help you provide an intelligent description of the problem and what steps you taken to resolve it, making your experience with IT much more pleasant.