They're faster than boats, pretty much as fast as trains and much more fun than either. For a reasonably short trip (500 miles or less) they'd be great. I wouldn't want to cross the Atlantic in one, but flying around Europe would be cool..
Not sure how efficient these would be for cargo transport, however they are extremely efficient at sending hundreds of tourists plunging to a spectacular death.
Why is there an assumption that inflation-adjusted wages must rise, either in general (chart in parent) or in IT (article)? For an individual employee, sure, they should rise over time as they gain more experience. But for the population as a whole I'd expect it to stay constant; as employees get older they earn more, but some retire, and they are replaced by inexperienced workers just starting their careers, earning much less. Since the average experience of the workforce is remaining the same, why shouldn't the average wage remain the same?
What this seems to indicate more is that the supply and demand in the job market are fairly stable - thus wages are neither going up nor down.
Except in a recession a country's economy grows. In the last thirty years there have not been many quarters with no growth. If the overall economy grows you would expect everyone's wealth/salary to be growing too. Whereas, in fact, it just goes to making the rich richer, in broad terms.
Private Property = resources that are dedicated to an individual.
If your economic model does not allow dedicated resources then it will fail.
It is not necessarily a pure black and white (free market versus communism) issue.
I have to have shelter, clothing, food and water to live. It's irrelevant to me whether I "own" these things or get given them as part of a communal share out. If I want a luxury hand made silk suit instead of the standard cotton overalls, or a Ferrari instead of a bicycle, that's a question of how non-essential resources are allocated. There just doesn't seem any reason why a few very rich people should have the choice of anything/everything they want.
It's the way the resources are allocated that puzzles me.
It's a constantly changing process and it is a process that in general is getting better. Greed though is an ever present problem.
It used to be getting better, but for the last thirty years or so the vested power interests have been doing a pretty good job of reversing that progress.
Without going into the legal specifics, anyone who enters your home without your permission can be legally shot (or taken out with any other weapon of choice). This includes someone wandering in through an unlocked door
Yes, because simple trespass deserves capital punishment. They should bring back hanging for stealing a loaf of bread.
Precisely. that is the notion of 'security theatre' Where u have the 'feeling' of security, but no real security.
No, that's simply not true. The reason you have a feeling of security is because as a normal person you actually are pretty secure in most civilised countries.
You're not going to be secure against a Navy SEAL team landing in helicopters, blowing your roof off and shooting you dead when you try to resist, but that really doesn't matter if you're not a terrorist or major criminal.
But a simple lock only prevents access to honest people or to those without the time or desire to enter. (These days, that is a very small segment of the popluation.)
That is paranoid bullshit. The vast majority of people are not criminals or psychopaths and will respect other people and their property quite happily.
I think every particle could represent a bit and you could have about 8 at a time and you would get a byte of data sent. Then just time it like clockworks to sent a long string of data. It is instantaneous not just secure.
That's right, and none of those dumb old scientists ever thought of this until you posted here. By Christ they must be kicking themselves now for overlooking something so beautifully simple!
Couldn't quantum teleportation (paralell with some form of classical communication like the internet) be used as an uneavesdroppable communication channel?
Get a headset for the mobile - the kind with a plug not that bluetooth stuff. Works great for long phone calls.
Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat. The only exception is people like receptionists or call centre employees, who have no choice.
I type a few emails on my tablet, not extensive word processing, spreadsheets, or writing code. I watch digital copies of movies that I get when I buy the Blu Ray. I don't care about 99% of the software ever written. I've never had to spend money on stuff, I just don't bother. I easily get my 10 hours of battery life as advertised. And I've never found myself needing either a USB flash drive or to print from it. These just aren't things I do with that device -- I have access to lots of other computers for that stuff.
But that's the whole point. Most people don't have lots of other computers. They want one machine to do everything, and neither netbooks nor tablets can do that.
I don't think anyone's saying that tablets don't have their uses, just that they are not the whole answer.
There's still a lot of film/TV stuff that's available on DVD but not via online streaming, at least legally.
We don't use the word "legally" here.
Copyright infringement!=theft. Theft is a crime. Anything that is a crime is illegal. Therefore you are accusing downloaders of being the same as serial child killers. Therefore you are a RAFIAA shill.
I just hate it taking up space and reminding me of 90's technology that no longer serves a useful purpose (DVDs? If you're watching recent movies, they're BluRays anyway).
We don't have a BluRay player in our house, and we do have lots of old DVDs that the kids still watch. Just because something is not cool and trendy doesn't mean that it's an obsolete technology.
You may just download new games from BitTorrent, Steam or whatever, but I still have a lot of old games on CDs/DVDs, for instance, not to mention old backups.
You don't need a DVD drive on your tablet, but that is only because you have a DVD drive on at least one of your other computers.
what the fuck is a DVD drive? I remember old, slow, failure prone round plasticky things but the last time i had a need for one in ANY computing related task was probably more than 5 years ago
People have software and data on CDs/DVDs still, plus us oldsters still have DVD movies.
I know it's cool to have everything streamed from the cloud, but we don't all have high speed broadband and no legacy discs we want to access.
Also, at work, things like Office and accounting packages still come on physical media.
The reason that people are asking for iPad versions of software is that they have reached the tipping point where they use their iPad more than any other device. Instead of using the iPad for just a few things they now use it for *most* things, and they really want to be rid of Windows forever.
Most people don't give a shit about Windows one way or another, it's only geeks who hate Microsoft. If youcan use an iPad for all of your computing needs, fine go ahead. Just remember it's not a holy war for most people.
If you can't use apps with fingers... They will die.
If only it were the apps you have to use with fingers that would die. I fucking loathe touchscreens, swiping, pinching and all the rest. It's clumsy, inaccurate, unhygienic and generally annoying.
December 21, 2012 the date of first contact! Seriously, what will we do when/if this happens? Will it mean a paradigm shift for humanity or the implosion?
It probably depends on how tasty the aliens find us.
Two centuries ago I'm sure someone said, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going faster than 35 miles an hour." Barely a century ago they were saying, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going to fly." Half a century ago they said, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going to have a computer in their home." Physics changes bitches, get over it.
This is the classic space nutter argument:
All we have to do is discover how to travel faster than light/tap into unlimited quantities of energy, and we can start to colonise the stars!
Slashdot Mirror
At 120 knots, they're not fast
They're faster than boats, pretty much as fast as trains and much more fun than either. For a reasonably short trip (500 miles or less) they'd be great. I wouldn't want to cross the Atlantic in one, but flying around Europe would be cool..
Not sure how efficient these would be for cargo transport, however they are extremely efficient at sending hundreds of tourists plunging to a spectacular death.
You're almost saying that like it's a bad thing.
Why is there an assumption that inflation-adjusted wages must rise, either in general (chart in parent) or in IT (article)? For an individual employee, sure, they should rise over time as they gain more experience. But for the population as a whole I'd expect it to stay constant; as employees get older they earn more, but some retire, and they are replaced by inexperienced workers just starting their careers, earning much less. Since the average experience of the workforce is remaining the same, why shouldn't the average wage remain the same?
What this seems to indicate more is that the supply and demand in the job market are fairly stable - thus wages are neither going up nor down.
Except in a recession a country's economy grows. In the last thirty years there have not been many quarters with no growth. If the overall economy grows you would expect everyone's wealth/salary to be growing too. Whereas, in fact, it just goes to making the rich richer, in broad terms.
And a moat. Filled with sharks. Burglars fucking hate shark-filled moats.
Private Property = resources that are dedicated to an individual.
If your economic model does not allow dedicated resources then it will fail.
It is not necessarily a pure black and white (free market versus communism) issue.
I have to have shelter, clothing, food and water to live. It's irrelevant to me whether I "own" these things or get given them as part of a communal share out. If I want a luxury hand made silk suit instead of the standard cotton overalls, or a Ferrari instead of a bicycle, that's a question of how non-essential resources are allocated. There just doesn't seem any reason why a few very rich people should have the choice of anything/everything they want.
It's the way the resources are allocated that puzzles me.
It's a constantly changing process and it is a process that in general is getting better. Greed though is an ever present problem.
It used to be getting better, but for the last thirty years or so the vested power interests have been doing a pretty good job of reversing that progress.
You advocating communism?
For all important things, why not?
Without going into the legal specifics, anyone who enters your home without your permission can be legally shot (or taken out with any other weapon of choice). This includes someone wandering in through an unlocked door
Yes, because simple trespass deserves capital punishment. They should bring back hanging for stealing a loaf of bread.
In other news, burglars armed with enough plastic explosive can probably blow your whole apartment complex up.
Precisely. that is the notion of 'security theatre' Where u have the 'feeling' of security, but no real security.
No, that's simply not true. The reason you have a feeling of security is because as a normal person you actually are pretty secure in most civilised countries.
You're not going to be secure against a Navy SEAL team landing in helicopters, blowing your roof off and shooting you dead when you try to resist, but that really doesn't matter if you're not a terrorist or major criminal.
But a simple lock only prevents access to honest people or to those without the time or desire to enter. (These days, that is a very small segment of the popluation.)
That is paranoid bullshit. The vast majority of people are not criminals or psychopaths and will respect other people and their property quite happily.
the reader should be open top open with great east
Please.
I think every particle could represent a bit and you could have about 8 at a time and you would get a byte of data sent. Then just time it like clockworks to sent a long string of data. It is instantaneous not just secure.
That's right, and none of those dumb old scientists ever thought of this until you posted here. By Christ they must be kicking themselves now for overlooking something so beautifully simple!
Couldn't quantum teleportation (paralell with some form of classical communication like the internet) be used as an uneavesdroppable communication channel?
Yes. Or no.
I'm quite the quantum guru today.
Get a headset for the mobile - the kind with a plug not that bluetooth stuff. Works great for long phone calls.
Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat. The only exception is people like receptionists or call centre employees, who have no choice.
I type a few emails on my tablet, not extensive word processing, spreadsheets, or writing code. I watch digital copies of movies that I get when I buy the Blu Ray. I don't care about 99% of the software ever written. I've never had to spend money on stuff, I just don't bother. I easily get my 10 hours of battery life as advertised. And I've never found myself needing either a USB flash drive or to print from it. These just aren't things I do with that device -- I have access to lots of other computers for that stuff.
But that's the whole point. Most people don't have lots of other computers. They want one machine to do everything, and neither netbooks nor tablets can do that.
I don't think anyone's saying that tablets don't have their uses, just that they are not the whole answer.
There's still a lot of film/TV stuff that's available on DVD but not via online streaming, at least legally.
We don't use the word "legally" here.
Copyright infringement!=theft. Theft is a crime. Anything that is a crime is illegal. Therefore you are accusing downloaders of being the same as serial child killers. Therefore you are a RAFIAA shill.
Something like that.
I just hate it taking up space and reminding me of 90's technology that no longer serves a useful purpose (DVDs? If you're watching recent movies, they're BluRays anyway).
We don't have a BluRay player in our house, and we do have lots of old DVDs that the kids still watch. Just because something is not cool and trendy doesn't mean that it's an obsolete technology.
You may just download new games from BitTorrent, Steam or whatever, but I still have a lot of old games on CDs/DVDs, for instance, not to mention old backups.
You don't need a DVD drive on your tablet, but that is only because you have a DVD drive on at least one of your other computers.
what the fuck is a DVD drive? I remember old, slow, failure prone round plasticky things but the last time i had a need for one in ANY computing related task was probably more than 5 years ago
People have software and data on CDs/DVDs still, plus us oldsters still have DVD movies.
I know it's cool to have everything streamed from the cloud, but we don't all have high speed broadband and no legacy discs we want to access.
Also, at work, things like Office and accounting packages still come on physical media.
We are entering the Post-PC world, where everything should interact, regardless of the manufacturer.
Yes, because my Android tablet interacts seamlessly with my wife's iPad. Oh, wait, no it doesn't at all.
The reason that people are asking for iPad versions of software is that they have reached the tipping point where they use their iPad more than any other device. Instead of using the iPad for just a few things they now use it for *most* things, and they really want to be rid of Windows forever.
Most people don't give a shit about Windows one way or another, it's only geeks who hate Microsoft. If youcan use an iPad for all of your computing needs, fine go ahead. Just remember it's not a holy war for most people.
If you can't use apps with fingers... They will die.
If only it were the apps you have to use with fingers that would die. I fucking loathe touchscreens, swiping, pinching and all the rest. It's clumsy, inaccurate, unhygienic and generally annoying.
But clearly I'm in the minority.
A planet is basically just a very large space ship with no engines.
And a human being's just a very complicated collection of cells.
December 21, 2012 the date of first contact! Seriously, what will we do when/if this happens? Will it mean a paradigm shift for humanity or the implosion?
It probably depends on how tasty the aliens find us.
Two centuries ago I'm sure someone said, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going faster than 35 miles an hour." Barely a century ago they were saying, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going to fly." Half a century ago they said, "Barring some tremendous breakthroughs in physics, no one's going to have a computer in their home." Physics changes bitches, get over it.
This is the classic space nutter argument:
All we have to do is discover how to travel faster than light/tap into unlimited quantities of energy, and we can start to colonise the stars!