You know, I've been trying that "shift" thing since I had win 95, and I've gotta say, it's never worked for me. I've always had to go into settings and turn off autorun manually. (XP isn't so bad, though. It gives you a menu of auto-options, which include not auto-running anything)
Yeah, but then you don't really want the laptop, then. The "free market" plan would be to sell the OLPCs at as much of a profit as they can as well as accepting donations and use those profits (and the economies of scale from the increased volume) to fund their 3rd world profit.
Instead, they seem to have gone the PBS, "Make a donation of X size and get a fabulous tote bag" except the tote bag in question is an expensive computer (compared to a cheaply manufactured cotton bag). The $400 hundred dollar laptops are nothing more than donation trophies and won't be sold in enough volume to gain process efficiency.
Furthermore, there are plenty of families in North America for whom the expected price is an affordable computer they wouldn't otherwise have. If they could afford the "double" price, they'd already have a computer: there are plenty of capable models selling at or below that price now.
Of course, that depends on them being honest about "Buy One, Give One." Which really sounds like a scam to me. Based on their stated goals, if they really were able to produce laptops at the claimed price, they ought to sell them at that price. I suspect that what's going on here is that they can't, and they're using outside donations to cover that fact. i.e. They'll "give" a free laptop for every one bought under the program, but some of the cost of producing that laptop come from other sources.
You'd get suspicious of the Red Cross if they started charging double for the CPR program "to offer CPR classes to people who can't afford it."
I used to be in the "I just want a phone that's a phone" camp. Then the prepaid phones came out that are small, just a phone, and hella inexpensive. Finally, exactly what I wanted came around. So I paid too much to get a cool convergence phone with a camera and and mp3 player and cable to connect my computer to the internet and a chintzy gps (actually, the gps isn't half bad. Not good enough for hiking, but more than adequate for "the turn's just a little farther, we haven't missed it" type stuff). Turns out I've been a hypocrite the whole time.
I'd still whine if the small, fairly robust, inexpensive, no frills, prepaid phones didn't exist, though.
A more realistic option with cars would be to take away the foldable part and simply have car pick-up places spread throughout cities with cars able to be driven from one point to any point in America (you simply have to say how long you plan on taking it for and pay for it. There'd be a grace period and you'd also have the ability to phone ahead). Each car would be cleaned before the next person used it so if you left anything behind they'd put it aside for you. There'd also be a complimentary bus to take you to and from your home. If you drove a LOT within a typical day this would be more expensive, but for many it would turn out to be cheaper (there'd be a threshold where one hour you break even, the next its more expensive).
Have you thought about taking the bus in in the morning and riding the bike back? 30 miles isn't actually all that far for a bike (although 60 is pushing it.) That's about 2hrs at a leisurely pace if you've got safe enough roads to do it. And only an hour and some change after you get back in shape. If you just do it for the return trip, you don't have to worry about being sweaty at the office.
"Work" used to mean carrying heavy loads and driving things into the earth with hammers and stuff. And to some, it still does. But a lot of what we now refer to as "work" really isn't. Sitting at an air-conditioned desk, typing away may be stressful, but to call it "work" is an insult to people who've really had to labor in dangerous conditions.
The reality is that we're at the point *now* where only about 3% of the population has to work to meet our needs. The rest is about figuring out how best to distribute the fruits of their labors.
That's about $90k in salary (on average) not counting benefits and employment taxes.
Seems like the machine is an investment with ~5% return. Better than inflation, but possibly not better than the loan you'd use to purchase it. Also, if it only replaces the temps, it's even less of a return.
At those prices, I don't think I'd have rejected the system outright. I'd really need to do the further investigation to see if it's worth it, and the first price quoted isn't necessarily the price you'd pay after negotiation.
Not necessarily. As long as you're envisioning impossible tech, imagine "anti-ballast", the opposite of a weight (but instead of lighter than air gas like dirigibles, roughly the same size as lead weights would be). Build the frame out of the stuff.
Then you only need the engine for anti-anti-gravity, and a mooring so you don't have to leave the engine running to pick up your groceries. Then if it fails, you just float up to the equilibrium altitude and await rescue.
It's a good goal to increase competition for utility-like entities like cable and telephone, but why do the attempts always involve increasing regulation.
I suggest that the greatest barrier to entry for cable competitors isn't the programming, OR the copper, but the land. Everyone who wants to lay copper or glass has to go through miles of red tape just to get the rights of way, but this is silly. Where rights of way have already been granted, it makes sense to simply open that up: Pick a number of additional parallel lines that won't be too unsightly, and auction off the extra rights of way. Obviously, they would have lease-lengths, and no minimum bid, and the existing telcos would be barred from the first round of bidding on the additional cross-sectional area.
The point is that if you want competition, you're never going to have it as long as the "competition" has to buy or lease its capacity from the entrenched company they're trying to compete with.
What kind of doctor? Many Astronauts are Ph.D.s. They're real doctors who advance human knowledge. Not like MDs, who are basically walking massively cross-indexed databases. Admittedly, it takes almost a decade to program that database, but we're going to have to get to the point that computers can take over the tasks if we hope to survive the developing aging-baby-boomer medical needs bubble.
We meddled in Vietnam, too, and badly. But you don't see Vietnamese crashing planes into our buildings and blowing up random civilians and embassies. In fact, last I checked, we're on not-that-crappy terms with them. I doubt they'll ever love us, but they don't seem to have any problem with being one of our trading partners.
I'm curious, also, as to how we offended the Barbary Pirates to make them capture our cargoes and ransom or impress our sailors.
That will never give you coherent results, as information is lost in both steps.
That's the point. If what you get back is understandable, then you can assume that either A) the translated text is also understandable or B) the translation method has reversible errors.
(B) is unlikely precisely because information is lost in both steps.
I don't know where you live, but in my area, the broadcasters have chosen both to offer more channels and to offer them in "stunning HD." It's about 40/30/30 betwen 1080p, 720p, and SD, and most of the SD channels are PBS. Now granted I don't know how much they're compressing that 1080p signal and I couldn't see it anyway since I'm using my receiver to drive an old, analog SD set, but the point is that they are making the HD offer.
Wait a minute, you were questioning whether bribery is wrong, then you provided an example which isn't bribery. How is providing a definition and hypothetical example of bribery equivalent to saying that Microsoft actually committed it?
That actually makes his point. The value of the game is the stress or boredom it relieves. A major failing of MMOs is that they have boring time sinks which are required to alleviate the stress of not having good enough equipment. People paid your friend to get solve a problem with getting what they actually wanted from the game: relief of stress and boredom.
No, but your victim doesn't personally control other people's money as well. If they give the Nigerian Government a rebate or gift to convince them to buy windows, that's not bribery. If they give a key Nigerian official gifts or rebates to convince them to exercise the Nigerian government's authority to buy windows, that's a bribe.
Not only is it unethical, it's also less costly. You can see how much cheaper it is to influence one person than to influence an entire country. 1% discount might not seem like much, but if 1% of the cost of 100,000 PCs were directed to a single person...
You can do better than that. You can convert it at 500% "efficiency" with a heat pump. Note that there has to be heat to pump, and the maximum coefficient of performance you can expect drops as your desired temperature difference increases.
Standby power-heating is almost always less "efficient" than your main heating system, when you consider the energy used to ship it. The heating per dollar metric is a pretty good proxy for this. Only in the case that you use electric resistance heating* is standby heating equally effective at converting volt-amp-hours to joules although it does something (however marginally so) useful in the process.
*but then you'd have a multiple zone system (as in, each room is a separate zone, even the bathrooms and hallways), and the standby devices won't all conveniently be in the room you actually want warm.
Or better still, send wormhole mouths out at 99.99999% of the speed of light (maybe possible within the laws of physics : it all depends on whether "dark energy" can be generated) and establish instantaneous links with the rest of the universe.
I've always wondered about that wormhole paradox. Seems to me that even if you could generate the "exotic matter" needed to maintain the wormhole, moving the ends around would require vastly more energy than you would expect based on raising the support structure out of a gravity well.
Re:Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak
on
Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 1
You'd figure we'd have found something by now.
Not if you'd read anything they'd actually written on the subject. To detect earth-like omnidirectional radio not specifically intended for interstellar communication in any reasonable sphere requires receiving equipment a few orders of magnitude more sensitive than is currently accessible to the SETI project. There is no substitute for area.
So they're not really looking for that. The current phase could well be described as learning how to look and it's certainly interesting for more reasons that just cosmology.
It's not completely hopeless, however. They do have equipment sensitive enough to detect a highly directional, very high power signal directed at us by some other civilization. A power level and directionality that would still be difficult for us, at our currently level of power consumption, to produce. But if an ET civilization were actively sending a beacon to candidate stars as part of their SETI program, we could detect that.
Obviously, if the number of ET civilizations is small, the number of them with sufficiently high energy-use and inclination to send invitations is even smaller. But if it's non-zero, it'd be of monumental importance.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I've been trying that "shift" thing since I had win 95, and I've gotta say, it's never worked for me. I've always had to go into settings and turn off autorun manually. (XP isn't so bad, though. It gives you a menu of auto-options, which include not auto-running anything)
Obviously, he's management. Notice how he thinks that "closed" means "off."
Yeah, but then you don't really want the laptop, then. The "free market" plan would be to sell the OLPCs at as much of a profit as they can as well as accepting donations and use those profits (and the economies of scale from the increased volume) to fund their 3rd world profit.
Instead, they seem to have gone the PBS, "Make a donation of X size and get a fabulous tote bag" except the tote bag in question is an expensive computer (compared to a cheaply manufactured cotton bag). The $400 hundred dollar laptops are nothing more than donation trophies and won't be sold in enough volume to gain process efficiency.
Furthermore, there are plenty of families in North America for whom the expected price is an affordable computer they wouldn't otherwise have. If they could afford the "double" price, they'd already have a computer: there are plenty of capable models selling at or below that price now.
Of course, that depends on them being honest about "Buy One, Give One." Which really sounds like a scam to me. Based on their stated goals, if they really were able to produce laptops at the claimed price, they ought to sell them at that price. I suspect that what's going on here is that they can't, and they're using outside donations to cover that fact. i.e. They'll "give" a free laptop for every one bought under the program, but some of the cost of producing that laptop come from other sources.
You'd get suspicious of the Red Cross if they started charging double for the CPR program "to offer CPR classes to people who can't afford it."
I used to be in the "I just want a phone that's a phone" camp. Then the prepaid phones came out that are small, just a phone, and hella inexpensive. Finally, exactly what I wanted came around. So I paid too much to get a cool convergence phone with a camera and and mp3 player and cable to connect my computer to the internet and a chintzy gps (actually, the gps isn't half bad. Not good enough for hiking, but more than adequate for "the turn's just a little farther, we haven't missed it" type stuff). Turns out I've been a hypocrite the whole time.
I'd still whine if the small, fairly robust, inexpensive, no frills, prepaid phones didn't exist, though.
Wait.. are you saying that the Nuremberg convicts were right to follow the orders they did?
You mean, like Hertz? Did I miss a joke?
Have you thought about taking the bus in in the morning and riding the bike back? 30 miles isn't actually all that far for a bike (although 60 is pushing it.) That's about 2hrs at a leisurely pace if you've got safe enough roads to do it. And only an hour and some change after you get back in shape. If you just do it for the return trip, you don't have to worry about being sweaty at the office.
"Work" used to mean carrying heavy loads and driving things into the earth with hammers and stuff. And to some, it still does. But a lot of what we now refer to as "work" really isn't. Sitting at an air-conditioned desk, typing away may be stressful, but to call it "work" is an insult to people who've really had to labor in dangerous conditions.
The reality is that we're at the point *now* where only about 3% of the population has to work to meet our needs. The rest is about figuring out how best to distribute the fruits of their labors.
1 guy-year plus 6 men * 2 months = 2 man-years.
That's about $90k in salary (on average) not counting benefits and employment taxes.
Seems like the machine is an investment with ~5% return. Better than inflation, but possibly not better than the loan you'd use to purchase it. Also, if it only replaces the temps, it's even less of a return.
At those prices, I don't think I'd have rejected the system outright. I'd really need to do the further investigation to see if it's worth it, and the first price quoted isn't necessarily the price you'd pay after negotiation.
Not necessarily. As long as you're envisioning impossible tech, imagine "anti-ballast", the opposite of a weight (but instead of lighter than air gas like dirigibles, roughly the same size as lead weights would be). Build the frame out of the stuff.
Then you only need the engine for anti-anti-gravity, and a mooring so you don't have to leave the engine running to pick up your groceries. Then if it fails, you just float up to the equilibrium altitude and await rescue.
It's a good goal to increase competition for utility-like entities like cable and telephone, but why do the attempts always involve increasing regulation.
I suggest that the greatest barrier to entry for cable competitors isn't the programming, OR the copper, but the land. Everyone who wants to lay copper or glass has to go through miles of red tape just to get the rights of way, but this is silly. Where rights of way have already been granted, it makes sense to simply open that up: Pick a number of additional parallel lines that won't be too unsightly, and auction off the extra rights of way. Obviously, they would have lease-lengths, and no minimum bid, and the existing telcos would be barred from the first round of bidding on the additional cross-sectional area.
The point is that if you want competition, you're never going to have it as long as the "competition" has to buy or lease its capacity from the entrenched company they're trying to compete with.
What kind of doctor? Many Astronauts are Ph.D.s. They're real doctors who advance human knowledge. Not like MDs, who are basically walking massively cross-indexed databases. Admittedly, it takes almost a decade to program that database, but we're going to have to get to the point that computers can take over the tasks if we hope to survive the developing aging-baby-boomer medical needs bubble.
Of course, there're also Ph.D.s in medicine...
Won't work. We couldn't carry through on that threat. Baghdad sand has too low a silica content.
Reversibility is a key component of efficient slogans.
We meddled in Vietnam, too, and badly. But you don't see Vietnamese crashing planes into our buildings and blowing up random civilians and embassies. In fact, last I checked, we're on not-that-crappy terms with them. I doubt they'll ever love us, but they don't seem to have any problem with being one of our trading partners.
I'm curious, also, as to how we offended the Barbary Pirates to make them capture our cargoes and ransom or impress our sailors.
There's definitely more to it than our meddling.
Yeah but the problem is that the monkeys tend to pick the same three keys most of the time.
That's the point. If what you get back is understandable, then you can assume that either A) the translated text is also understandable or B) the translation method has reversible errors.
(B) is unlikely precisely because information is lost in both steps.
I don't know where you live, but in my area, the broadcasters have chosen both to offer more channels and to offer them in "stunning HD." It's about 40/30/30 betwen 1080p, 720p, and SD, and most of the SD channels are PBS. Now granted I don't know how much they're compressing that 1080p signal and I couldn't see it anyway since I'm using my receiver to drive an old, analog SD set, but the point is that they are making the HD offer.
Wait a minute, you were questioning whether bribery is wrong, then you provided an example which isn't bribery. How is providing a definition and hypothetical example of bribery equivalent to saying that Microsoft actually committed it?
That actually makes his point. The value of the game is the stress or boredom it relieves. A major failing of MMOs is that they have boring time sinks which are required to alleviate the stress of not having good enough equipment. People paid your friend to get solve a problem with getting what they actually wanted from the game: relief of stress and boredom.
No, but your victim doesn't personally control other people's money as well. If they give the Nigerian Government a rebate or gift to convince them to buy windows, that's not bribery. If they give a key Nigerian official gifts or rebates to convince them to exercise the Nigerian government's authority to buy windows, that's a bribe.
Not only is it unethical, it's also less costly. You can see how much cheaper it is to influence one person than to influence an entire country. 1% discount might not seem like much, but if 1% of the cost of 100,000 PCs were directed to a single person...
Who are you, The Sphinx?
You can do better than that. You can convert it at 500% "efficiency" with a heat pump. Note that there has to be heat to pump, and the maximum coefficient of performance you can expect drops as your desired temperature difference increases.
Standby power-heating is almost always less "efficient" than your main heating system, when you consider the energy used to ship it. The heating per dollar metric is a pretty good proxy for this. Only in the case that you use electric resistance heating* is standby heating equally effective at converting volt-amp-hours to joules although it does something (however marginally so) useful in the process.
*but then you'd have a multiple zone system (as in, each room is a separate zone, even the bathrooms and hallways), and the standby devices won't all conveniently be in the room you actually want warm.
I've always wondered about that wormhole paradox. Seems to me that even if you could generate the "exotic matter" needed to maintain the wormhole, moving the ends around would require vastly more energy than you would expect based on raising the support structure out of a gravity well.
So they're not really looking for that. The current phase could well be described as learning how to look and it's certainly interesting for more reasons that just cosmology.
It's not completely hopeless, however. They do have equipment sensitive enough to detect a highly directional, very high power signal directed at us by some other civilization. A power level and directionality that would still be difficult for us, at our currently level of power consumption, to produce. But if an ET civilization were actively sending a beacon to candidate stars as part of their SETI program, we could detect that.
Obviously, if the number of ET civilizations is small, the number of them with sufficiently high energy-use and inclination to send invitations is even smaller. But if it's non-zero, it'd be of monumental importance.