You're basically right for what they have out in the US (that I know of). The thing is there are some really really nice Android tablets available here in Japan. The Galapagos tablet by Sharp is gorgeous and also has a smart phone version with a 3D display (no glasses required): http://www.sharp.co.jp/mediatablet/product/home/index.html . I think it's going to be released in the US, but I'm not sure. As for actual performance I've tried out both the iPad and the Galapagos and I personally found the Galapagos much more appealing.
Well, according to Google translate:
Enjoy the magazine spread, "10.8-inch wide screen"
Images can be clearly legible letters show,
"High-definition HD LCD (1,366 × 800) " with
microSDHC Memory Card (sample): 8GB × 1 included
Nice screen resolution, not entirely sure what the 'magazine spread' is about, cost is about $665 USD. Doesn't say much else.
I'm 57 and I remember when documentation included the source code of the OS and schematics. None of the 'restore CD' nonsense. We had to type the damned stuff in. Tech support? That's what your soldering iron was for.
But it's late and the nurse tells me it's time for my afternoon meds so I don't get all crochety and weird. But, if you don't mind - get off my lawn.
The title says they reduced a cell TOWER to the size of a cube, then they show a picture of a guy holding a cube and say it replaces the filing cabinet behind him. Is the tower still required or no? Because I'm fairly sure than most of the cost in a cell tower is the land required by the tower and feeder trunks. If this doesn't replace either then it's pretty much worthless.
There are two parts to this: smaller, modular baseband radios that can be (somehow, magically) clumped together so you can put the electronics in a central spot and minimize the 'shack' below the antenna mast and wider frequency antennas that minimize the number of 'funny rectangular things' hanging off the mast which, as a bonus, have an integral microwave amplifier. Sounds basically like they've managed to rackmount the radios and put the microwave amplifiers up in the mast so you don't lose as much power.
Remember, cable losses at microwave frequencies is a big, big deal. I'm rather surprised that the amps haven't been mast mounted. Of course, TFA is light on useful details but it sounds like some reasonably advanced incremental engineering efforts.
Oh stop. mjwx is correct to point out that Apple, once the Reality Distortion Field has subsided a bit, isnt' much different from the others. Look at the Apple forums - just like every other hardware / software manufacturer. Bugs / mechanical problems / poor construction (I'm looking at you, stupid replacement 17" MacBook Pro battery and the funny loose screw I found inside the MBP).
I like Apple stuff, it's a bit better than the bottom of the barrel crap that Dell sells and they have done a much better job of hardware / software integration than anybody else, but they still have problems. Lots and lots of problems. Seems to go with the territory, sad as that statement is.
But the numbers speak for themselves. Even if half of them are tossed in a corner (like how many PCs / laptops / exercise machines we've seen at people's houses), the other half (of a large number) are using them. A decent uptake for a technology that has been canned and panned for literally decades.
The current iPad (and smart phones / Androids of various flavors) are vastly more powerful than anything most of us have used for the majority of our careers. And 'we' did 'work' on those underpowered puppies.
Although the 'model' can't claim copyright, they do have (at least in the US) some say in how the photograph is distributed and how the model gets reimbursed. You are in a potential legal minefield if you publish a identifiable image of someone for commercial purposes without a model release. I'm not sure how it would play out for a photograph of a recognizable human with a public domain or creative commons license, but I presume that the issues are actually separate.
As usual, it's complicated. The usual recommendation of obtaining competent legal advice certainly applies here.
Nope, I live in Alaska and, Sarah Palin notwithstanding, it's still part of the US. Although the formal recommendation is for a single dose of DTAP followed by plain ol DT, nobody does that because we can't be sure that the vaccine the person had 10 years ago was DTAP (or really anything else for that matter, thank you US Healthcare system for the scattered, inconsistent database you've created). We see lots more pertussis than tetanus so the impetus is on strongly immunizing people against the former. The data for acellular pertussis longevity in adults is weak (as always) and it's very well tolerated.
Not quite. It's included in the tetanus booster. It's called DTAP for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellular Pertussis. It has long been known that childhood pertussis vaccination loses efficacy over time, however the old 'whole cell' pertussis vaccine caused bad local reactions in adults and really wasn't tolerated. The newer vaccine is much 'cleaner' - less extraneous proteins for your immune system to have hissy fits about.
This becomes important since we've found out that adults are the biggest reservoir of the disease - it causes an annoying and irritating cough / upper respiratory infection but won't kill a healthy adult. Giving it to a 6 month old child just might kill them. So it's important that we immunize the general adult population. Probably more important that immunizing for tetanus since 3 vaccinations over a lifetime is probably enough to confer lasting immunity.
Global tourism is on the order of a trillion dollars per year. The money is there. And once you have a vehicle that can put tourists into space, it can be used for other purposes, such as putting workers or researchers into space.
Doing a quick search, I came up with a bunch of varying wild ass guestimates. Nobody was going to call it in the trillion dollar category, at least near term. Personally, I think that suborbital tourism flights would make enough money to keep them going, but purely tourism to LEO (as opposed to Moon / Mars / all sorts of neat stuff way in the future) using extent technologies (ie. no warp drive, no space elevator just stuff we can reasonably forsee using) isn't going to get you that far. There just aren't that many people with that much disposable income.
I suppose we shall see, but I rather doubt that I will be able to dock to anything resembling the space station in 2001 in my lifetime.
This is true to some extent, but fungi's point is interesting. Money spent in space is really due to three lines of business - communications satellites, monitor satellites (camera or multi mode) and whatever NASA and the Air Force are up to. Of the three areas, really only communications has a strong truly private sector. There are a couple of private imaging satellites but only a few.
SpaceX and Bigelow may be able to toss a few rich tourists into LEO but I don't see that keeping much of the space infrastructure busy - the money just isn't there.
The people that make the civilian communications satellites are the same people that make the military ones - again, it's a small, very capital and intellectual property intensive business.
So much of the posturing about the 'commercial sector' of space exploration is posturing. Mind you, it may well serve the excellent purpose of kicking the big boys out of their comfort zone and moving faster and cheaper. However, I don't see anyone but the various governments pulling off major space programs at least for the next several decades. IMHO, the best thing we can do is encourage China and India to push their programs. We do things best when we're 'scared' of something.
Sounds perfectly reasonable. A couple of high sounding, moral high ground arguments (space is for everyone), a few sops to Boeing, et. al (need for continued government support for x,y,z), a sop to NASA and the inevitable "don't mess too much with our playground, we're bigger than you".
First of all, she was a very successful office holder in Alaska. Even after being savaged by the national media, her popularity never fell below 50% when she was governor. Second, she did some pretty amazing and worthwhile things during her governorship.
If you define 'successful' as not getting arrested or indited, then yes. Otherwise, not so much. Remember, she was running against Murkowski Sr., an ancient, decrepit, arrogant fossil. She didn't do very much at all during her (brief) tenure and most of what actually was accomplished was done by her Lt. Governor, Sean Parnell (who is now the real governor). Her 'accomplishments' included selling Murkowski's jet and brokering some oil / gas legislation that will likely get overturned in the current legislative session because it has more holes than a MacPro.
At least Sarah Palin loves America and believes in American Exceptionalism. I'd rather have her as President than 0 by a factor of about 1000.
Palin loves herself and not much else. She's a classic demagogue-to-be. If you want American politicians to be shallow, vapid caracatures, then fine, that's your call, but most of us don't think she is suited for running anything much more complicated than a crayon.
I can't believe no one has mentioned the lack of politic leftness in the US anyways. There quite literally is no left wing, it's all just shades of right, rendering this whole argument completely moot.
Remember, two lefts don't make a right. But three do.
Just measure carbohydrate intake. That correlates with all of the "diseases of civilization", like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's and other chronic diseases.
Of course! It's just that simple. Why didn't anybody think of that sooner?
You need to read up on human diseases a bit more. And no, you cannot jump from rodent longevity using caloric restriction to broad brushing carbohydrates as the boogyman for western health care issues.
so robots caring for the elderly might be a funny tech article, and us techies might think of the japanese trying to get robots in all these domestic situations as laudable. but its actually the sign of a social sickness. the whole subject matter really speaks of some very serious social problems japan has, that are only going to get worse, unless japan makes some difficult choices, and soon
Only subtly different issues between the Japanese and say, the US. We both have an aging demographic. Given the entitlements both countries (and a host of others, I'm not sure anyone really has the answer) give to the elderly - and given the costs involved in taking care of the aged, we're both looking for some hurt. You can see this at any nursing home in the US. Virtually all of the careworkers are immigrants working at unsustainably low wage levels. A care attendant is never going to make a terribly healthy wage. It's above minimum wage to be sure, but there is very little room for advancement and it's essentially a physical job. As you get older, say in your late 50's or 60's it gets harder to lift and move the sedentary whales in your care.
Much has been made about how this 'service industry' is going to be the economic lifeline since we've trashed everything below Stock Market manipulator and politician, but it doesn't really work for most folks.
To put it into a more historical (as opposed to an hysterical) context - in the past (pre Medicare / Medicaid in the US), the elderly often died in poverty and it's attendant misery. You got sick and bam, you dead. Now, we take care of hugely complex chronically ill patients for decades in Medicaid / Medicare funded nursing homes. Funding for Medicaid nursing home patients is typically 30 - 50% of a state's Medicaid budget (Medicaid for those of an un USasian persuasion is a jointly state and Federal funded healthcare system for indigent / poor people. It has turned into a middle class nursing home entitlement since nobody, but nobody can afford nursing home care otherwise). In the upcoming years as budgets get stretched further, expect to see this issue played out in the US. We have a couple of options - continue funding nursing homes like we have, to the short term detriment of everyone else or change the social contract some how so we don't aggressively treat the elderly or more likely, just muddle on and make up everything as we go.
Wyden and Merkley (Senators from Oregon) both deserve praise for their efforts to put the people back in control of our government and preserve our rights. Merkley (the freshman senator) particularly has shown a strength of character that is unexpected for a first-timer.
Let's hope they stand as an example to the bought-and-paid-for corporatist weasels that currently hold the seats from many other states.
Which is ironic since Oregon is the poster child for nanny statism. You can't even pump your own gas.
Browsers are lightweight, 'easy' to program. Cheap. More or less OS independent. So that's where the impetus comes from.
But I agree, sticking everything in the stupid browser is annoyingly limited. I can't imagine Photoshop or Maya being browser based. Hell, their browser based help systems don't even work well and that's just linked text - something a browser ought to be good at.
But the vast majority of users don't go past simple stuff - where a browser UI isn't bad. And Bog knows we ought to put everything on the network so that the poor little user can't screw things up.
It's the same iOS, but some UI classes are only available on the iPad and some UI elements are slightly different on the iPad -- as they should be.
There's a clear delineation between iPhone and iPad. With android, there are 3" phones, 5" phones, 7" phones, 7" tablets. It's like being bi-sexual -- you like dick, you like vagina, you think you're doubling your options but you're really just creeping people out. Better for everyone if they decide to be a phone or a tablet and design around that.
Slashdot Mirror
You're basically right for what they have out in the US (that I know of). The thing is there are some really really nice Android tablets available here in Japan. The Galapagos tablet by Sharp is gorgeous and also has a smart phone version with a 3D display (no glasses required): http://www.sharp.co.jp/mediatablet/product/home/index.html . I think it's going to be released in the US, but I'm not sure. As for actual performance I've tried out both the iPad and the Galapagos and I personally found the Galapagos much more appealing.
Well, according to Google translate:
,
Enjoy the magazine spread, "10.8-inch wide screen"
Images can be clearly legible letters show
"High-definition HD LCD (1,366 × 800) " with
microSDHC Memory Card (sample): 8GB × 1 included
Nice screen resolution, not entirely sure what the 'magazine spread' is about, cost is about $665 USD. Doesn't say much else.
What are you, 60 years old?
I'm 57 and I remember when documentation included the source code of the OS and schematics. None of the 'restore CD' nonsense. We had to type the damned stuff in. Tech support? That's what your soldering iron was for.
But it's late and the nurse tells me it's time for my afternoon meds so I don't get all crochety and weird. But, if you don't mind - get off my lawn.
A piece of Geography rarely is.
Rosie O'Donnell begs to differ.
The title says they reduced a cell TOWER to the size of a cube, then they show a picture of a guy holding a cube and say it replaces the filing cabinet behind him. Is the tower still required or no? Because I'm fairly sure than most of the cost in a cell tower is the land required by the tower and feeder trunks. If this doesn't replace either then it's pretty much worthless.
There are two parts to this: smaller, modular baseband radios that can be (somehow, magically) clumped together so you can put the electronics in a central spot and minimize the 'shack' below the antenna mast and wider frequency antennas that minimize the number of 'funny rectangular things' hanging off the mast which, as a bonus, have an integral microwave amplifier. Sounds basically like they've managed to rackmount the radios and put the microwave amplifiers up in the mast so you don't lose as much power.
Remember, cable losses at microwave frequencies is a big, big deal. I'm rather surprised that the amps haven't been mast mounted. Of course, TFA is light on useful details but it sounds like some reasonably advanced incremental engineering efforts.
Oh stop. mjwx is correct to point out that Apple, once the Reality Distortion Field has subsided a bit, isnt' much different from the others. Look at the Apple forums - just like every other hardware / software manufacturer. Bugs / mechanical problems / poor construction (I'm looking at you, stupid replacement 17" MacBook Pro battery and the funny loose screw I found inside the MBP).
I like Apple stuff, it's a bit better than the bottom of the barrel crap that Dell sells and they have done a much better job of hardware / software integration than anybody else, but they still have problems. Lots and lots of problems. Seems to go with the territory, sad as that statement is.
But the numbers speak for themselves. Even if half of them are tossed in a corner (like how many PCs / laptops / exercise machines we've seen at people's houses), the other half (of a large number) are using them. A decent uptake for a technology that has been canned and panned for literally decades.
The current iPad (and smart phones / Androids of various flavors) are vastly more powerful than anything most of us have used for the majority of our careers. And 'we' did 'work' on those underpowered puppies.
Yeah. Put a shark fin on the top, add a laser or two and you're golden!
Clap. Clap. This all is just a smokescreen for religious indoctrination, nothing more.
Amputation seems a tad drastic, even if it is to facilitate iPad usage... Still, if it's good enough for Ranulph Fiennes...
True, although watching US 'football' often makes me think of putting bamboo shoots through my fingers.
In reality, all they need is a little conductive thread. I've done that to all my gloves for my iPhone. Works pretty well.
Although the 'model' can't claim copyright, they do have (at least in the US) some say in how the photograph is distributed and how the model gets reimbursed. You are in a potential legal minefield if you publish a identifiable image of someone for commercial purposes without a model release. I'm not sure how it would play out for a photograph of a recognizable human with a public domain or creative commons license, but I presume that the issues are actually separate.
As usual, it's complicated. The usual recommendation of obtaining competent legal advice certainly applies here.
Nope, I live in Alaska and, Sarah Palin notwithstanding, it's still part of the US. Although the formal recommendation is for a single dose of DTAP followed by plain ol DT, nobody does that because we can't be sure that the vaccine the person had 10 years ago was DTAP (or really anything else for that matter, thank you US Healthcare system for the scattered, inconsistent database you've created). We see lots more pertussis than tetanus so the impetus is on strongly immunizing people against the former. The data for acellular pertussis longevity in adults is weak (as always) and it's very well tolerated.
So roll up your sleeves and bend over.
Not quite. It's included in the tetanus booster. It's called DTAP for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellular Pertussis. It has long been known that childhood pertussis vaccination loses efficacy over time, however the old 'whole cell' pertussis vaccine caused bad local reactions in adults and really wasn't tolerated. The newer vaccine is much 'cleaner' - less extraneous proteins for your immune system to have hissy fits about.
This becomes important since we've found out that adults are the biggest reservoir of the disease - it causes an annoying and irritating cough / upper respiratory infection but won't kill a healthy adult. Giving it to a 6 month old child just might kill them. So it's important that we immunize the general adult population. Probably more important that immunizing for tetanus since 3 vaccinations over a lifetime is probably enough to confer lasting immunity.
Global tourism is on the order of a trillion dollars per year. The money is there. And once you have a vehicle that can put tourists into space, it can be used for other purposes, such as putting workers or researchers into space.
Doing a quick search, I came up with a bunch of varying wild ass guestimates. Nobody was going to call it in the trillion dollar category, at least near term. Personally, I think that suborbital tourism flights would make enough money to keep them going, but purely tourism to LEO (as opposed to Moon / Mars / all sorts of neat stuff way in the future) using extent technologies (ie. no warp drive, no space elevator just stuff we can reasonably forsee using) isn't going to get you that far. There just aren't that many people with that much disposable income.
I suppose we shall see, but I rather doubt that I will be able to dock to anything resembling the space station in 2001 in my lifetime.
This is true to some extent, but fungi's point is interesting. Money spent in space is really due to three lines of business - communications satellites, monitor satellites (camera or multi mode) and whatever NASA and the Air Force are up to. Of the three areas, really only communications has a strong truly private sector. There are a couple of private imaging satellites but only a few.
SpaceX and Bigelow may be able to toss a few rich tourists into LEO but I don't see that keeping much of the space infrastructure busy - the money just isn't there.
The people that make the civilian communications satellites are the same people that make the military ones - again, it's a small, very capital and intellectual property intensive business.
So much of the posturing about the 'commercial sector' of space exploration is posturing. Mind you, it may well serve the excellent purpose of kicking the big boys out of their comfort zone and moving faster and cheaper. However, I don't see anyone but the various governments pulling off major space programs at least for the next several decades. IMHO, the best thing we can do is encourage China and India to push their programs. We do things best when we're 'scared' of something.
Sounds perfectly reasonable. A couple of high sounding, moral high ground arguments (space is for everyone), a few sops to Boeing, et. al (need for continued government support for x,y,z), a sop to NASA and the inevitable "don't mess too much with our playground, we're bigger than you".
Now. Where's the money?
First of all, she was a very successful office holder in Alaska. Even after being savaged by the national media, her popularity never fell below 50% when she was governor. Second, she did some pretty amazing and worthwhile things during her governorship.
If you define 'successful' as not getting arrested or indited, then yes. Otherwise, not so much. Remember, she was running against Murkowski Sr., an ancient, decrepit, arrogant fossil. She didn't do very much at all during her (brief) tenure and most of what actually was accomplished was done by her Lt. Governor, Sean Parnell (who is now the real governor). Her 'accomplishments' included selling Murkowski's jet and brokering some oil / gas legislation that will likely get overturned in the current legislative session because it has more holes than a MacPro.
At least Sarah Palin loves America and believes in American Exceptionalism. I'd rather have her as President than 0 by a factor of about 1000.
Palin loves herself and not much else. She's a classic demagogue-to-be. If you want American politicians to be shallow, vapid caracatures, then fine, that's your call, but most of us don't think she is suited for running anything much more complicated than a crayon.
I can't believe no one has mentioned the lack of politic leftness in the US anyways. There quite literally is no left wing, it's all just shades of right, rendering this whole argument completely moot.
Remember, two lefts don't make a right. But three do.
Think about it.
Just measure carbohydrate intake. That correlates with all of the "diseases of civilization", like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's and other chronic diseases.
Of course! It's just that simple. Why didn't anybody think of that sooner?
You need to read up on human diseases a bit more. And no, you cannot jump from rodent longevity using caloric restriction to broad brushing carbohydrates as the boogyman for western health care issues.
Only subtly different issues between the Japanese and say, the US. We both have an aging demographic. Given the entitlements both countries (and a host of others, I'm not sure anyone really has the answer) give to the elderly - and given the costs involved in taking care of the aged, we're both looking for some hurt. You can see this at any nursing home in the US. Virtually all of the careworkers are immigrants working at unsustainably low wage levels. A care attendant is never going to make a terribly healthy wage. It's above minimum wage to be sure, but there is very little room for advancement and it's essentially a physical job. As you get older, say in your late 50's or 60's it gets harder to lift and move the sedentary whales in your care.
Much has been made about how this 'service industry' is going to be the economic lifeline since we've trashed everything below Stock Market manipulator and politician, but it doesn't really work for most folks.
To put it into a more historical (as opposed to an hysterical) context - in the past (pre Medicare / Medicaid in the US), the elderly often died in poverty and it's attendant misery. You got sick and bam, you dead. Now, we take care of hugely complex chronically ill patients for decades in Medicaid / Medicare funded nursing homes. Funding for Medicaid nursing home patients is typically 30 - 50% of a state's Medicaid budget (Medicaid for those of an un USasian persuasion is a jointly state and Federal funded healthcare system for indigent / poor people. It has turned into a middle class nursing home entitlement since nobody, but nobody can afford nursing home care otherwise). In the upcoming years as budgets get stretched further, expect to see this issue played out in the US. We have a couple of options - continue funding nursing homes like we have, to the short term detriment of everyone else or change the social contract some how so we don't aggressively treat the elderly or more likely, just muddle on and make up everything as we go.
And robots aren't going to help a bunch.
What could go wrong? go wrong?
18USC242 I bet the good senator has the wherewithal to at least start an investigation.
OMG No! Not another congressional investigation!
Children will be running in the streets in abject terror. Teeth will be gnashed. Garments rended.
CSpan will have 6 people watching the feed representing a 50% increase from baseline.
Wyden and Merkley (Senators from Oregon) both deserve praise for their efforts to put the people back in control of our government and preserve our rights. Merkley (the freshman senator) particularly has shown a strength of character that is unexpected for a first-timer.
Let's hope they stand as an example to the bought-and-paid-for corporatist weasels that currently hold the seats from many other states.
Which is ironic since Oregon is the poster child for nanny statism. You can't even pump your own gas.
Browsers are lightweight, 'easy' to program. Cheap. More or less OS independent. So that's where the impetus comes from.
But I agree, sticking everything in the stupid browser is annoyingly limited. I can't imagine Photoshop or Maya being browser based. Hell, their browser based help systems don't even work well and that's just linked text - something a browser ought to be good at.
But the vast majority of users don't go past simple stuff - where a browser UI isn't bad. And Bog knows we ought to put everything on the network so that the poor little user can't screw things up.
That's our job.
Cool. Never thought of that. And besides, my watch has a compass (and a barometer and a calendar and a bunch of other useless tidbits) built in.
It's the same iOS, but some UI classes are only available on the iPad and some UI elements are slightly different on the iPad -- as they should be.
There's a clear delineation between iPhone and iPad. With android, there are 3" phones, 5" phones, 7" phones, 7" tablets. It's like being bi-sexual -- you like dick, you like vagina, you think you're doubling your options but you're really just creeping people out. Better for everyone if they decide to be a phone or a tablet and design around that.
My God. You just called Google a pervert.
This can't end well for you.