First, you have to QA the silicon in all of the ambient environments, which means the worst of Alaska to the heat of Death Valley, all precip, all RF/EMI, etc.
Then using a closed OS (or a modified BSD-licensed RTOS), you have to ensure its reliability and recoverability from miscellaneous events. Then you have to train the sucker.
You can look to the failures of Google Maps for problems, including map-to-net errors, driver foolishness, and the craziness of random events, like rabbits and pedestrians, etc.
Here's what's more likely to have happened:
Elon said to Jensen: Yo, Jen, buddy, you gotta cut the price of that stuff Jen then says: Hell no, we can't keep up as it is. Elon says: I'm gonna have to make my own silicon. Jen says: Go fish, mothufucka. Elson says: Hah!
For better and worse, keeping things proprietary means it's by definition both closed source, and tested only to one's own environment. Although it produces fast yields, it doesn't have many eyes. Many eyes and many hours are needed to vet the integrity and edge cases (like cliff edges) before safety can be assured.
It's a risky, expensive, and proprietary endeavor. If everyone (systems builders) were using similar development, the testing age could be completed in a concurrent time, rather than a serial/iterative time. I'm betting against this turning out well.
I can see uses for a cheap dumb terminal. But it's the model where it's a terminal, and not really a computing device that has edge processing beyond coughing a raster.
I've been following portables and laptops since the late 1970s. Even an Osborne I or Kaypro has more usefulness. This is a terminal, a high-cost terminal. It's value as a terminal can be found in a myriad less expensive, vastly more sophisticated forms as cheap laptops-- that don't have the constraints imposed by being, well, just a really cute terminal.
Because people don't oust the legislators that are bribed at the state and federal levels with campaign contributions. The history of utilities has shifted dramatically since the breakup of the Bell Companies.
First the telcos tried to get state authority ceded to federal jurisdiction, then found a way to get an FCC Chair to actually believe that they were exempt from Title II so that net neutrality was another fuzzy issue that could be propaganda-controlled to cede the FCC's authority to provide a truly neutral space. Game won. But not by you, or I.
So tell me you're good with the typical 32-64GB of storage. Tell me you're ok with 1080p. Tell me you're good with speakers that sound like tin cans. Tell me you're into all that peripheral device attachment option pack. Tell me you're good with dual OS.
Why not simply buy an inexpensive 8MB/500GB laptop with actual LInux on it? I write this on a Lenovo running Debian underneath, Cinnamon on top. It's not the world best, but it's durable, has reasonable speakers, a few extra jacks, and yeah, 500GB instead of 32.
It's a terminal. Simply a terminal. Cool terminal. Terminal.
Chrome is just a subscription-less operating environment.
The entire post is Google PR. Why? Chromebooks are cloud devices and of course you'd have a great experience, because you would blame problems on cloud vendors.
What's at play here is the cloud model vs client/server or endpoint resource/storage. 32GB of storage is less than I have on my phone, and I'm not alone.
The Chromebook is a terminal access device. Remember Sun and their Network-is-the-Computer maxim? Who was CTO of Sun at the time? Remember Eric Schmidt? He also worked at Microsoft-hating Novell for a while, too. The Chromebook is a pointedly stupid edge terminal device, devoid of much power, and priced accordingly. It's part of a centrist computing model where you PAY some one in the center to give you your fix of processing.
This is not to say kind things about Microsoft, rather, the Chromebook is simply a terminal with memory. Comparing it to Windows isn't a good argument, as Chrome and Windows in the context of the Chromebook are two different things and models.
Perhaps you missed the memo on robotics. Low wage jobs are here to stay, unless you do something yourself, or allow yourself to become a wage slave.
I ate ketchup soup in college. Stretched the budget tight. Actually refused to go to the bars, spending my meager wages on yes, actual food. I worked through college. Full load, part time. Scrimped.
If you have half a brain, you plan how to deal with lots of study and how to feed yourself, sleep at night, and take care of yourself. If you can't do that, college isn't going to help you much, as you'll always be dependent on one branch of the system or another.
Student loans are far too loose, a bit in the mouth of every future workhorse that takes them. It makes the choices stark. University marketing has seduced so many people into its vortex, when the future careers are hazy. Recruiters don't look at CVs or resumes and say, gosh, this one comes from a podunk college in Iowa, but look, this one comes from Harvard. Were it me, I'd take the candidate from podunk simply because they had to earn their way, and didn't face the massive grade erosion endemic to the Ivy League frauds.
Life doesn't come to you on a platter unless you're a part of the dynastic wealth in the USA. Let the trust fund babies have their avocado toast. The others will sink or swim. I hope they swim. If they can't feed themselves.... they'll sink later.
Extending that model, your apps will come only from the languishing Microsoft Store, where they'll make a commission on it. As the Surface becomes popular (as yet another Chromebook) you'll be tempted into convenience. Like Google/Android and Apple/iOS, Microsoft is trying to know you without selling you a phone. They lost that battle.
They're also hurting from the loss of Wintel, and looking at juicy new ARM CPUs to undercut the vicious cost of Intel/AMD CPUs, believing that competing devices based on ARM are cutting into their sales-- with tolerable performance.
Microsoft is feeling very threatened, and with good reason. Their Windows Beta program, oops, I mean Insider program, has started to backfire on them. It's almost impossible to do good QA when you don't control the hardware architecture. Hell, Apple still has problems when they DO control their architecture.
Windows in businesses won't care much because they're already moving into cloud-based applications that hurt Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and others are killing them and I'm sure they'd love to get some of that revenue back (as if they ever had it).
Ultimately, the Linux-ification of Windows will not produce Linux. It will produce Windows.
If you subscribe to the old meme that every connected system is just adding to the same computational strength, then we have a lot of disconnected computers, and one huge one, save that chunk firewalled by China.
CPUs have mutated extraordinarily. GPUs, FPGAs, specialized chips, they're all "CPUs" but measuring or counting them seems pretty silly.
You now desire to disambiguate shareholder rights, as a function of their ownership of a corporation, stock classes held, laws regarding shareholder rights, and more. That's another conversation.
Resolutions, aiding the aims of social justice, are plentiful and find their ways into stockholder resolutions, which may or may not be viable. They're a nice outlet-- should they be able to influence outcomes, but most often, they don't for a number of reasons.
My point remains that large corporations are enslaved to profits, even if that means doing sleazy things like hiring temps, 1099 contractors, or using one corp to optimze the return on another through employee renting, and other schemes. Shareholder return is the goal, not social justice. Social justice is the rare exception, as are themes like environmental-allied goals, and more. Corporations are made to enrichen and reduce liability. This doesn't mean I like how corporations work or the law behind them, or the wall against civic control applies, it's just how it is. It can be changed, but it's very difficult to do when corporations control campaign financing, and therefore, the legal system.
Do publicly traded corporations employ a lot of people? Yes. Do they 1099 an incredible number of people? Yes. Do those agency or 1099 people benefit as employees of the corporation? Only slightly. Does the US Treasury and the Social Security Administration funds lose out because of the agency or 1099 employees? You bet.
There are a myriad corporations with no employees, or perhaps one or two at best. Add to this, lots of other corpus like LLCs, LLPs, SubS, and other schemes/theories/dodges? A profound number.
My point is simple: Tax and liability mitigation schemes are myriad. Look at the US Tax Code printed volumes for the stunning result. In publicly traded corps, it's all about the payout. In smaller SubS/C/LLC/LLP/etc., it's about tax mitigation, sheltering expenses, and not about that taxable pass-through profit because that income is absorbed rather than pay a Schedule C rate. Where did you go to business school???
Having been under SEC laws in a publicly traded US corp as an officer, much of what you cite is correct, but there are a few errors.
There is a wide variance in charters, state laws, and how US Federal Law is applied, then there's the IRS, and other taxing jurisdictions.
The stockholders own the company, and their directives to for-profit entities is to make profit. The onus is huge, and in some exec's minds, all-important. Laws are skirted, rules bent, policies defended, and much more, all in the quest to optimize returns and longevity.
This becomes more complex when publicly traded. The SEC and securities law + securities litigation comes into play. But the purpose of most corporations IS NOT TO EMPLOY PEOPLE, and HR/ER departments maximize the mix that management wants, and keeping personnel counts down is a desired common characteristic among for-profits. Other Co-ops, partnerships, NGOs, NFPs, etc have different motives (more often than not). But a for-profit corp is FOR PROFIT, not necessarily legally employed W2 humans.
More likely, having not spoken to a sound attorney, he's blowing smoke. If the SEC does get involved, there may be a lot of smoke, the scent of pants on fire, and lots of subsequent litigation.
Nut cases have a habit of digging in deeper, when they should be looking for cover. Obsessed, they carry on even as noose gets tighter.
No one falls on their sword these days, or even admits anything because: lawyers. And no one gets fired.
After all, one is a mistake, three is a bit more than oopsy-doo, and five? Well, five is: "We never did give a shit. Are my stock options ready yet? This junior coder gig has to pay me at least something."
I find Amazon ratings full of WTFs, not that the Never A Negative Review on FleaBay is much better. Amazon's search engine truly sucks. Ebay's is only a tiny bit better.
It's shipping where the Prime marketing delivers. Ebay lacks really good supply chain tech. And their customer support is pretty lame.
They're not decades late, they chose to be insular and keep things comparatively stupid. Now a few UI folks can fix it, having spent decades fixing the rest of their stuff.
Microsoft is about revenue, never make a mistake thinking there's an ounce of altruism in what Microsoft is, does, or plans.
If you want pointers to the body count, let me know. Or if the SCO-Linux-Kernel debacle wasn't enough, let's just say that they don't do UX for free...
May I call your attention to the hottest summer in NA on record?
How much evidence do I have to wave under your nose? It makes me suspect you're on the dole.
There are bad people on both sides, but a clear preponderance of research says that rationalizing the clear results, atop clear evidence under your nose, the citations of political idiots (they're on both sides of the aisle in the US) means you're either in denial or paid. I appreciate a cogent skeptic, but you've only demonstrated your limited knowledge of dog whistles.
Perhaps you're unaware of the disinformation campaign foisted by the oil companies over decades. The "science" funded was a mixture of great geology, totally bullshit oil resource studies designed to bias advancing prices, and an aggressive defense of increased consumption, deregulation of California's advanced MPG requirements, wicked amounts of distribution control to prop prices up, and the oil wars that we're still fighting 17 years later.
It's more like social Darwinism. Geeks fight with mod points, rather than take pretty obvious facts and grind their heel into them. I've had great enlightenment here, as well as the sludge of over-ripe ego as well.
Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but not their own set of facts.
A clear preponderance of scientific research refutes your opinion. No one will censor your for your opinion, but when your facts are clearly and undeniably bad, indeed you may get modded down.
The petrochemical/oil industry's clear mandate is to not be sued or cited as a decent part of the problem.
They're the one watching TV tonight. Not you. They're not you.
They're not me, either, but at least I understand they exist, and swing electoral college votes. Don't under estimate TV watchers. TV is still free. Slashdot is still free. People do both because: Free.
Much of rural America still watches TV over dishes. Think about election demographics, urban vs not. Re-evaluate the importance. This is why nutjobs like 538.com blew the election predictions: underestimated the power of TV as a media source. Yes, there were other perhaps evil influences. TV has a captive audience. Not you. Not me. But it's a big audience.
It's all about pressuring Germany to buy fracked LNG. If you expected Truth from Trump, you were mistaken; he's a sales guy with lip flatulence, a bad hairdo, and no conscience. Sales guy.
Were it only so. There would be no business model for them if what you said was true, and they're still thriving. Look to Sinclair Media's profitability and lockstep newscasts if you had any questions. Underestimating compromised media is a big mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
First, you have to QA the silicon in all of the ambient environments, which means the worst of Alaska to the heat of Death Valley, all precip, all RF/EMI, etc.
Then using a closed OS (or a modified BSD-licensed RTOS), you have to ensure its reliability and recoverability from miscellaneous events. Then you have to train the sucker.
You can look to the failures of Google Maps for problems, including map-to-net errors, driver foolishness, and the craziness of random events, like rabbits and pedestrians, etc.
Here's what's more likely to have happened:
Elon said to Jensen: Yo, Jen, buddy, you gotta cut the price of that stuff
Jen then says: Hell no, we can't keep up as it is.
Elon says: I'm gonna have to make my own silicon.
Jen says: Go fish, mothufucka.
Elson says: Hah!
Proprietary silicon ensues.
For better and worse, keeping things proprietary means it's by definition both closed source, and tested only to one's own environment. Although it produces fast yields, it doesn't have many eyes. Many eyes and many hours are needed to vet the integrity and edge cases (like cliff edges) before safety can be assured.
It's a risky, expensive, and proprietary endeavor. If everyone (systems builders) were using similar development, the testing age could be completed in a concurrent time, rather than a serial/iterative time. I'm betting against this turning out well.
Great edge use case. Chromebooks for civilians are not a bad idea.
I can see uses for a cheap dumb terminal. But it's the model where it's a terminal, and not really a computing device that has edge processing beyond coughing a raster.
I've been following portables and laptops since the late 1970s. Even an Osborne I or Kaypro has more usefulness. This is a terminal, a high-cost terminal. It's value as a terminal can be found in a myriad less expensive, vastly more sophisticated forms as cheap laptops-- that don't have the constraints imposed by being, well, just a really cute terminal.
Because people don't oust the legislators that are bribed at the state and federal levels with campaign contributions. The history of utilities has shifted dramatically since the breakup of the Bell Companies.
First the telcos tried to get state authority ceded to federal jurisdiction, then found a way to get an FCC Chair to actually believe that they were exempt from Title II so that net neutrality was another fuzzy issue that could be propaganda-controlled to cede the FCC's authority to provide a truly neutral space. Game won. But not by you, or I.
Terminal with a decent battery. Everyone needs one.
So tell me you're good with the typical 32-64GB of storage. Tell me you're ok with 1080p. Tell me you're good with speakers that sound like tin cans. Tell me you're into all that peripheral device attachment option pack. Tell me you're good with dual OS.
Why not simply buy an inexpensive 8MB/500GB laptop with actual LInux on it? I write this on a Lenovo running Debian underneath, Cinnamon on top. It's not the world best, but it's durable, has reasonable speakers, a few extra jacks, and yeah, 500GB instead of 32.
It's a terminal. Simply a terminal. Cool terminal. Terminal.
Windows free? Nope. Not gonna happen.
Chrome is just a subscription-less operating environment.
The entire post is Google PR. Why? Chromebooks are cloud devices and of course you'd have a great experience, because you would blame problems on cloud vendors.
What's at play here is the cloud model vs client/server or endpoint resource/storage. 32GB of storage is less than I have on my phone, and I'm not alone.
The Chromebook is a terminal access device. Remember Sun and their Network-is-the-Computer maxim? Who was CTO of Sun at the time? Remember Eric Schmidt? He also worked at Microsoft-hating Novell for a while, too. The Chromebook is a pointedly stupid edge terminal device, devoid of much power, and priced accordingly. It's part of a centrist computing model where you PAY some one in the center to give you your fix of processing.
This is not to say kind things about Microsoft, rather, the Chromebook is simply a terminal with memory. Comparing it to Windows isn't a good argument, as Chrome and Windows in the context of the Chromebook are two different things and models.
Perhaps you missed the memo on robotics. Low wage jobs are here to stay, unless you do something yourself, or allow yourself to become a wage slave.
I ate ketchup soup in college. Stretched the budget tight. Actually refused to go to the bars, spending my meager wages on yes, actual food. I worked through college. Full load, part time. Scrimped.
If you have half a brain, you plan how to deal with lots of study and how to feed yourself, sleep at night, and take care of yourself. If you can't do that, college isn't going to help you much, as you'll always be dependent on one branch of the system or another.
Student loans are far too loose, a bit in the mouth of every future workhorse that takes them. It makes the choices stark. University marketing has seduced so many people into its vortex, when the future careers are hazy. Recruiters don't look at CVs or resumes and say, gosh, this one comes from a podunk college in Iowa, but look, this one comes from Harvard. Were it me, I'd take the candidate from podunk simply because they had to earn their way, and didn't face the massive grade erosion endemic to the Ivy League frauds.
Life doesn't come to you on a platter unless you're a part of the dynastic wealth in the USA. Let the trust fund babies have their avocado toast. The others will sink or swim. I hope they swim. If they can't feed themselves.... they'll sink later.
Extending that model, your apps will come only from the languishing Microsoft Store, where they'll make a commission on it. As the Surface becomes popular (as yet another Chromebook) you'll be tempted into convenience. Like Google/Android and Apple/iOS, Microsoft is trying to know you without selling you a phone. They lost that battle.
They're also hurting from the loss of Wintel, and looking at juicy new ARM CPUs to undercut the vicious cost of Intel/AMD CPUs, believing that competing devices based on ARM are cutting into their sales-- with tolerable performance.
Microsoft is feeling very threatened, and with good reason. Their Windows Beta program, oops, I mean Insider program, has started to backfire on them. It's almost impossible to do good QA when you don't control the hardware architecture. Hell, Apple still has problems when they DO control their architecture.
Windows in businesses won't care much because they're already moving into cloud-based applications that hurt Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and others are killing them and I'm sure they'd love to get some of that revenue back (as if they ever had it).
Ultimately, the Linux-ification of Windows will not produce Linux. It will produce Windows.
If you subscribe to the old meme that every connected system is just adding to the same computational strength, then we have a lot of disconnected computers, and one huge one, save that chunk firewalled by China.
CPUs have mutated extraordinarily. GPUs, FPGAs, specialized chips, they're all "CPUs" but measuring or counting them seems pretty silly.
That is, until they take over the world.
Your citations are specious to the point.
You now desire to disambiguate shareholder rights, as a function of their ownership of a corporation, stock classes held, laws regarding shareholder rights, and more. That's another conversation.
Resolutions, aiding the aims of social justice, are plentiful and find their ways into stockholder resolutions, which may or may not be viable. They're a nice outlet-- should they be able to influence outcomes, but most often, they don't for a number of reasons.
My point remains that large corporations are enslaved to profits, even if that means doing sleazy things like hiring temps, 1099 contractors, or using one corp to optimze the return on another through employee renting, and other schemes. Shareholder return is the goal, not social justice. Social justice is the rare exception, as are themes like environmental-allied goals, and more. Corporations are made to enrichen and reduce liability. This doesn't mean I like how corporations work or the law behind them, or the wall against civic control applies, it's just how it is. It can be changed, but it's very difficult to do when corporations control campaign financing, and therefore, the legal system.
Do publicly traded corporations employ a lot of people? Yes. Do they 1099 an incredible number of people? Yes. Do those agency or 1099 people benefit as employees of the corporation? Only slightly. Does the US Treasury and the Social Security Administration funds lose out because of the agency or 1099 employees? You bet.
There are a myriad corporations with no employees, or perhaps one or two at best. Add to this, lots of other corpus like LLCs, LLPs, SubS, and other schemes/theories/dodges? A profound number.
My point is simple: Tax and liability mitigation schemes are myriad. Look at the US Tax Code printed volumes for the stunning result. In publicly traded corps, it's all about the payout. In smaller SubS/C/LLC/LLP/etc., it's about tax mitigation, sheltering expenses, and not about that taxable pass-through profit because that income is absorbed rather than pay a Schedule C rate. Where did you go to business school???
Having been under SEC laws in a publicly traded US corp as an officer, much of what you cite is correct, but there are a few errors.
There is a wide variance in charters, state laws, and how US Federal Law is applied, then there's the IRS, and other taxing jurisdictions.
The stockholders own the company, and their directives to for-profit entities is to make profit. The onus is huge, and in some exec's minds, all-important. Laws are skirted, rules bent, policies defended, and much more, all in the quest to optimize returns and longevity.
This becomes more complex when publicly traded. The SEC and securities law + securities litigation comes into play. But the purpose of most corporations IS NOT TO EMPLOY PEOPLE, and HR/ER departments maximize the mix that management wants, and keeping personnel counts down is a desired common characteristic among for-profits. Other Co-ops, partnerships, NGOs, NFPs, etc have different motives (more often than not). But a for-profit corp is FOR PROFIT, not necessarily legally employed W2 humans.
More likely, having not spoken to a sound attorney, he's blowing smoke. If the SEC does get involved, there may be a lot of smoke, the scent of pants on fire, and lots of subsequent litigation.
Nut cases have a habit of digging in deeper, when they should be looking for cover. Obsessed, they carry on even as noose gets tighter.
No one falls on their sword these days, or even admits anything because: lawyers. And no one gets fired.
After all, one is a mistake, three is a bit more than oopsy-doo, and five? Well, five is: "We never did give a shit. Are my stock options ready yet? This junior coder gig has to pay me at least something."
I find Amazon ratings full of WTFs, not that the Never A Negative Review on FleaBay is much better. Amazon's search engine truly sucks. Ebay's is only a tiny bit better.
It's shipping where the Prime marketing delivers. Ebay lacks really good supply chain tech. And their customer support is pretty lame.
They're not decades late, they chose to be insular and keep things comparatively stupid. Now a few UI folks can fix it, having spent decades fixing the rest of their stuff.
Microsoft is about revenue, never make a mistake thinking there's an ounce of altruism in what Microsoft is, does, or plans.
If you want pointers to the body count, let me know. Or if the SCO-Linux-Kernel debacle wasn't enough, let's just say that they don't do UX for free...
Citations, please.
May I call your attention to the hottest summer in NA on record?
How much evidence do I have to wave under your nose? It makes me suspect you're on the dole.
There are bad people on both sides, but a clear preponderance of research says that rationalizing the clear results, atop clear evidence under your nose, the citations of political idiots (they're on both sides of the aisle in the US) means you're either in denial or paid. I appreciate a cogent skeptic, but you've only demonstrated your limited knowledge of dog whistles.
Perhaps you're unaware of the disinformation campaign foisted by the oil companies over decades. The "science" funded was a mixture of great geology, totally bullshit oil resource studies designed to bias advancing prices, and an aggressive defense of increased consumption, deregulation of California's advanced MPG requirements, wicked amounts of distribution control to prop prices up, and the oil wars that we're still fighting 17 years later.
But yeah, some great geology and chemistry.
It's more like social Darwinism. Geeks fight with mod points, rather than take pretty obvious facts and grind their heel into them. I've had great enlightenment here, as well as the sludge of over-ripe ego as well.
Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but not their own set of facts.
A clear preponderance of scientific research refutes your opinion. No one will censor your for your opinion, but when your facts are clearly and undeniably bad, indeed you may get modded down.
The petrochemical/oil industry's clear mandate is to not be sued or cited as a decent part of the problem.
You mistake yourself for the average Joe or Jane.
They're the one watching TV tonight. Not you. They're not you.
They're not me, either, but at least I understand they exist, and swing electoral college votes. Don't under estimate TV watchers. TV is still free. Slashdot is still free. People do both because: Free.
Much of rural America still watches TV over dishes. Think about election demographics, urban vs not. Re-evaluate the importance. This is why nutjobs like 538.com blew the election predictions: underestimated the power of TV as a media source. Yes, there were other perhaps evil influences. TV has a captive audience. Not you. Not me. But it's a big audience.
It's all about pressuring Germany to buy fracked LNG. If you expected Truth from Trump, you were mistaken; he's a sales guy with lip flatulence, a bad hairdo, and no conscience. Sales guy.
Were it only so. There would be no business model for them if what you said was true, and they're still thriving. Look to Sinclair Media's profitability and lockstep newscasts if you had any questions. Underestimating compromised media is a big mistake.