the journey included over an hour waiting for freight trains to pass
One of the very serious problems with the US train system is the lack of dual (or better) tracks on many routes. Even on the high line up where I am, huge runs of track from the east coast to the west coast are plagued by extensive single track sections. You have to decouple your mind from the idea that the train experience is one of continuous motion. It's not going to get solved, either, because the cost of right of way has risen so high that almost no new trackbed is being prepared anywhere. We just never got our rail system up to the point where it would really work well. A real shame.
Me, I've always hoped for elevated monorails, which would solve many of our rail problems all at once. Speed, collisions, interference with road traffic, right of way, snow, etc. But that's not looking likely in my lifetime. We're just not the thriving, growing country we once were.
He made a perfectly valid point that we already have hardware of the level you mentioned. Whether it's in a box or on a phone is irrelevant,
No, it is relevant, because I was talking about apps. Not computer software for desktops, but apps. They live on tablets, phones, televisions and the like. I described it clearly in that context, and then he tried to make a counterpoint by bringing up something I wasn't talking about at all. I explicitly described low core counts and small memory. Clearly I wasn't talking about desktops. The subject was apps. "Preparing for the 'App Bubble' To Pop?", remember?
Here's a tip for you: if AI was just a question of writing a clever bit of software, then it would probably have been done by now. I know it's sacriligeous to say it on slashdot, but not every problem is solveable by programming.
And in the same spirit, here's a tip for you: Since we don't (yet) know how intelligence works (ours or any other means to accomplish it), there's no cause to be assigning it to a list of unsolvable problems, or to be slinging the idea around that clever software would have already got it done were it actually possible -- most of the time, you have to know what you're trying to do before you can do it. I'll allow that it could happen by accident, but I'm also pretty comfortable saying that it very probably won't. For instance, if you set out to program a means to rotate an arbitrary cartesian XYZ-by-N object, but you don't have the required trig to understand how rotation works, you're not likely to solve the problem. AI is likely to be like that, only far more challenging and may require more hardware resources than anyone presently has to throw at it. So as far as accidental solutions go... I really wouldn't bet that way.
So far, every indication is that the mechanisms involved in the hardware (ok, wetware) are mundane in the extreme, but that the whole is presently out of our reach in terms of sheer numbers of computational elements and related connectivity. Knowing that our hardware is advancing at a rather formidable rate, there is every reason to think that it will reach a level where it can do enough to accomplish the required tasks. With any luck at all, by then we'll figure out what those tasks are, and make a working analog or metaphor for them. Some parts of the problem are already solved, such as associative memory, speech output, speech input (somewhat), image acquisition and storage, touch, smell (somewhat), and other sensory areas that we don't have analogs for.
Unless someone suddenly discovers one or more completely new features of the brain that use fields and/or forces and/or materials we cannot model, solving this problem can reasonably be assumed to be inevitable. And frankly, as nothing like that has yet been found or even so much as hinted at, it is highly unlikely that it exists at all.
As long as the solution can be codified in the digital world, we really only have to solve the problem once. Making AI #2...n could be as simple as a few seconds of copy time. There's also something to be said for the fact that an intelligent answer is just as intelligent if rendered in a second, or in a minute. So it's going to be about achievable complexity, not so much speed.
You are talking as if AI field is widely spread to general level in public.
No, I'm not. I'm saying AI *will* spread. When it does, it'll almost certainly require higher power hardware than we have now. But, inasmuch as AI is a future thing, and higher power hardware is a future thing, I'm implying they'll coexist.
When I am talking about AI, I mean real AI
So am I. There isn't any. Not yet.
There is a possibility that the bubble will burst before the real AI technology arrives to general public, and the reason of the burst could easily be caused by the insanely growth of number of crappy apps. Good apps (with small number of developers) will stay, but most of app developers will be out of jobs.
Well, a possibility... but going by television, the public's appetite for the mediocre is unquenchable. So I'll withhold judgement on that until I see it.
The point of bubble burst is the quality of apps, not what usefulness (and not crappy) apps can do.
Hmm. Guess I don't see it that way. I see it as a matter of economics, and again, apps will continue to be made, hardware will continue to power up, new types of apps will become practical, and so it will go on into the indefinite future. I don't really care about games, personally, though many do. I have all kinds of cool apps on my tablet, expect to add quite a few more before I have to upgrade the hardware, but I *do* know I'll have to upgrade at some point. That's just the way the tech ball rolls.
I usually drive. I find there's a lot to be said for loading up my camera gear and suitcases in a fine automobile and taking off. There's no baggage limit, I get to eat at nice restaurants, sleep in luxury accommodations, my seating in the car itself is wonderfully comfortable, I control the environment, there are no crying babies or diseased traveling "companions", I get to pick the music, the when and what of mealtimes, I can use my cellphone (or ham/sw radio if I take my own vehicle) simply by pulling over, I get to see the countryside and the cityscapes, I can stop off and visit friends, meet people I've only known online, hit up everything from symphonies to comedy clubs to strip joints, and not once will anyone try to feed me peanuts.:)
I've dug for diamonds in Arkansas, spelunked in Virginia, gone diving off of the Keys, watched a couple of space shuttle launches (and one abort... sometimes you draw the short straw), gone skiing about everywhere you can in the US, entered a couple of martial arts tournaments I randomly came across, marched in several political events, and shot photos of just about anything that would hold still enough for long enough for me to get my gear online. I've been to most major national parks off season and on. When I decide to take a trip, I look forward to it and then I consume it. I have developed business interests on both coasts and live in Montana, so my excuses are legion.:)
The only thing I find slightly annoying is the ratcheting down of speed limits as one gets closer to the coasts. Not that people drive a lot slower, typically, they don't, but I'm not inclined risk my license, so I obey the posted limits. Can be irritating to others on the road. One time I was driving along Rt 6 in NY, near Middletown, with my lady and a friend from the area. I was keeping to the speed limit, which was 50 mph on that winding, hilly road. I was in my own car, so carrying Montana plates. Guy passes me going somewhat faster, yells out the window: "Go back to the grand canyon!" We laughed about that all through dinner.
On occasion, I take an ocean liner or a train. On that very rare instance when someone says "can you be at X by Y" and it doesn't seem doable, I simply tell them, sorry, no.
If your job is so awful that it forces you to fly, well then, you'll be flying. I've simply made it a point to never allow that kind of control to be exerted over me. These days, the "need" to physically be somewhere at a certain time is a lot more limited than it used to be. I can face-to-face interface with just about anyone who can get to a computer, anywhere in the world. I see little reason to insist on smelling people's armpits as well.
if it's your own vacation time, you cool with blowing two entire vacation days just for driving?
Actually, I'm cool with "blowing" my entire vacation driving. I like to drive; I'm good at it, and I make it a point to rent something interesting from time to time. I try to drive a new (to me) route as much as possible. The US is huge and there's more to see than I could ever manage to see. I've done some long haul motorcycling too, but eventually found that to be physically wearing out of proportion to the fun, so no more of that.
ok, how about I take the train. I did that once, it took 23 hours. TWENTY THREE FREAKIN HOURS from leaving the front door of my house (at the time) in chicago to reaching my destination in washington.
Yep. But while you were on there, you had access to power which you could use to keep a laptop, ipad, music player or video player up and running. You could have slept in your chair, or your bunk if you took a sleeper or a full cabin. They'll serve you meals, and you can pay too much for junk food at the concession thing. I'm not saying they couldn't do better,
You're confusing unreasonable discrimination -- based upon things that actually have no effect such as skin color or sex -- with reasonable discrimination -- based upon things that do have an actual effect such as bringing your pet on board when your pet is a puppy, as opposed to bringing your pet on board when your pet is an elephant. Weight and size actually affect cost of transport. Is it fair to average out the costs, so that people who, as you point out, through no fault of their own, are lighter than you, end up paying a portion of your transport costs? It might be convenient, but is is actually fair? Now consider: most anti-discrimination law is in place to impose fairness where fairness wasn't happening. So do you really think that such law would be properly employed to make that 120 kg woman pay for ~20 kg of your ticket? If so, why? So you can pretend to weigh 140 kg?
I'm big, and this seems perfectly reasonable to me. Weight and size affects the cost of transport, and it may affect seating as well.
Though I have to say, if you charge more, but don't arrange for the comfort of both the larger persons and those that might be seated near them, you really aren't addressing the issue all that well. Pretending a seven foot tall guy fits in, or behind, or in front of, a seat designed for a five foot tall person (who apparently only has one arm, judging by the armrest configurations) isn't fooling anyone. Likewise, for widebody people, a seat designed for narrow hips doesn't cut it. If I sit in front of you, my head will be in your dinner plate if I recline at all. Well, ok, your peanut bag, anyway. If you sit in front of me, you're likely to find my feet right behind yours. This is part of the reason I no longer fly. The rest being accounted for by the TSA nonsense.
Frankly, I'm amazed that "regular" size people put up with typical airline seating. Outside of first class. That's something else again.
Actually, the lease is over $1000/month. The $500/month figure is a made up number that comes from applying savings they are wanting you to think you'll make. But the assumptions behind the putative savings specify how much you drive, what your time is worth (assumption being $100/hour), an average price of gas being $5/gallon, and that electricity prices remain stable, and that electricity doesn't suddenly acquire a road tax to make up for the fact that you're using the roads, but not paying for them like the rest of us.
Bottom line, though, is you'll be putting out over $1000/month on that lease for those thirty months if you take the deal as advertised. Whatever your circumstances.
Wow. You really didn't understand a thing I wrote, did you?
Sometimes I forget a good proportion of the audience here is asleep.
Tip: My post wasn't about servers. I don't know why "pad" and "phone" didn't clue you in, but I guess that's between you and your reading habits. As for your 32 core not laughing at you, not to put too fine a point on it, sparky, but there is no AI software yet, any more than there is powerful tablet or phone hardware. Both are future speculations. If it's any consolation, though, I am laughing at you, and quite heartily, too.:)
The only thing limiting apps right now is small memory and slowish, low core-count processors.
As the pads and phones continue to power up, there will be a market for more and more serious software (and we'll begin to see a real desktop instead of this freakish abomination with 20 apps / drawer and no nested drawers and no app to app data sharing.)
Pads and phones are really in their infancy. I can think of a huge long list of additional capabilities that have yet to hit the market, and a whole bunch of potential apps that can't run there -- yet -- because the hardware is still too anemic.
When your pad or phone has 16 cores running at 3 ghz, a decent ultracap power supply, 64 gb of ram... you'll look at that "app bubble" statement the same way we look at what the head of the patent department in the early 1900's was saying when he declared something along the lines of "everything important has already been invented", or the famous "no one needs more than 64k (or was it 640? Can't be bothered, both are equally ridiculous.) The little AI in your pad will laugh with you.
For one thing, Chrome and Chromebooks are central to Google's future.
Oh, you're such a tease. If only the failure that is Chrome would drag Google down with it. But no. Google Glass is Google's future. And the dimbulb masses are gonna love it, and Google will grow ever richer off of it. It'll make the texting addiction look like occasional cough drop use. Can you say addictive behavior? I knew you could!
Yes, a much better indicator is them taking their crippled, poorly supported shopping product to a fee-based, crippled, poorly supported shopping product. One driven by robots that don't obey the robot standards. One where pay to rank completely overshadows relevance. That's Google.
Although you could also learn something from their failure to implement some of the most basic email functionality in GMail after all these years. From auto-setting of email reply addresses and fonts based on incoming addresses to decent control over attachments, Google is telling you to deal. Arrogance and a complete lack of concern for users is the takeaway. You don' need to steenkeng functionality, bitch.
Because Chromebooks are exactly zero threat to any of the three established operating systems. It's all hype, smoke and mirrors. If people want a lightweight computer, the iPad and its Android counterparts are right there, priced well and offering all manner of ergonomic amenities superior to any lap-anything... even if you need to type seriously, a cheap bluetooth keyboard and you're going. If, on the other hand, someone actually needs a laptop, it'll be to run software X; and a Chromebook... won't. Best you can say for them is they can be crowbarred to run linux; but we already know how linux laptops fare in the marketspace. Not well. Chromebooks are simply a bad idea, DOA, FUBAR and catastrophically late to the party.
What you want to be paying attention to at this point in time is Google Glass. Now that is likely to change your life. You won't like it, either.
I'm afraid one person's embarrassing past is completely without significance when compared with those who have been railroaded by the state -- or really did something wrong. This is already happening; a felony rap means most job doors close tight, even schools do background checks now, so you can't even improve yourself without walking the autodidact plus entrepreneur path... and if you can't hack that, welcome to the "ditchdigger for life" club.
Then there's the "go live under a bridge" mindset, mainly promoted by people who don't remember the troll stories, I think.
The whole thing is creating a lowest-level underclass; it's a vicious retribution based mindset that shows no sign of coming around to rehabilitation and common sense.
But even your average felon or person on a list can, right now, still walk into McDonalds and get served. Imagine when they're ID'd walking in the door. Or trying to get a date. Or trying to use a library. Think of the children, man. Going to put some stress on the social fabric, it is.
I would find it deeply amusing if misuse of tech like this effectively drove us back to all-mechanical days. Piss off some willing luddite, and bang, everything goes dark for 16 square blocks. "Smart" pistols wouldn't fire, radios wouldn't work, records couldn't be retrieved, cars wouldn't start. Your local gendarme would be reduced to a billy club with his back against the wall. And here's Clem, with a big smile, singed hair, and a smoking backpack.
Um... yeah. No. I appreciate that what you have are considerably better than regular caps, but they're nowhere *near* the performance of what we keep being offered. Nanotube infused designs with power to weight ratios around that of batteries, graphene designs, etc. There's a huge wealth of applications waiting for them to hit somewhere around those marks. Electric cars, actual car battery replacements, cellphone power supplies that never die, backup systems for the house with peak powers far in excess of anything we have now but with comparable storage... the ultracap "breakthroughs" are as regular as any other kind (memristors, etc.) and the consistent no-show of actual commercially available units is also consistent. It's the flying car of electronic components, sigh. High voltage, high capacity, high vapor factor, lol.
Believe me, I've been following the whole ultracap thing for a while. I even keep an eye on EEStor, which I can assure you has been a stupendous exercise in fruitless waiting. As a ham with a full boat of offline powered goodies and the beginnings of a household able to run off backup systems, and more than a little willingness to buy an electric car, actual availability of ultracaps in what I call "the battery range" would truly light me up.
But that carrot is well and truly still out on the stick.
Re:It's "more... THAN", stupid, stupid Americans..
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What the hell happened to the American education system in the last ten years or so?
Absolutely nothing. Hence, no change in slashdot editing quality. New here, are you?
Your memristors are with my ultracaps, flying car, and retroviral DNA fixes. I think they're all in the basement of the fusion reactor. Tended to by household service robots.
The issue isn't that you use the product (and can therefore opt out), the issue is that the person across from you is using it, and they just found your name on [pick your poison] and your social and/or employment and/or schooling options just narrowed considerably. When people can put your life on the table they will inevitably draw the wrong conclusions. Particularly in a country where the justice system is so radically out of control from coercive plea bargains to commando-style raids (often on the wrong address) to violent, well insulated law enforcement. Screw up? Or simply been railroaded? Privacy out the window? Welcome to the permanent lower class.
"The person across from you is in the felon database" What you're looking at here is a personal mechanism to automatically apply the Jewish star. Or any other kind of star you, or other creatives, decide to implement as the witch hunt of the day.
Sure, that'll work to smooth social interactions. Not.
...the personal jammer. I can see it now. "Jams bluetooth, wifi and all cell bands, plus emits infrared sufficient to blind IR cameras. Small enough to fit on your person, self-destructs on command. Order now, get this wide-band audio jammer, free. Or, step up to our 'Don't Tread On Me' personal EMP line. We have models guaranteed to brick any commercial device in ranges from 10 feet to half a mile. (not for sale in USA; not responsible for collateral damage)"
Viola, Instant black market.:)
What's really interesting about this is that both jammers and EMP emitters are relatively trivial to design and aren't tech that can practically be suppressed.
Perhaps privacy will get a second chance, courtesy of Google's attempt at over-reach, or even just their signal that the Orwellian idea is reaching practical application.
Think of the secondary markets: EMP shielding for your apartment, mil-grade phones, etc.
For instance, I have 2D CAD, structured drawing, whiteboard, paint, text and word processing, spreadsheet, music composition and performance, photo manipulation, comic builder, mannequin manipulator, and HTML5 authoring tools on my iPad. I've also got a wonderful camera-control app for my DSLR. All of that came from the app store. I have to say, I'm not feeling particularly compromised, creativity-wise.
When I want to write software, I generally do it with the target in mind being the desktop. Part of that is a disinterest in the way Apple runs their developer programs, part of it is simply disdain for the idea that someone would expect me to pay to develop for them (if anything, they should pay me.) But if I *wanted* to, I certainly could make IOS apps in the Objective C to-the-metal sense. I can already cook up HTML5 goodies, should the urge strike me.
Apple's far from perfect, and so is the iPad (I have a list... lol) but really, this whole "not a creative tool" thing is a bridge too far. You could put me in a corner with my iPad and I could go under all day, doing nothing but creating.
I'd also like to throw this out: Consuming content can also be part of the creative process. Read a textbook, a thoughtful essay, a political rant, etc. If that doesn't spur you to think creatively, warning, you may actually be algae.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the very serious problems with the US train system is the lack of dual (or better) tracks on many routes. Even on the high line up where I am, huge runs of track from the east coast to the west coast are plagued by extensive single track sections. You have to decouple your mind from the idea that the train experience is one of continuous motion. It's not going to get solved, either, because the cost of right of way has risen so high that almost no new trackbed is being prepared anywhere. We just never got our rail system up to the point where it would really work well. A real shame.
Me, I've always hoped for elevated monorails, which would solve many of our rail problems all at once. Speed, collisions, interference with road traffic, right of way, snow, etc. But that's not looking likely in my lifetime. We're just not the thriving, growing country we once were.
No, it is relevant, because I was talking about apps. Not computer software for desktops, but apps. They live on tablets, phones, televisions and the like. I described it clearly in that context, and then he tried to make a counterpoint by bringing up something I wasn't talking about at all. I explicitly described low core counts and small memory. Clearly I wasn't talking about desktops. The subject was apps. "Preparing for the 'App Bubble' To Pop?", remember?
And in the same spirit, here's a tip for you: Since we don't (yet) know how intelligence works (ours or any other means to accomplish it), there's no cause to be assigning it to a list of unsolvable problems, or to be slinging the idea around that clever software would have already got it done were it actually possible -- most of the time, you have to know what you're trying to do before you can do it. I'll allow that it could happen by accident, but I'm also pretty comfortable saying that it very probably won't. For instance, if you set out to program a means to rotate an arbitrary cartesian XYZ-by-N object, but you don't have the required trig to understand how rotation works, you're not likely to solve the problem. AI is likely to be like that, only far more challenging and may require more hardware resources than anyone presently has to throw at it. So as far as accidental solutions go... I really wouldn't bet that way.
So far, every indication is that the mechanisms involved in the hardware (ok, wetware) are mundane in the extreme, but that the whole is presently out of our reach in terms of sheer numbers of computational elements and related connectivity. Knowing that our hardware is advancing at a rather formidable rate, there is every reason to think that it will reach a level where it can do enough to accomplish the required tasks. With any luck at all, by then we'll figure out what those tasks are, and make a working analog or metaphor for them. Some parts of the problem are already solved, such as associative memory, speech output, speech input (somewhat), image acquisition and storage, touch, smell (somewhat), and other sensory areas that we don't have analogs for.
Unless someone suddenly discovers one or more completely new features of the brain that use fields and/or forces and/or materials we cannot model, solving this problem can reasonably be assumed to be inevitable. And frankly, as nothing like that has yet been found or even so much as hinted at, it is highly unlikely that it exists at all.
As long as the solution can be codified in the digital world, we really only have to solve the problem once. Making AI #2...n could be as simple as a few seconds of copy time. There's also something to be said for the fact that an intelligent answer is just as intelligent if rendered in a second, or in a minute. So it's going to be about achievable complexity, not so much speed.
No, I'm not. I'm saying AI *will* spread. When it does, it'll almost certainly require higher power hardware than we have now. But, inasmuch as AI is a future thing, and higher power hardware is a future thing, I'm implying they'll coexist.
So am I. There isn't any. Not yet.
Well, a possibility... but going by television, the public's appetite for the mediocre is unquenchable. So I'll withhold judgement on that until I see it.
Hmm. Guess I don't see it that way. I see it as a matter of economics, and again, apps will continue to be made, hardware will continue to power up, new types of apps will become practical, and so it will go on into the indefinite future. I don't really care about games, personally, though many do. I have all kinds of cool apps on my tablet, expect to add quite a few more before I have to upgrade the hardware, but I *do* know I'll have to upgrade at some point. That's just the way the tech ball rolls.
I usually drive. I find there's a lot to be said for loading up my camera gear and suitcases in a fine automobile and taking off. There's no baggage limit, I get to eat at nice restaurants, sleep in luxury accommodations, my seating in the car itself is wonderfully comfortable, I control the environment, there are no crying babies or diseased traveling "companions", I get to pick the music, the when and what of mealtimes, I can use my cellphone (or ham/sw radio if I take my own vehicle) simply by pulling over, I get to see the countryside and the cityscapes, I can stop off and visit friends, meet people I've only known online, hit up everything from symphonies to comedy clubs to strip joints, and not once will anyone try to feed me peanuts. :)
I've dug for diamonds in Arkansas, spelunked in Virginia, gone diving off of the Keys, watched a couple of space shuttle launches (and one abort... sometimes you draw the short straw), gone skiing about everywhere you can in the US, entered a couple of martial arts tournaments I randomly came across, marched in several political events, and shot photos of just about anything that would hold still enough for long enough for me to get my gear online. I've been to most major national parks off season and on. When I decide to take a trip, I look forward to it and then I consume it. I have developed business interests on both coasts and live in Montana, so my excuses are legion. :)
The only thing I find slightly annoying is the ratcheting down of speed limits as one gets closer to the coasts. Not that people drive a lot slower, typically, they don't, but I'm not inclined risk my license, so I obey the posted limits. Can be irritating to others on the road. One time I was driving along Rt 6 in NY, near Middletown, with my lady and a friend from the area. I was keeping to the speed limit, which was 50 mph on that winding, hilly road. I was in my own car, so carrying Montana plates. Guy passes me going somewhat faster, yells out the window: "Go back to the grand canyon!" We laughed about that all through dinner.
On occasion, I take an ocean liner or a train. On that very rare instance when someone says "can you be at X by Y" and it doesn't seem doable, I simply tell them, sorry, no.
If your job is so awful that it forces you to fly, well then, you'll be flying. I've simply made it a point to never allow that kind of control to be exerted over me. These days, the "need" to physically be somewhere at a certain time is a lot more limited than it used to be. I can face-to-face interface with just about anyone who can get to a computer, anywhere in the world. I see little reason to insist on smelling people's armpits as well.
Actually, I'm cool with "blowing" my entire vacation driving. I like to drive; I'm good at it, and I make it a point to rent something interesting from time to time. I try to drive a new (to me) route as much as possible. The US is huge and there's more to see than I could ever manage to see. I've done some long haul motorcycling too, but eventually found that to be physically wearing out of proportion to the fun, so no more of that.
Yep. But while you were on there, you had access to power which you could use to keep a laptop, ipad, music player or video player up and running. You could have slept in your chair, or your bunk if you took a sleeper or a full cabin. They'll serve you meals, and you can pay too much for junk food at the concession thing. I'm not saying they couldn't do better,
except they are...
You're confusing unreasonable discrimination -- based upon things that actually have no effect such as skin color or sex -- with reasonable discrimination -- based upon things that do have an actual effect such as bringing your pet on board when your pet is a puppy, as opposed to bringing your pet on board when your pet is an elephant. Weight and size actually affect cost of transport. Is it fair to average out the costs, so that people who, as you point out, through no fault of their own, are lighter than you, end up paying a portion of your transport costs? It might be convenient, but is is actually fair? Now consider: most anti-discrimination law is in place to impose fairness where fairness wasn't happening. So do you really think that such law would be properly employed to make that 120 kg woman pay for ~20 kg of your ticket? If so, why? So you can pretend to weigh 140 kg?
I'm big, and this seems perfectly reasonable to me. Weight and size affects the cost of transport, and it may affect seating as well.
Though I have to say, if you charge more, but don't arrange for the comfort of both the larger persons and those that might be seated near them, you really aren't addressing the issue all that well. Pretending a seven foot tall guy fits in, or behind, or in front of, a seat designed for a five foot tall person (who apparently only has one arm, judging by the armrest configurations) isn't fooling anyone. Likewise, for widebody people, a seat designed for narrow hips doesn't cut it. If I sit in front of you, my head will be in your dinner plate if I recline at all. Well, ok, your peanut bag, anyway. If you sit in front of me, you're likely to find my feet right behind yours. This is part of the reason I no longer fly. The rest being accounted for by the TSA nonsense.
Frankly, I'm amazed that "regular" size people put up with typical airline seating. Outside of first class. That's something else again.
Actually, the lease is over $1000/month. The $500/month figure is a made up number that comes from applying savings they are wanting you to think you'll make. But the assumptions behind the putative savings specify how much you drive, what your time is worth (assumption being $100/hour), an average price of gas being $5/gallon, and that electricity prices remain stable, and that electricity doesn't suddenly acquire a road tax to make up for the fact that you're using the roads, but not paying for them like the rest of us.
Bottom line, though, is you'll be putting out over $1000/month on that lease for those thirty months if you take the deal as advertised. Whatever your circumstances.
Wow. You really didn't understand a thing I wrote, did you?
Sometimes I forget a good proportion of the audience here is asleep.
Tip: My post wasn't about servers. I don't know why "pad" and "phone" didn't clue you in, but I guess that's between you and your reading habits. As for your 32 core not laughing at you, not to put too fine a point on it, sparky, but there is no AI software yet, any more than there is powerful tablet or phone hardware. Both are future speculations. If it's any consolation, though, I am laughing at you, and quite heartily, too. :)
The only thing limiting apps right now is small memory and slowish, low core-count processors.
As the pads and phones continue to power up, there will be a market for more and more serious software (and we'll begin to see a real desktop instead of this freakish abomination with 20 apps / drawer and no nested drawers and no app to app data sharing.)
Pads and phones are really in their infancy. I can think of a huge long list of additional capabilities that have yet to hit the market, and a whole bunch of potential apps that can't run there -- yet -- because the hardware is still too anemic.
When your pad or phone has 16 cores running at 3 ghz, a decent ultracap power supply, 64 gb of ram... you'll look at that "app bubble" statement the same way we look at what the head of the patent department in the early 1900's was saying when he declared something along the lines of "everything important has already been invented", or the famous "no one needs more than 64k (or was it 640? Can't be bothered, both are equally ridiculous.) The little AI in your pad will laugh with you.
lol
Oh, you're such a tease. If only the failure that is Chrome would drag Google down with it. But no. Google Glass is Google's future. And the dimbulb masses are gonna love it, and Google will grow ever richer off of it. It'll make the texting addiction look like occasional cough drop use. Can you say addictive behavior? I knew you could!
Yes, a much better indicator is them taking their crippled, poorly supported shopping product to a fee-based, crippled, poorly supported shopping product. One driven by robots that don't obey the robot standards. One where pay to rank completely overshadows relevance. That's Google.
Although you could also learn something from their failure to implement some of the most basic email functionality in GMail after all these years. From auto-setting of email reply addresses and fonts based on incoming addresses to decent control over attachments, Google is telling you to deal. Arrogance and a complete lack of concern for users is the takeaway. You don' need to steenkeng functionality, bitch.
Because Chromebooks are exactly zero threat to any of the three established operating systems. It's all hype, smoke and mirrors. If people want a lightweight computer, the iPad and its Android counterparts are right there, priced well and offering all manner of ergonomic amenities superior to any lap-anything... even if you need to type seriously, a cheap bluetooth keyboard and you're going. If, on the other hand, someone actually needs a laptop, it'll be to run software X; and a Chromebook... won't. Best you can say for them is they can be crowbarred to run linux; but we already know how linux laptops fare in the marketspace. Not well. Chromebooks are simply a bad idea, DOA, FUBAR and catastrophically late to the party.
What you want to be paying attention to at this point in time is Google Glass. Now that is likely to change your life. You won't like it, either.
I'm afraid one person's embarrassing past is completely without significance when compared with those who have been railroaded by the state -- or really did something wrong. This is already happening; a felony rap means most job doors close tight, even schools do background checks now, so you can't even improve yourself without walking the autodidact plus entrepreneur path... and if you can't hack that, welcome to the "ditchdigger for life" club.
Then there's the "go live under a bridge" mindset, mainly promoted by people who don't remember the troll stories, I think.
The whole thing is creating a lowest-level underclass; it's a vicious retribution based mindset that shows no sign of coming around to rehabilitation and common sense.
But even your average felon or person on a list can, right now, still walk into McDonalds and get served. Imagine when they're ID'd walking in the door. Or trying to get a date. Or trying to use a library. Think of the children, man. Going to put some stress on the social fabric, it is.
I would find it deeply amusing if misuse of tech like this effectively drove us back to all-mechanical days. Piss off some willing luddite, and bang, everything goes dark for 16 square blocks. "Smart" pistols wouldn't fire, radios wouldn't work, records couldn't be retrieved, cars wouldn't start. Your local gendarme would be reduced to a billy club with his back against the wall. And here's Clem, with a big smile, singed hair, and a smoking backpack.
They'll just track the suit. Disguises are just a flag that says "watch me."
Um... yeah. No. I appreciate that what you have are considerably better than regular caps, but they're nowhere *near* the performance of what we keep being offered. Nanotube infused designs with power to weight ratios around that of batteries, graphene designs, etc. There's a huge wealth of applications waiting for them to hit somewhere around those marks. Electric cars, actual car battery replacements, cellphone power supplies that never die, backup systems for the house with peak powers far in excess of anything we have now but with comparable storage... the ultracap "breakthroughs" are as regular as any other kind (memristors, etc.) and the consistent no-show of actual commercially available units is also consistent. It's the flying car of electronic components, sigh. High voltage, high capacity, high vapor factor, lol.
Believe me, I've been following the whole ultracap thing for a while. I even keep an eye on EEStor, which I can assure you has been a stupendous exercise in fruitless waiting. As a ham with a full boat of offline powered goodies and the beginnings of a household able to run off backup systems, and more than a little willingness to buy an electric car, actual availability of ultracaps in what I call "the battery range" would truly light me up.
But that carrot is well and truly still out on the stick.
Absolutely nothing. Hence, no change in slashdot editing quality. New here, are you?
Your memristors are with my ultracaps, flying car, and retroviral DNA fixes. I think they're all in the basement of the fusion reactor. Tended to by household service robots.
The issue isn't that you use the product (and can therefore opt out), the issue is that the person across from you is using it, and they just found your name on [pick your poison] and your social and/or employment and/or schooling options just narrowed considerably. When people can put your life on the table they will inevitably draw the wrong conclusions. Particularly in a country where the justice system is so radically out of control from coercive plea bargains to commando-style raids (often on the wrong address) to violent, well insulated law enforcement. Screw up? Or simply been railroaded? Privacy out the window? Welcome to the permanent lower class.
"The person across from you is in the felon database" What you're looking at here is a personal mechanism to automatically apply the Jewish star. Or any other kind of star you, or other creatives, decide to implement as the witch hunt of the day.
Sure, that'll work to smooth social interactions. Not.
Jammers. EMP. Disguises. Stay indoors.
Oh, they don't need to ask. They'll just get it as it goes by.
...the personal jammer. I can see it now. "Jams bluetooth, wifi and all cell bands, plus emits infrared sufficient to blind IR cameras. Small enough to fit on your person, self-destructs on command. Order now, get this wide-band audio jammer, free. Or, step up to our 'Don't Tread On Me' personal EMP line. We have models guaranteed to brick any commercial device in ranges from 10 feet to half a mile. (not for sale in USA; not responsible for collateral damage)"
Viola, Instant black market. :)
What's really interesting about this is that both jammers and EMP emitters are relatively trivial to design and aren't tech that can practically be suppressed.
Perhaps privacy will get a second chance, courtesy of Google's attempt at over-reach, or even just their signal that the Orwellian idea is reaching practical application.
Think of the secondary markets: EMP shielding for your apartment, mil-grade phones, etc.
For instance, I have 2D CAD, structured drawing, whiteboard, paint, text and word processing, spreadsheet, music composition and performance, photo manipulation, comic builder, mannequin manipulator, and HTML5 authoring tools on my iPad. I've also got a wonderful camera-control app for my DSLR. All of that came from the app store. I have to say, I'm not feeling particularly compromised, creativity-wise.
When I want to write software, I generally do it with the target in mind being the desktop. Part of that is a disinterest in the way Apple runs their developer programs, part of it is simply disdain for the idea that someone would expect me to pay to develop for them (if anything, they should pay me.) But if I *wanted* to, I certainly could make IOS apps in the Objective C to-the-metal sense. I can already cook up HTML5 goodies, should the urge strike me.
Apple's far from perfect, and so is the iPad (I have a list... lol) but really, this whole "not a creative tool" thing is a bridge too far. You could put me in a corner with my iPad and I could go under all day, doing nothing but creating.
I'd also like to throw this out: Consuming content can also be part of the creative process. Read a textbook, a thoughtful essay, a political rant, etc. If that doesn't spur you to think creatively, warning, you may actually be algae.