It always was a way to get R&D paid for under the guise of charity. They could have easily made a computer for under a hundred dollars, but that wasn't what they were trying to do.
Funny, I have heard the same kind of anthropomorphizing of dogs, cats, cars, and guns. Just because you think you see a person there, doesn't make it so. In fact, the problem of people not recognizing dogs are not human has reached an epidemic level of insanity.
I can honestly say that I have never lost a dime in a casino. I have spent a little money for entertainment, just as some do in a movie theater, but I have never lost money in a casino.
The fact that it responds to the slightest touch is one of it's drawbacks. The trend of making laptop touchpads that jump to the middle of the page right in the middle of typing somthing because the pad of your hand slightly touches the surface, or worse yet, some random link gets clicked on a web page while you are typing, is infuriating. The first thing I do with a new laptop is look for a way to turn that off. My wife went so far as to make an on/off button for the touchpad be a litmus test on whether she would consider a model on her recent laptop purchase.
The last thing I want is a keyboard where the slightest touch of my finger starts putting random characters in the middle of what I am typing. So far, touch screens are limited to hunt and peck. Even Swype is just an advanced hunt and peck. Maybe they will have more incentive to fix the flaws with touch interfaces when it is a replacement for a keyboard than they have when it was a replacement for a mouse, but I'm not holding my breath.
No, the virus can go dormant after an infection. Adult or Childhood. The reason that you tend not to see it from adult infections is because shingles is relatively rare, as is people who make it into adulthood without catching the virus. That makes the crossover EXTREMELY rare.
Or, it may have made him grow antlers. The chicken pox vaccine hasn't been around nearly long enough to find out what happens to 40 year olds when they get it as children. Heck, they don't even have good information on what it does to teens when they get it as children.
When my now 6 year old was 1, the peditrician was pushing for a chicken pox vaccine. He insisted that it was life long, although they expected that there might need to be a booster between 18 and 20 years of age. Beyond that alone pushing the dangers of getting the vaccine to be more than the dangers of not getting it, by the time he was 4, it had become completely clear that the vaccine had a very short duration, and they were recommending boosters at 5 years of age.
The found this out when large outbreaks started happening in grade schools where almost 100% of the children had been vaccinated.
So, as the vaccine now stands, it doesn't prevent you from getting chicken pox, it just delays it so that you can get it when it stops being a major inconvenience, but instead becomes a real life threatening disease.
The vaccine would have had a better chance of leaving your father with a full blown case of chicken pox than the much more mild shingles.
There have been some studies that indicate the chicken pox vaccine does reduce the rates of shingles in adults, but that is when it is given to adults who have already had chicken pox.
Yes, there are cases of people having serious problems with Chicken pox. Those cases are EXTREMELY rare. The are so rare, that if your child plays HS football, you have a greater chance of them dying from that than from Chicken Pox.
So, Yes, Chicken pox IS as benign as people think. What isn't as benign as people think is the fact that they are frequently pushing the contraction of the disease out of the safe childhood time to the dangerous adult time.
The Chicken Pox vaccine should be should be reserved for people over the age of 13-16.
The Chicken Pox vaccine has more to do with money than it does with health. Everyone in the chain makes money by pushing the disease off to adulthood, except the child. Parents, Schools, Doctors, Pharmaceutical Companies. I haven't looking in a little while, but just within the last few years, the CDC was citing the parents making more money has a primary reason why they should get their kids vaccinated.
While I am cynical concerning Flu and Chicken Pox vaccines, I have a hard time understanding how a sample size of 12 can be seriously considered a "Study".
While "number one threat to internet freedom" is certainly hyperbole, the fact that ChromeOS is DOA, and Apple has successfully push bad ideas out to large numbers of people who then rationalize it as good, I would definitly put Apple's cloud offering as more dangerous than Google's. Not because Apple is more evil than Google, but because it has a greater chance of being implemented than Google's.
Sole, Core, your splitting hairs to make a point that isn't argued. Most of Googles money comes from advertising, and a little comes from other stuff. We agree on that.
I haven't seen any of the threads that largely praise ChromeOS. All the ones I see discount it as too bad of idea to get off the ground.
Either way, the focus on Google based on an article about why Apple's idea is bad, is typical of what Apple fans do. They blame Apples failures on others. In this case, it is an attempt to make Apple's REALLY bad idea seem not so bad because Google's idea is worse.
My Acer Revo cost $180 including the OS. The remote cost me $25 dollars. That puts my price close enough to your $200 as to call it a wash. It looks like the newer models are closer to $350, but they will give you more flexibility. I would never recommend Linux as an HTPC to anyone that wasn't already a Linux user, but Windows 7 pretty much comes ready to go, and comes with the computers. It is no more an extra cost than the software that comes on the Blu-ray players.
The trade off will come mostly in the Blu-ray part of the Blu-ray player. The Revo's don't come with an optical drive, so no playing any optical media on it.
The Revo has the benefit of having actual storage for the media. It also can play a much wider range of media types. It can also get regular Hulu, which for many people is vastly superior to Hulu Plus.
I would say that for someone that REALLY doesn't want to think about the setup at all, the Blu-ray player has a slight edge. For people that want Blu-ray capabilities, the Blu-ray player is a complete no brainer.
For people that don't mind a little setup, the Revo has a little edge, and for people that want flexibility, the Revo is definitely the way to go.
For those with more PCs in the house, one nice feature of the Revo is that it's power requirements are 5-20 watts depending on load. At that, it makes a nice file server for the rest of the PCs in the house. So, even if you went the Blu-ray player route, the Revo might still be a worthy part of the mix so that you don't have to choose between running a 80-100 watt desktop PC 24/7 and having to go boot your desktop to watch movies.
I know this might sound harsh, but take it as one parent's advice to another... You REALLY need to teach your child that there are bad people out their that will try to trick them by offering them 'candy'. The PC is the safest way to teach them that.
It sounds like it is too late for your wife, but now would be the time to teach your kids how to avoid being victims.
I know... Easier said than done. I also know that we all have different priorities on what we put our effort into with our kids.
Google give people what they want by the metric that when people are faced with the choice between Google and other similar products, most people choose Google. They don't choose Google because they feel that it is the only thing they can use. They choose Google because Google gives them what they want. Most people who use Google are specifically rejecting the competitor that is installed by default, and are specifically choosing them.
Most people when faced with Apple products will choose the iPod for MP3 players, but for computers and phones, most people choose their competitors. They do this because their competitors give them what they want.
I will agree that ChromeOS is a bad idea. You will also find that there are very few people who don't think ChromeOS is a bad idea. It is getting universally panned as an idea. So, claiming that Google gets a pass on ChromeOS is a strawman. Most people also see ChromeOS as DOA. Why? Because it is a bad idea.
If you want to talk about Googles core business of advertising it is one thing. They have been pretty up front about what they do with that, and have earned their reputation, even if it is starting to slide a bit. But, pointing out ChromeOS and claiming that Google got a pass is simply dishonest.
And, beyond all of that, claiming that Apple is being picked on because they compete with Google is simply Stupid. Claiming that a bad idea from Apple is getting panned is only being panned because an equally panned idea has come from Google is just bizarre.
It seems that it is a common theme among Apple fans that any criticism of Apple isn't because Apple has done something wrong/poorly/stupid, but instead they are being criticized for being so cool that everyone else is jealous.
This idea is not getting panned because of Google. It is getting panned because the idea that is being rumored is a bad idea. All on it's own.
My first response wants to be that they should be educated on what they are doing. After all, even if it didn't break the computer and in a 'secure' enviornment, that kind of behavior can be very dangerous.
Of course, the reality is that they won't be. They will continue to behave irresponsibly. Likely for their entire lives. They will be totally oblivious to the damage they do to other people. So, the real answer is to approach the problem from that perspective. Having the OS loaded from a server won't solve that problem. They will still install damaging apps that will make it easier to reinstall than fix. "Free smileies" and "facebook" don't go away with a server/terminal install.
Home servers are a simple answer to most of the problems that keep trying to be solved by these questionable services. A nightly clone of the system to the home server is a simple solution that would work at least as good if not better than handing your system over to a company for a fee. Heck, even if you did a remote boot from a home server, you would have a better system than getting it from an external company.
This is in every way shape and form, a suggestion of making trailer parks. The article even says that roads could be used instead of rail in places that have roads. There is nothing new or inovative about this. Heck, they don't even have good trailers. What they show in the article are closer to those crappy trailers they pull in for temporary office space. These guys shouldn't get an award. They should get laughed at.
What you suggest has been available for over a decade. Software that will net boot and restore a system to a pristine state has been available for over a decade. Pretty much the only place I have seen it used is in training centers though. If this is a feature that admins feel is important, and yet they have not implemented it by now, I would question their competence. Buying into a whole new ecosystem to get a decade old feature simply makes no sense.
I am surprised to hear that your wife and kid trash their copy of Windows that often. What do they do to it? I have given my son full access to Ubuntu from the ages of 1 - 4, and Windows from the ages of 3 to 6. Only once have I felt the need to do a reinstall, and that didn't REALLY need to be done. Are they installing random applications off the internet?
That is intellectually dishonest. Google doesn't get a pass because it competes with Apple. Google gets a pass because they have a history of giving users what users want. While Apple has a history of giving users what Apple wants. The users that get what they want are just the subset of the population that happen to want what Apple gives them.
Google MAY do evil in cases where they have little choice if they want to continue to exist. The level of this is debatable. Apple chooses to pioneer evil.
If you paid attention, as Google has grown and has been faced with harder decisions, it has been increasingly taken to task for it's decisions. So, really, Google hasn't been given a pass at all. Google has been viewed as a whole, and so has Apple. Apple just looks much worse from that perspective.
Just make sure your the nettop comes with Windows 7 and get a Media Center Remote. Not only will you have a cool media player completely controlled remote with XBMC, but you will have Netflix with the Media Center software, and you will have TV shows via the Hulu client. All of these controlled with a regular TV remote.
I canceled my satellite service last April. It is the first time in over 30 years that I have not had some form of cable service. My family watches 8-10 hours of TV a day. We haven't missed the satellite channels. The single factor that seems to be a showstopper for people doing this is that you don't get sports.
By that standard, almost nobody uses most of the streets in most cities. Almost nobody uses permits department. Almost nobody uses any perticular park. The list goes on and on. 1% is actually a very high number.
If you can't figure out how to get away from phone noise anywhere, you are a complete moron. I don't believe that you can't though. I believe that you are using it as an excuse to justify why you are an ass to people.
That doesn't change the fact that you argued against a system that still lets people have their contact with other people without noise. Obviously, your belief that the world should adjust itself you you is NOT just about noise. There are other mental disorders at work here.
So, you are one of the assholes from camp 1. When presented with a perfectly reasonable solution that is both convenient and gives everyone what they claim they want, you sat that isn't good enough. You are no better than a vandal and a thug.
Your probably one of the guys that complains and throws a tantrum if someone is having a conversation on a plane instead of bringing a $0.30 pair of earplugs.
Hate to break it to you, but the world is not your personal meditation chamber.
We have about 200k in our city with two libraries.
I would say that 2 or 3 people out of 5000 is a very high number. 2 or 3 people at a time would indicate that you have at least 50 to 100 residents using the facility. That is 1 to 2% conservatively. That is WAY more than the percentage of the population that uses my street. 1 to 2% of the population using a public service is really quite good.
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It always was a way to get R&D paid for under the guise of charity. They could have easily made a computer for under a hundred dollars, but that wasn't what they were trying to do.
Funny, I have heard the same kind of anthropomorphizing of dogs, cats, cars, and guns. Just because you think you see a person there, doesn't make it so. In fact, the problem of people not recognizing dogs are not human has reached an epidemic level of insanity.
I can honestly say that I have never lost a dime in a casino. I have spent a little money for entertainment, just as some do in a movie theater, but I have never lost money in a casino.
Given that they would be flat pieces of glass, I would assume that keeping food out would be one of the advantages.
The fact that it responds to the slightest touch is one of it's drawbacks. The trend of making laptop touchpads that jump to the middle of the page right in the middle of typing somthing because the pad of your hand slightly touches the surface, or worse yet, some random link gets clicked on a web page while you are typing, is infuriating. The first thing I do with a new laptop is look for a way to turn that off. My wife went so far as to make an on/off button for the touchpad be a litmus test on whether she would consider a model on her recent laptop purchase.
The last thing I want is a keyboard where the slightest touch of my finger starts putting random characters in the middle of what I am typing. So far, touch screens are limited to hunt and peck. Even Swype is just an advanced hunt and peck. Maybe they will have more incentive to fix the flaws with touch interfaces when it is a replacement for a keyboard than they have when it was a replacement for a mouse, but I'm not holding my breath.
No, the virus can go dormant after an infection. Adult or Childhood. The reason that you tend not to see it from adult infections is because shingles is relatively rare, as is people who make it into adulthood without catching the virus. That makes the crossover EXTREMELY rare.
Or, it may have made him grow antlers. The chicken pox vaccine hasn't been around nearly long enough to find out what happens to 40 year olds when they get it as children. Heck, they don't even have good information on what it does to teens when they get it as children.
When my now 6 year old was 1, the peditrician was pushing for a chicken pox vaccine. He insisted that it was life long, although they expected that there might need to be a booster between 18 and 20 years of age. Beyond that alone pushing the dangers of getting the vaccine to be more than the dangers of not getting it, by the time he was 4, it had become completely clear that the vaccine had a very short duration, and they were recommending boosters at 5 years of age.
The found this out when large outbreaks started happening in grade schools where almost 100% of the children had been vaccinated.
So, as the vaccine now stands, it doesn't prevent you from getting chicken pox, it just delays it so that you can get it when it stops being a major inconvenience, but instead becomes a real life threatening disease.
The vaccine would have had a better chance of leaving your father with a full blown case of chicken pox than the much more mild shingles.
There have been some studies that indicate the chicken pox vaccine does reduce the rates of shingles in adults, but that is when it is given to adults who have already had chicken pox.
Yes, there are cases of people having serious problems with Chicken pox. Those cases are EXTREMELY rare. The are so rare, that if your child plays HS football, you have a greater chance of them dying from that than from Chicken Pox.
So, Yes, Chicken pox IS as benign as people think. What isn't as benign as people think is the fact that they are frequently pushing the contraction of the disease out of the safe childhood time to the dangerous adult time.
The Chicken Pox vaccine should be should be reserved for people over the age of 13-16.
The Chicken Pox vaccine has more to do with money than it does with health. Everyone in the chain makes money by pushing the disease off to adulthood, except the child. Parents, Schools, Doctors, Pharmaceutical Companies. I haven't looking in a little while, but just within the last few years, the CDC was citing the parents making more money has a primary reason why they should get their kids vaccinated.
So, a win-win then?
Well, if you get rid of cultural arts, you take care of the monolith by default, since it is a cultural arts project.
While I am cynical concerning Flu and Chicken Pox vaccines, I have a hard time understanding how a sample size of 12 can be seriously considered a "Study".
While "number one threat to internet freedom" is certainly hyperbole, the fact that ChromeOS is DOA, and Apple has successfully push bad ideas out to large numbers of people who then rationalize it as good, I would definitly put Apple's cloud offering as more dangerous than Google's. Not because Apple is more evil than Google, but because it has a greater chance of being implemented than Google's.
Sole, Core, your splitting hairs to make a point that isn't argued. Most of Googles money comes from advertising, and a little comes from other stuff. We agree on that.
I haven't seen any of the threads that largely praise ChromeOS. All the ones I see discount it as too bad of idea to get off the ground.
Either way, the focus on Google based on an article about why Apple's idea is bad, is typical of what Apple fans do. They blame Apples failures on others. In this case, it is an attempt to make Apple's REALLY bad idea seem not so bad because Google's idea is worse.
My Acer Revo cost $180 including the OS. The remote cost me $25 dollars. That puts my price close enough to your $200 as to call it a wash. It looks like the newer models are closer to $350, but they will give you more flexibility. I would never recommend Linux as an HTPC to anyone that wasn't already a Linux user, but Windows 7 pretty much comes ready to go, and comes with the computers. It is no more an extra cost than the software that comes on the Blu-ray players.
The trade off will come mostly in the Blu-ray part of the Blu-ray player. The Revo's don't come with an optical drive, so no playing any optical media on it.
The Revo has the benefit of having actual storage for the media. It also can play a much wider range of media types. It can also get regular Hulu, which for many people is vastly superior to Hulu Plus.
I would say that for someone that REALLY doesn't want to think about the setup at all, the Blu-ray player has a slight edge. For people that want Blu-ray capabilities, the Blu-ray player is a complete no brainer.
For people that don't mind a little setup, the Revo has a little edge, and for people that want flexibility, the Revo is definitely the way to go.
For those with more PCs in the house, one nice feature of the Revo is that it's power requirements are 5-20 watts depending on load. At that, it makes a nice file server for the rest of the PCs in the house. So, even if you went the Blu-ray player route, the Revo might still be a worthy part of the mix so that you don't have to choose between running a 80-100 watt desktop PC 24/7 and having to go boot your desktop to watch movies.
I know this might sound harsh, but take it as one parent's advice to another... You REALLY need to teach your child that there are bad people out their that will try to trick them by offering them 'candy'. The PC is the safest way to teach them that.
It sounds like it is too late for your wife, but now would be the time to teach your kids how to avoid being victims.
I know... Easier said than done. I also know that we all have different priorities on what we put our effort into with our kids.
Google give people what they want by the metric that when people are faced with the choice between Google and other similar products, most people choose Google. They don't choose Google because they feel that it is the only thing they can use. They choose Google because Google gives them what they want. Most people who use Google are specifically rejecting the competitor that is installed by default, and are specifically choosing them.
Most people when faced with Apple products will choose the iPod for MP3 players, but for computers and phones, most people choose their competitors. They do this because their competitors give them what they want.
I will agree that ChromeOS is a bad idea. You will also find that there are very few people who don't think ChromeOS is a bad idea. It is getting universally panned as an idea. So, claiming that Google gets a pass on ChromeOS is a strawman. Most people also see ChromeOS as DOA. Why? Because it is a bad idea.
If you want to talk about Googles core business of advertising it is one thing. They have been pretty up front about what they do with that, and have earned their reputation, even if it is starting to slide a bit. But, pointing out ChromeOS and claiming that Google got a pass is simply dishonest.
And, beyond all of that, claiming that Apple is being picked on because they compete with Google is simply Stupid. Claiming that a bad idea from Apple is getting panned is only being panned because an equally panned idea has come from Google is just bizarre.
It seems that it is a common theme among Apple fans that any criticism of Apple isn't because Apple has done something wrong/poorly/stupid, but instead they are being criticized for being so cool that everyone else is jealous.
This idea is not getting panned because of Google. It is getting panned because the idea that is being rumored is a bad idea. All on it's own.
My first response wants to be that they should be educated on what they are doing. After all, even if it didn't break the computer and in a 'secure' enviornment, that kind of behavior can be very dangerous.
Of course, the reality is that they won't be. They will continue to behave irresponsibly. Likely for their entire lives. They will be totally oblivious to the damage they do to other people. So, the real answer is to approach the problem from that perspective. Having the OS loaded from a server won't solve that problem. They will still install damaging apps that will make it easier to reinstall than fix. "Free smileies" and "facebook" don't go away with a server/terminal install.
Home servers are a simple answer to most of the problems that keep trying to be solved by these questionable services. A nightly clone of the system to the home server is a simple solution that would work at least as good if not better than handing your system over to a company for a fee. Heck, even if you did a remote boot from a home server, you would have a better system than getting it from an external company.
This is in every way shape and form, a suggestion of making trailer parks. The article even says that roads could be used instead of rail in places that have roads. There is nothing new or inovative about this. Heck, they don't even have good trailers. What they show in the article are closer to those crappy trailers they pull in for temporary office space. These guys shouldn't get an award. They should get laughed at.
I'm glad I could help you see the error of your ways.
What you suggest has been available for over a decade. Software that will net boot and restore a system to a pristine state has been available for over a decade. Pretty much the only place I have seen it used is in training centers though. If this is a feature that admins feel is important, and yet they have not implemented it by now, I would question their competence. Buying into a whole new ecosystem to get a decade old feature simply makes no sense.
I am surprised to hear that your wife and kid trash their copy of Windows that often. What do they do to it? I have given my son full access to Ubuntu from the ages of 1 - 4, and Windows from the ages of 3 to 6. Only once have I felt the need to do a reinstall, and that didn't REALLY need to be done. Are they installing random applications off the internet?
That is intellectually dishonest. Google doesn't get a pass because it competes with Apple. Google gets a pass because they have a history of giving users what users want. While Apple has a history of giving users what Apple wants. The users that get what they want are just the subset of the population that happen to want what Apple gives them.
Google MAY do evil in cases where they have little choice if they want to continue to exist. The level of this is debatable. Apple chooses to pioneer evil.
If you paid attention, as Google has grown and has been faced with harder decisions, it has been increasingly taken to task for it's decisions. So, really, Google hasn't been given a pass at all. Google has been viewed as a whole, and so has Apple. Apple just looks much worse from that perspective.
Just make sure your the nettop comes with Windows 7 and get a Media Center Remote. Not only will you have a cool media player completely controlled remote with XBMC, but you will have Netflix with the Media Center software, and you will have TV shows via the Hulu client. All of these controlled with a regular TV remote.
I canceled my satellite service last April. It is the first time in over 30 years that I have not had some form of cable service. My family watches 8-10 hours of TV a day. We haven't missed the satellite channels. The single factor that seems to be a showstopper for people doing this is that you don't get sports.
Didn't you hear? He called us morons. That means physics don't apply.
By that standard, almost nobody uses most of the streets in most cities. Almost nobody uses permits department. Almost nobody uses any perticular park. The list goes on and on. 1% is actually a very high number.
If you can't figure out how to get away from phone noise anywhere, you are a complete moron. I don't believe that you can't though. I believe that you are using it as an excuse to justify why you are an ass to people.
That doesn't change the fact that you argued against a system that still lets people have their contact with other people without noise. Obviously, your belief that the world should adjust itself you you is NOT just about noise. There are other mental disorders at work here.
So, you are one of the assholes from camp 1. When presented with a perfectly reasonable solution that is both convenient and gives everyone what they claim they want, you sat that isn't good enough. You are no better than a vandal and a thug.
Your probably one of the guys that complains and throws a tantrum if someone is having a conversation on a plane instead of bringing a $0.30 pair of earplugs.
Hate to break it to you, but the world is not your personal meditation chamber.
We have about 200k in our city with two libraries.
I would say that 2 or 3 people out of 5000 is a very high number. 2 or 3 people at a time would indicate that you have at least 50 to 100 residents using the facility. That is 1 to 2% conservatively. That is WAY more than the percentage of the population that uses my street. 1 to 2% of the population using a public service is really quite good.