Apple's growth is coming to an end as all the rich people have their expensive products and the rest can't afford them or already have one.
I'm not so sure, the Applesauce for brains people I know upgrade their phones every other cycle, buy one of every iPad that comes out, and update their laptops about every 3 years.
Autism, the inability to distinguish what's relevant and what isn't in a given context.
...according to the social norms of the majority. Also known as free-thinking and inventive. Not necessarily better, but different, and when "normal" is screwed up, different at least has a chance of being better.
In the context of asking a bunch of nerds for ideas, saying all homo-sapiens brains work the same is more than a little obtuse.
In theory: they could buy even more foodstuff with their Fairtrade income than they could grow.
The problem is that 'they' is not the same people. The people making the money from the Fairtrade crops are not the same people who are starving. They are farm owners. People who used to buy food from their local farms are not able to because the local farm no longer produces things for sale locally and getting food from further away is too expensive.
Which circles back to distribution and social issues as the root of the problem. Fairtrade _could_ help feed the continent even better than aid-food does, but neither work as well as proponents hope they would.
In our society if it doesn't line the pockets of the rich, the rich loose interest fast.
FTFY. Take power away from the rich and they won't be able to abuse it (as much), also, the near-rich should become less interested in becoming six-sigma-wealthy/powerful and start doing things other than wealth building.
I was to going make some comments about the situation there but everything I wrote sounded racist. How do you address the fact that seems to be a clear pattern of behaviour in that continent that doesn't look like it will ever be solved while the locals are in charge?
Race != Culture.
Exactly. The USA has undergone several cultural changes in the last century: Women's sufferage and Civil Rights for example. People _can_ change. I was born just after the Civil Rights movement, and I have seen the generations shift away from racial prejudice - we're not completely there yet (especially in my town), but compared to 50 years ago, the progress (even in my town) is amazing.
The ask slashdot question was how to solve the soil fertility problem. Not how to solve human nature.
Sorry, didn't read the question (let alone the article), the headline was "How to feed Africa?" and it's much more fun to react to the first thing that tweaks your interest.
When answering "How to feed Africa?", human nature is the problem. Soil fertility could be solved with existing knowledge from any number of sources, researched, correlated to local conditions, optimized for cost.... oops, when you go to implement it, that's when you hit the interesting issues.
Not just that. Initiatives like Fairtrade have made a lot of farmers shift from growing food for local consumption to growing things like roses and coffee for export. Guaranteeing a price above the market value of these crops made them a lot more lucrative.
In theory: they could buy even more foodstuff with their Fairtrade income than they could grow.
"Africa has some of the poorest soils anywhere on the earth". Such a generic statement about a whole continent which contains huge portions of tropical rainforest and grassland is just wrong.
Good soil / poor soil, there's enough growing potential to feed all the people (and animals) on the Continent. The problems are in utilization, management, distribution and elimination of corruption and graft.
If you dumped enough MREs to feed every human in Africa twice over at a port on the coast, I doubt it would ever benefit 90% of them.
I was thinking of the satellites - again, they might accomplish their mission better roving in a Solar orbit rather than stuck around Earth... also, I'm thinking it's going to take more than one or two big solar panel arrays to make any appreciable impact on asteroid tragectory...
You would think $17M would get attention, but I have seen cases with $7M settlements where similar abusers just yawn and say "so sue me."
It took this guy and the ACLU a couple of years to get here, I'd feel ripped off if I only received $170K for two years of seriously disrupting my life.
O.K., so I've run the "convert my Miata to electric power" thought-game a few too many times, and what I almost invariably come up with is:
Stage 1, nice powerful electric motor with enough electrical energy storage to run maybe 20 minutes at full output, or just enough to get to work and back with a comfortable reserve. Plug-in recharge for the daily commute.
Stage 2, for longer trips, fuel powered generator (anything from a nasty cheap generator from Northern Tool, to a small turbine APU) mounted on a trailer - feeds power while traveling.
Works great for the daily commute, can make long trips, and is even better for motorsports because you detach the trailer when you arrive at the track and you don't have to carry a bunch of unneeded battery capacity around with you while racing.
Of course, it looks goofy as hell with the trailer attached, and you'll need a LoJack on the trailer because it's such a tempting theft target.
Obviously intended as a joke, I suppose I should say "never been broken by remote exploit."
Also, to the Offtopic mods - I challenge anyone to find a more meaningful reply to the stated question (which I would liken to: Which Pickup truck is more dependable, Ford, Chevy or Dodge?)
Potential energy varies linearly with height, not with the square of height. Put differently, pressure varies linearly with height, and power is flow rate * pressure, so power varies linearly with height.
Mathematics aside, even if you were correct, I would say "so what?" If the potential is still measured in gigawatts, then it's probably worth looking into. I'll agree it's not a panacea, but it's something nonetheless.
Yeah, I caught myself on that just after hitting "Submit."
Living in Florida, anytime I have looked into micro-hydropower it is the lack of vertical drop (or pressure) that kills it. For any reasonable water flow rate, I come up with total power figures like 6W.
Sorry, I was wrong about the squared term (in hydro power from height, it's linear, but it is a product of the height * flow)... the fusion simulations did quote output varying as the square of the input current....
Slashdot Mirror
Apple's growth is coming to an end as all the rich people have their expensive products and the rest can't afford them or already have one.
I'm not so sure, the Applesauce for brains people I know upgrade their phones every other cycle, buy one of every iPad that comes out, and update their laptops about every 3 years.
Sorry, no, this is Sarcasm... you're looking for Abuse- that's down the hall.
1% of Apple:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/aapl/financials
and, total revenue = 1/7th of Microsoft's 2010-2011 growth:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/msft/financials
I love Linux (lowercase l), and RedHat does good things - worthy of being a going-growing concern. "Winning the war", they are not.
Autism, the inability to distinguish what's relevant and what isn't in a given context.
...according to the social norms of the majority. Also known as free-thinking and inventive. Not necessarily better, but different, and when "normal" is screwed up, different at least has a chance of being better.
In the context of asking a bunch of nerds for ideas, saying all homo-sapiens brains work the same is more than a little obtuse.
In theory: they could buy even more foodstuff with their Fairtrade income than they could grow.
The problem is that 'they' is not the same people. The people making the money from the Fairtrade crops are not the same people who are starving. They are farm owners. People who used to buy food from their local farms are not able to because the local farm no longer produces things for sale locally and getting food from further away is too expensive.
Which circles back to distribution and social issues as the root of the problem. Fairtrade _could_ help feed the continent even better than aid-food does, but neither work as well as proponents hope they would.
Take it one step further: deadly wars.
Better still: government that gives you a choice: exercise birth control or be sent into deadly combat.
Would make a great book, not sure I want to live there.
They think differently, no matter how much BS the Greens and Liberals tell you - people in the 3rd world do NOT think or act like YOU.
All homo-sapiens brains work in the same way.
That is just plain wrong.
In our society if it doesn't line the pockets of the rich, the rich loose interest fast.
FTFY. Take power away from the rich and they won't be able to abuse it (as much), also, the near-rich should become less interested in becoming six-sigma-wealthy/powerful and start doing things other than wealth building.
I was to going make some comments about the situation there but everything I wrote sounded racist. How do you address the fact that seems to be a clear pattern of behaviour in that continent that doesn't look like it will ever be solved while the locals are in charge?
Race != Culture.
Exactly. The USA has undergone several cultural changes in the last century: Women's sufferage and Civil Rights for example. People _can_ change. I was born just after the Civil Rights movement, and I have seen the generations shift away from racial prejudice - we're not completely there yet (especially in my town), but compared to 50 years ago, the progress (even in my town) is amazing.
The ask slashdot question was how to solve the soil fertility problem. Not how to solve human nature.
Sorry, didn't read the question (let alone the article), the headline was "How to feed Africa?" and it's much more fun to react to the first thing that tweaks your interest.
When answering "How to feed Africa?", human nature is the problem. Soil fertility could be solved with existing knowledge from any number of sources, researched, correlated to local conditions, optimized for cost.... oops, when you go to implement it, that's when you hit the interesting issues.
Reduced food production
Not just that. Initiatives like Fairtrade have made a lot of farmers shift from growing food for local consumption to growing things like roses and coffee for export. Guaranteeing a price above the market value of these crops made them a lot more lucrative.
In theory: they could buy even more foodstuff with their Fairtrade income than they could grow.
In practice: Woohoo new plasma TV!
Just like the Westerners.
Because post-WWII Japanese and German reconstruction was a mistake?
Maybe ask them if they want it fixed?
I wonder if rigid geographic boundaries are even appropriate for African governance. They certainly weren't for native Americans.
"Africa has some of the poorest soils anywhere on the earth". Such a generic statement about a whole continent which contains huge portions of tropical rainforest and grassland is just wrong.
Good soil / poor soil, there's enough growing potential to feed all the people (and animals) on the Continent. The problems are in utilization, management, distribution and elimination of corruption and graft.
If you dumped enough MREs to feed every human in Africa twice over at a port on the coast, I doubt it would ever benefit 90% of them.
I was thinking of the satellites - again, they might accomplish their mission better roving in a Solar orbit rather than stuck around Earth... also, I'm thinking it's going to take more than one or two big solar panel arrays to make any appreciable impact on asteroid tragectory...
Agree, no he wasn't, but it is a somewhat valid point, unless these laser wielding satellites can be put out in Solar orbit....
You would think $17M would get attention, but I have seen cases with $7M settlements where similar abusers just yawn and say "so sue me."
It took this guy and the ACLU a couple of years to get here, I'd feel ripped off if I only received $170K for two years of seriously disrupting my life.
O.K., so I've run the "convert my Miata to electric power" thought-game a few too many times, and what I almost invariably come up with is:
Stage 1, nice powerful electric motor with enough electrical energy storage to run maybe 20 minutes at full output, or just enough to get to work and back with a comfortable reserve. Plug-in recharge for the daily commute.
Stage 2, for longer trips, fuel powered generator (anything from a nasty cheap generator from Northern Tool, to a small turbine APU) mounted on a trailer - feeds power while traveling.
Works great for the daily commute, can make long trips, and is even better for motorsports because you detach the trailer when you arrive at the track and you don't have to carry a bunch of unneeded battery capacity around with you while racing.
Of course, it looks goofy as hell with the trailer attached, and you'll need a LoJack on the trailer because it's such a tempting theft target.
If you haven't seen Wall-E, you need to.
Obviously intended as a joke, I suppose I should say "never been broken by remote exploit."
Also, to the Offtopic mods - I challenge anyone to find a more meaningful reply to the stated question (which I would liken to: Which Pickup truck is more dependable, Ford, Chevy or Dodge?)
Thousands of years and it's never been broken.
And, what do your neighbors think about you shading their solar panels?
Potential energy varies linearly with height, not with the square of height. Put differently, pressure varies linearly with height, and power is flow rate * pressure, so power varies linearly with height.
Mathematics aside, even if you were correct, I would say "so what?" If the potential is still measured in gigawatts, then it's probably worth looking into. I'll agree it's not a panacea, but it's something nonetheless.
Yeah, I caught myself on that just after hitting "Submit."
Living in Florida, anytime I have looked into micro-hydropower it is the lack of vertical drop (or pressure) that kills it. For any reasonable water flow rate, I come up with total power figures like 6W.
Sorry, I was wrong about the squared term (in hydro power from height, it's linear, but it is a product of the height * flow)... the fusion simulations did quote output varying as the square of the input current....