keep track of the window and the time and tell the students it's being tracked. If they switch tasks or change the windows size during the test at any time, it will be logged and they'll lose 10% for each minute of the infraction.
Another option is to disable the network(ipdown?) for the duration of the test and test for it during the exam. if it comes up at any time, shut it down and log it and the processes running to see if a browser or some user action caused it.
From what I've heard, the hybrids are allowed only because of a clause in the license says something about being predominantly powered by electric power and the Toyota hybrids are 49% EV and 51% ICE powered.
in full EV's it's not just storage/weight ratio which is important, cost is also a big factor.
and some companies spent lots of their profits fighting new ideas and stomping them out. Read the book "StartUp" for an old look at how Microsoft stomped out the first tablet computer company almost 20 years ago. Then there's the oil industry and how they purchased the patent to NiMH batteries and won't let them be used in electric cars. Kodak just let the world pass them by and that's ok in some regards because they didn't prevent new ideas and products from having a chance in the market like a few others have. There's another book out called something like "The Innovators Dilemma" which addresses how new ideas can replace slow to change large companies. No doubt Bill Gates has read that one and told Steve Ballmer about it.
CM7 will give the Nook Color USB Host? Well then wouldn't a USB webcam/mic combo solve the camera and mic problem for video conferencing at least. Interesting.
kindle fire is the in-between? it's locked to Amazon, has almost no local working memory and no SD slot. For $50 more the Nook Tablet or for the same price the older Nook Color are real tablets as opposed to the limited Amazon cloud device the Fire is.
I'm not sure if it's because people don't know about the Nook(s) or what but it sure seems Amazon gets the press when the Nook seems to be the real ebook tablet. And it's been on the market for a year now already(Nook Color).
Other than that, you're spot on about the display and touch and in some cases the packaging/case are most of the cost of the high end devices. Now, if only the original Transformer will come down in price.
Don't be so sure about that hardware being the "resource limit" although it could very well be the case. Microsoft requires you pay a per device/client access fee and it could be they are exceeding what they paid for. The number of Microsoft Client Access Licenses( CAL ) to connect to the Microsoft Exchange Server wasn't listed and they are being pretty vague as to what "resource" limits are being reached.
Microsoft executives learned long ago that once they had the monopoly on desktop OS's and therefore the developers, if they made their system "unique" enough it would be very difficult and expensive to make Windows programs run on other operating systems. You don't get an elegant design from that business model and you never will.
Remember, the threat of cross platform development was the reason Microsoft went against OOP and build a layered interface based system. Abstraction was a threat to keeping developers tied to their APIs. They were quite aggressive at putting the cross platform C++ frameworks vendors out of business.
Just about the time Smalltalk was finally picking up steam along came Java and it's piggy back on the Internet( ie buzz ). But it was not long before that cross platform system was declared a threat to Windows and Microsoft went and did their own version even though they signed documents and licenses saying they would not. It took years for Sun to settle that and by then Microsoft had gutted Borland of it's top language engineers and directed them to come up with a competitor to Java and patented the stuff developers would find useful. They paid a "standards" org to declare part of their system an industry standard but you couldn't do much of any thing cross platform on what was even hinted as being open.
We'll never see Microsoft act anything like what it would have taken for them to adopt *ix practices because they exist only because they have a monopoly and they build everything to tightly tie developers to their platform. So if the current trend toward handhelds and portable devices continues it'll still be a very long time before Microsoft becomes a footnote and therefore it'll still be a very long time before those non-*ix systems such as theirs goes away. And remember, they have lots of cash to buy their way into lots of places. Over a billion for Nokia and for what? Windows Phone 7 is still with low single digit market share and then they'll be talking about Windows 8 and that'll be quite bloated compared to the Windows CE based WP7. But they've got like $50 billion in cash so they have enough for a very long time.
haven't they been using their own Chai( JVM clean room implementation ) in their higher end printers for some time now? My guess is that having something like WebOS on their printers would give them a nice jump up to to somewhat modern times/software since they've been the only ones working with/on Chai for its lifetime.
history: HP had Chai and a 100% Java PIM platform on a Linux kernel running on one of their Jornada handhelds. When it was time to market it the project was shuttered because if they shipped it, they'd lose all the profits they got from Microsoft Marketing Programs. ie Microsoft was paying HP to ship WindowsCE on their handhelds and the loss of that was greater than the potential profits from doing their own Linux/JVM based platform. This was around the 2000 or 2001 timeframe. Chai ended up in lots of their printers and that was about it.
the reason is that the mouse driver needed a connection to the internet to get updates. To think that there would have to be a server on an isolated LAN where tested and approved updates would reside is just silly talk and paranoia. And besides, everyone else does it this way. I've heard that one too.
they are on a hunt for patentable material based on Kinect. who better to suck the life out of than tiny startups who'll walk away happy to have seen Microsoft's campus. Seriously, $20,000 is considering backing startups?
if it has disc brakes, I've seen some pretty nice locks which go into a hole on the disc so it's easily portable.
as others have said, being able to lock to a fixed object is best. Next would be motion based alarm and then the last resort might be a full on GPS-GSM tracking system. Or you could wire some electric shock system to the seat and handlebars triggered by the motion sensor. When you hear ambulance sirens, go back to your bike and watch them pick up the convulsing would be thief. Don't forget the warning label.
isn't it pathetic that after all these years of having handheld computers(Palm,WinCe, and Linux Zaurus) with I/O connectors being used for all sorts of things our "smart" phones have nothing standard but a audio jack.
Besides reminding me of some of the Zaurus based robots around 10 years ago I'm also wondering why not use bluetooth between the phone and robot and wifi for CC(command and control)?
here's one of the old Zaurus based bots: http://robotbox.net/project/dahlag/zaurbot
check to see how many of those who did sign, and signed quickly, have some kind of tie to Microsoft Windows. Also notice that Motorola publicly stated they would no longer do Windows CE/PocketPC/Mobile/etc and B&N does not ship any Windows based products. You should notice that most of those who signed sell products which require them to have a Microsoft Windows license of some sort and therefore not only was their leverage but also a means to make it easy if Microsoft wanted to. They can make it easy by charging them say $15/license for Android devices but then pay them an equal or greater amount for putting some kind of Microsoft logo on something else. Marketing kick backs are a feature of doing businesses with Microsoft.
I figure someone told some employees at Microsoft to start looking for things to patent which would require a Kinect type device. This is what they've come up with. More proof they are a bumbling bunch of idiots. IMO
Steve got railed by the PC segment back in the day and may have wanted to say efu and do an Apple only phone network too. But, the telco's are not known for fairness or general customer service and control the device makers by how they tie the phone to contracts. So Steve could have been trying to say screw that also. I know Google tried to break that telco-device tie in the US but it failed.
I'm going to figure that because it was early on in the iPhone development, it was Steve being Steve and wanting to move his monoculture into the phone segment.
ah so the patent owner( oil company ) was stopping Toyota from making high capacity NiMH batteries for EVs to protect the consumer from problems. I don't buy it. Compared to lithium, research and development of NiMH batteries has all but stopped because of who owns the patent and how they prevent vendors from making and selling large capacity cells.
all those things you mention might be problems in certain situations but that's it. We have cars sitting parked for over 8 hours every night so recharging in 1 hour is not a big limiter. Efficiency could be a problem but we'll never know because the technology can't be used in EVs so nobody is working on the problems.
Just as the hydrogen illusion was a distraction to delay progress so too was the purchase of the NiMH battery patents. Lets wait another 5+ years and hope something better is more affordable. Like those $1 million hydrogen fuel cell prototypes which were all over the place. It doesn't change the facts that NiMH was removed from the market for EVs by the oil companies. Well played guys and you may be continuing to get filthy rich but lots of people would still spit on you given the chance for your slimmy ways of doing business and slowing progress. IMO
I only know of 2 EVs which ran on NiMH and they are the EV1 later updated to NiMH and the Toyota Rav 4 EV which Toyota and Panasonic were sued for making the A95(?) NiMH battery and had to pull it from the market. If you know any real world EV usage please post them. Otherwise we see NiMH in hybrids with 10 year warranties but they are not deeply discharged as EVs might be inclined to do. I would call a $200/kWh jump from $300/kWh a large jump so unless it has close to 2x the capacity it's a big added cost.
Just as the hybrid is a step to full EV usage, NiMH could have been a step in that direction but it was a threat to their oil business and GM decided they deserved to control that element of the EV market. So, we don't know how well NiMH could really be because there's little development going on there compared to lithium technologies.
just like the ones for the back of your cell phone only bigger so they can communicate with their soon to be launched space station. Zoom in and you'll see a guy sitting in a bamboo chair with a radio in the upper left corner of the sticker.
that bit about the steel bothered me too. it takes no steel at all and even plastic or a stick or anything for that matter can cause the runaway chem reaction. It's about damaging the cell integrity and that bit about steel gives the impression there's a conductive element to this and that's not true. Steel will make it easier to cause a runaway chem reaction but it's not required.
Two people locally lost personal property( a car and a house ) to Li based battery runaways. One from poor charging regiment(the house) and the other from a crash landing in a fiberglass and balsa R/C airplane(the car).
FYI, the Prius battery is covered for 10 years and if you still have your car after that and when it finally does go bad, you can replace it yourself with a rebuilt battery pack for under $1,500 or probably double that if you must have someone else follow simple directions and turn a wrench and remove a few bolts. From what I've seen with our 2001 Prius, maintenance costs are far less than a normal car. We've not even had to change the brake pads yet after 100,000 miles thanks to regenerative braking. Oil changes after 5,000+ miles sill result in golden honey colored oil most likely because the engine can run with less heavy loading because there's a battery/motor to help take loads and the starting is done in a gradual manner.
FYI #2, almost all hybrids use NiMH batteries because they are allowed to by the oil industry. Mobil owns the patent for a few more years and allows NiMH in vehicles not primarily powered by electric power( ie hybrids ). They are not big, not heavy, not expensive and not explosive. Lithium batteries do pack more power density than NiMH but they are expensive and explosive as you mentioned. But Mobile will not let even GM use NiMH batteries in their next generation EV( Volt ). Did you know GM once owned the patent for NiMH and then sold it to Texaco( merged with Mobil shortly after )? Go and watch any of the interviews of GMs Bob Lutz and watch him stay WAY clear of mentioning NiMH batteries and only compare the Li batteries to Pb even though NiMH batteries were used in the EV1 and gave it 125 miles of range.
I agree with the OP though, Americans are nancies and mostly because we're way ignorant of what goes on around us. The specialization techniques which run up costs and dumb down employees feeds this.
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keep track of the window and the time and tell the students it's being tracked. If they switch tasks or change the windows size during the test at any time, it will be logged and they'll lose 10% for each minute of the infraction.
Another option is to disable the network(ipdown?) for the duration of the test and test for it during the exam. if it comes up at any time, shut it down and log it and the processes running to see if a browser or some user action caused it.
LoB
From what I've heard, the hybrids are allowed only because of a clause in the license says something about being predominantly powered by electric power and the Toyota hybrids are 49% EV and 51% ICE powered.
in full EV's it's not just storage/weight ratio which is important, cost is also a big factor.
LoB
that's it. thanks
LoB
and some companies spent lots of their profits fighting new ideas and stomping them out. Read the book "StartUp" for an old look at how Microsoft stomped out the first tablet computer company almost 20 years ago. Then there's the oil industry and how they purchased the patent to NiMH batteries and won't let them be used in electric cars. Kodak just let the world pass them by and that's ok in some regards because they didn't prevent new ideas and products from having a chance in the market like a few others have. There's another book out called something like "The Innovators Dilemma" which addresses how new ideas can replace slow to change large companies. No doubt Bill Gates has read that one and told Steve Ballmer about it.
LoB
CM7 will give the Nook Color USB Host? Well then wouldn't a USB webcam/mic combo solve the camera and mic problem for video conferencing at least. Interesting.
LoB
kindle fire is the in-between? it's locked to Amazon, has almost no local working memory and no SD slot. For $50 more the Nook Tablet or for the same price the older Nook Color are real tablets as opposed to the limited Amazon cloud device the Fire is.
I'm not sure if it's because people don't know about the Nook(s) or what but it sure seems Amazon gets the press when the Nook seems to be the real ebook tablet. And it's been on the market for a year now already(Nook Color).
Other than that, you're spot on about the display and touch and in some cases the packaging/case are most of the cost of the high end devices. Now, if only the original Transformer will come down in price.
LoB
Don't be so sure about that hardware being the "resource limit" although it could very well be the case. Microsoft requires you pay a per device/client access fee and it could be they are exceeding what they paid for. The number of Microsoft Client Access Licenses( CAL ) to connect to the Microsoft Exchange Server wasn't listed and they are being pretty vague as to what "resource" limits are being reached.
LoB
Microsoft executives learned long ago that once they had the monopoly on desktop OS's and therefore the developers, if they made their system "unique" enough it would be very difficult and expensive to make Windows programs run on other operating systems. You don't get an elegant design from that business model and you never will.
Remember, the threat of cross platform development was the reason Microsoft went against OOP and build a layered interface based system. Abstraction was a threat to keeping developers tied to their APIs. They were quite aggressive at putting the cross platform C++ frameworks vendors out of business.
Just about the time Smalltalk was finally picking up steam along came Java and it's piggy back on the Internet( ie buzz ). But it was not long before that cross platform system was declared a threat to Windows and Microsoft went and did their own version even though they signed documents and licenses saying they would not. It took years for Sun to settle that and by then Microsoft had gutted Borland of it's top language engineers and directed them to come up with a competitor to Java and patented the stuff developers would find useful. They paid a "standards" org to declare part of their system an industry standard but you couldn't do much of any thing cross platform on what was even hinted as being open.
We'll never see Microsoft act anything like what it would have taken for them to adopt *ix practices because they exist only because they have a monopoly and they build everything to tightly tie developers to their platform. So if the current trend toward handhelds and portable devices continues it'll still be a very long time before Microsoft becomes a footnote and therefore it'll still be a very long time before those non-*ix systems such as theirs goes away. And remember, they have lots of cash to buy their way into lots of places. Over a billion for Nokia and for what? Windows Phone 7 is still with low single digit market share and then they'll be talking about Windows 8 and that'll be quite bloated compared to the Windows CE based WP7. But they've got like $50 billion in cash so they have enough for a very long time.
LoB
that's why there's been a push toward SSD HD's. ;-)
LoB
haven't they been using their own Chai( JVM clean room implementation ) in their higher end printers for some time now? My guess is that having something like WebOS on their printers would give them a nice jump up to to somewhat modern times/software since they've been the only ones working with/on Chai for its lifetime.
history: HP had Chai and a 100% Java PIM platform on a Linux kernel running on one of their Jornada handhelds. When it was time to market it the project was shuttered because if they shipped it, they'd lose all the profits they got from Microsoft Marketing Programs. ie Microsoft was paying HP to ship WindowsCE on their handhelds and the loss of that was greater than the potential profits from doing their own Linux/JVM based platform. This was around the 2000 or 2001 timeframe. Chai ended up in lots of their printers and that was about it.
LoB
the reason is that the mouse driver needed a connection to the internet to get updates. To think that there would have to be a server on an isolated LAN where tested and approved updates would reside is just silly talk and paranoia. And besides, everyone else does it this way. I've heard that one too.
LoB
they are on a hunt for patentable material based on Kinect. who better to suck the life out of than tiny startups who'll walk away happy to have seen Microsoft's campus. Seriously, $20,000 is considering backing startups?
LoB
if it has disc brakes, I've seen some pretty nice locks which go into a hole on the disc so it's easily portable.
as others have said, being able to lock to a fixed object is best. Next would be motion based alarm and then the last resort might be a full on GPS-GSM tracking system. Or you could wire some electric shock system to the seat and handlebars triggered by the motion sensor. When you hear ambulance sirens, go back to your bike and watch them pick up the convulsing would be thief. Don't forget the warning label.
LoB
bluetooth then since standard USB is not an option here in 2011.
LoB
isn't it pathetic that after all these years of having handheld computers(Palm,WinCe, and Linux Zaurus) with I/O connectors being used for all sorts of things our "smart" phones have nothing standard but a audio jack.
Besides reminding me of some of the Zaurus based robots around 10 years ago I'm also wondering why not use bluetooth between the phone and robot and wifi for CC(command and control)?
here's one of the old Zaurus based bots:
http://robotbox.net/project/dahlag/zaurbot
LoB
check to see how many of those who did sign, and signed quickly, have some kind of tie to Microsoft Windows. Also notice that Motorola publicly stated they would no longer do Windows CE/PocketPC/Mobile/etc and B&N does not ship any Windows based products. You should notice that most of those who signed sell products which require them to have a Microsoft Windows license of some sort and therefore not only was their leverage but also a means to make it easy if Microsoft wanted to. They can make it easy by charging them say $15/license for Android devices but then pay them an equal or greater amount for putting some kind of Microsoft logo on something else. Marketing kick backs are a feature of doing businesses with Microsoft.
LoB
I figure someone told some employees at Microsoft to start looking for things to patent which would require a Kinect type device. This is what they've come up with. More proof they are a bumbling bunch of idiots. IMO
LoB
if you say Win 8 really fast it sounds like Wait. Just saying.
LoB
Steve got railed by the PC segment back in the day and may have wanted to say efu and do an Apple only phone network too. But, the telco's are not known for fairness or general customer service and control the device makers by how they tie the phone to contracts. So Steve could have been trying to say screw that also. I know Google tried to break that telco-device tie in the US but it failed.
I'm going to figure that because it was early on in the iPhone development, it was Steve being Steve and wanting to move his monoculture into the phone segment.
LoB
ah so the patent owner( oil company ) was stopping Toyota from making high capacity NiMH batteries for EVs to protect the consumer from problems. I don't buy it. Compared to lithium, research and development of NiMH batteries has all but stopped because of who owns the patent and how they prevent vendors from making and selling large capacity cells.
all those things you mention might be problems in certain situations but that's it. We have cars sitting parked for over 8 hours every night so recharging in 1 hour is not a big limiter. Efficiency could be a problem but we'll never know because the technology can't be used in EVs so nobody is working on the problems.
Just as the hydrogen illusion was a distraction to delay progress so too was the purchase of the NiMH battery patents. Lets wait another 5+ years and hope something better is more affordable. Like those $1 million hydrogen fuel cell prototypes which were all over the place. It doesn't change the facts that NiMH was removed from the market for EVs by the oil companies. Well played guys and you may be continuing to get filthy rich but lots of people would still spit on you given the chance for your slimmy ways of doing business and slowing progress. IMO
LoB
I only know of 2 EVs which ran on NiMH and they are the EV1 later updated to NiMH and the Toyota Rav 4 EV which Toyota and Panasonic were sued for making the A95(?) NiMH battery and had to pull it from the market. If you know any real world EV usage please post them. Otherwise we see NiMH in hybrids with 10 year warranties but they are not deeply discharged as EVs might be inclined to do. I would call a $200/kWh jump from $300/kWh a large jump so unless it has close to 2x the capacity it's a big added cost.
Just as the hybrid is a step to full EV usage, NiMH could have been a step in that direction but it was a threat to their oil business and GM decided they deserved to control that element of the EV market. So, we don't know how well NiMH could really be because there's little development going on there compared to lithium technologies.
LoB
just like the ones for the back of your cell phone only bigger so they can communicate with their soon to be launched space station. Zoom in and you'll see a guy sitting in a bamboo chair with a radio in the upper left corner of the sticker.
LoB
that bit about the steel bothered me too. it takes no steel at all and even plastic or a stick or anything for that matter can cause the runaway chem reaction. It's about damaging the cell integrity and that bit about steel gives the impression there's a conductive element to this and that's not true. Steel will make it easier to cause a runaway chem reaction but it's not required.
Two people locally lost personal property( a car and a house ) to Li based battery runaways. One from poor charging regiment(the house) and the other from a crash landing in a fiberglass and balsa R/C airplane(the car).
LoB
oh the humanity!
LoB
FYI, the Prius battery is covered for 10 years and if you still have your car after that and when it finally does go bad, you can replace it yourself with a rebuilt battery pack for under $1,500 or probably double that if you must have someone else follow simple directions and turn a wrench and remove a few bolts. From what I've seen with our 2001 Prius, maintenance costs are far less than a normal car. We've not even had to change the brake pads yet after 100,000 miles thanks to regenerative braking. Oil changes after 5,000+ miles sill result in golden honey colored oil most likely because the engine can run with less heavy loading because there's a battery/motor to help take loads and the starting is done in a gradual manner.
FYI #2, almost all hybrids use NiMH batteries because they are allowed to by the oil industry. Mobil owns the patent for a few more years and allows NiMH in vehicles not primarily powered by electric power( ie hybrids ). They are not big, not heavy, not expensive and not explosive. Lithium batteries do pack more power density than NiMH but they are expensive and explosive as you mentioned. But Mobile will not let even GM use NiMH batteries in their next generation EV( Volt ). Did you know GM once owned the patent for NiMH and then sold it to Texaco( merged with Mobil shortly after )? Go and watch any of the interviews of GMs Bob Lutz and watch him stay WAY clear of mentioning NiMH batteries and only compare the Li batteries to Pb even though NiMH batteries were used in the EV1 and gave it 125 miles of range.
I agree with the OP though, Americans are nancies and mostly because we're way ignorant of what goes on around us. The specialization techniques which run up costs and dumb down employees feeds this.
LoB