Can't really comment on the quality of the hardware
I have a few of these (just purchased a couple of OPi-lite) and they seem to be just as good, hardware-wise, as the Raspberry. I also have a few NanoPi Neo's and the same applies to them.
If either of these two suppliers had software and the support for it, that matched the build quality of their hardware, they would be right up there with the RPi in terms of adoption, popularity and units sold. That is the RPi's only real advantage: its community of volunteers and the ecosystem those volunteers have built around the hardware.
So what is the $200 equivalent of a Patriot missile (ans: one developed for the commercial sector, rather than on military - bottomless pit - budgets)?
If the combat space is going to be filled with $200 drones and $100 wheeled equivalents, then this sort of "asymetric warfare" needs an effective and cheap counter. But then, how do you prevent your adversary fom deploying the same cheap and effective technology against your expensive, offensive, weapons?
Artificial intelligence is highly adept at spotting patterns and making predictions that are much too small and subtle for humans to pick out
But all the patterns that AI extracts are historical. They all assume that the events in the future will be caused by, and will act out, the same things that happened in the past.
We have seen this with computerised trading: that all they can do is find a past pattern of actions and try to fit that to what is happening now and will continue into the future. AIs have no ability to understand when the rules have changed, or when new and previously unseen conditions need to be applied.
The UKs electricity generation often runs very, very, close to its limits in the winter. Mainly due to cost-cutting: why spend money on maintaining plant and excess capacity when it won't be used?
To employ AI to shave further percentage points and thereby run even closer to the limits simply reduces the margin for the unexpected. And being unexpected, you can't blame an AI for not spotting those patterns in the past.
Tim says we've "lost control of our personal data." This is not entirely accurate. We didn't lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley. It is stolen from you every day by people farmers;
Rubbish!
People gave it freely. They do not (still) consider it to have any value - maybe because a lot of it is completely fictitious. Whether that turns out to be mistaken or not has yet to be determined. Apart from the few cases where there has been actual theft, everyone who filled in their personal details for access to social media sites did so without duress. The overwhelming majority seem to have gone far beyond volunteering the bare minimum and some of the stuff that people post is startling in its intimacy.
It could be argued that "the people" don't understand what their personal data means. Why others want it and how it will be used. There is some small truth in that. However, website accounts can be closed, new ones opened. Email addresses are easily changed and online personas bear little resemblance to the actual people they purport to represent.
Yes. I have lost count of the number of times people have been praised and rewarded for fixing some "disaster" or outage. But without anybody ever asking how the problem occurred - frequently at the hands of the very same hero who then "saved" the company.
There seems to be the view in upper management that problems just happen: like earthquakes and floods. There is usually so much relief when the lights come back on (metaphorically) that everything leading up to an outage gets forgotten or forgiven. I even know of some individuals who, if not exactly creating problems, are very happy when there is an issue. Not just because it gives them the opportunity to be a "star", but because all the process-driven and procedural restrictions get tossed, and they have free rein to fix things by any means necessary.
,,, but making it available, is I assume still illegal. Since the originator cannot guarantee that none of the stream's recipients will make and keep (or even share) a copy of the material.
... to make people watch an advertisement before writing a comment. Though the sneaky way to do it would be to let people write the comment and then require them to watch the advertisement before they could commit it. But I expect by then. many would have forgotten what the article they were commenting on was about.
In the UK there is one place that sells them - if they haven't sold out. But they only permit Pi Zero (W) to be ordered 1 at a time.
Since these devices are component level products, limiting their availability (presumably because of limited production runs) makes them next to useless. I don't want a single unit to merely flash a few LEDs. I want one in EVERY hobby device I build. Selling them singly and then having none available for months makes them useless to me - as close as it's possible to get to vapourware without actually being non-existent.
A third reason is that as time has progressed, more content has been pushed only on the internet, not through print media. For web pages to earn their keep they have to attract attention - clicks. We know that fear is a great motivator and with the more "stuff" that people have, the greater their fear of losing it. It also seems likely that since 2001, the western world has been on a fear-driven agenda, which drives out good news.
So simply to compete, websites will promote FUD, warnings, threats. And the race to the bottom goes on with more shrill headlines and reports and more and more FAKE NEWS.
A possible fourth reason is that pre-2000, most tech reporting was intended for technically literate individuals. Ones who implicitly recognised dangers and didn't need them spelled out. But since "tech" has become mainstream, there are far more clueless idiots trying to do stupid things with technology. Maybe the negative articles simply reflect the (far) lower levels of competence among the audience for technology content?
Conferences are basically just a day off. No employer sets any expectations from conference attendance (except maybe to ensure that you bring back the conference material - to prove you actually went) and they seem to be used as treats for the non-essential staff that an employer can afford to be without for a few days.
... because next year they will cost less and perform better.
And the year after, better still
etc.
It is only at the point when a buyer will spend less on buying and running an EV over its lifetime, than the person would spend on buying and running a car that uses petrol or diesel that it makes economic sense.
The next question would be that if your intention is to "save the planet", would the cost difference be better spent on an EV or by being donated to one of the causes advocating less climate change?
(Of course, there is a third reason: to be able to brag look at me, I've got an electric car! Aren't I trendy / environmentally responsible / rich)
we don't have to sit in a plane but instead can sit in a train
So instead of sitting in a sealed container traveling through the air at 500 MPH, you will sit in a sealed container traveling through a tunnel at 500 MPH?
It doesn't seem like there are any benefits over air travel. Though there are many disadvantages. The biggest and most obvious is the lack of flexibility. You have to bore the tunnel and it only goes from one fixed point to another. The cost is enormous and the infrastructure is inflexible (literally and figuratively). Apart from that, tunnels need maintenance, you can't look out the windows, it is expensive to maintain the low pressure. This sort of "tunnel plane" will have all the security drawbacks of a real plane (without the ability to divert to a nearby station in case of an emergency), so we can expect the same degree of security theatre and delays at embarkation.
The only advantage I can see is that this train shouldn't be subject to disruption due to weather (and hopefully, it will be driverless). However, the crushing cost of digging and maintaining the tunnels will ensure that it is only ever going to be travel for the wealthy. The british/french Channel Tunnel - $15Bn at today's prices for 24 miles - should be all the warnings that people considering a project like this, should ever need.
This is one of the main conclusions of research conducted by anti-piracy firm Irdeto
I would have thought that a far higher (almost 100%) of the population would have viewed some pirated material, at least once in their lives.
But if the "survey" came out with a figure even close to 50%, it would be shooting itself in the foot by showing that the behaviour was not considered immoral by such a large proportion of the population that to make it illegal was questionable. And once the "everybody does it" card is played, it becomes impossible for the courts to prosecute, since no jury could, statistically, find against a defendant.
but a lot is going on in the classroom -- there is so much to look at inside it and out the window.
This is a little worrying, since we are told that a rich classroom environment stimulates the young mind. It almost sounds as if we should go back to the drab, austere, classrooms of past decades. That way the children will have few distractions and will be better able to pay attention to their teacher.
Early software was written because the author needed to perform a function that existing software didn't address: either in terms of utility or quality.
The PC magnified this need, with millions being sold but only crappy commercial software to run on it. Whether the free/share-ware in question was a Windows app or a different O/S, the same voids were filled for the same reasons. (If Windows software had started out as low-cost and high quality, would freeware have become so popular? Discuss.)
The argument now is whether that phase is over. Do we have enough apps? Can we (users) do all the things that we wish to, with the software that is available to us, now? Do we prefer to spend 99 on an app that has "star" ratings, user feedback, integrated installation is (almost) guaranteed not to make our hardware die, send SPAM or steal our data - or do we prefer to download something for zero cost and then spend hours trying to configure it and bend it to our will?
When I read the report, the list of mitigations it offers seems like the every-day advice that all computer security outfits continually tell all their users and admins to do.
If the degree of "russian hacking" can be so easily foiled, it doesn't sound much like they were using master criminals or IT experts - just script-kiddie stuff that follows people around the internet every day. One would hope that if they have solid evidence that this originated ONLY from the russian intelligence services that they are a lot more certain of it than they appear to make out here. If that was the case, it seems like the fix is easy and well known.
One also assumes that the US intelligence services are doing exactly the same to the "bad guys" and are getting similar sorts of results.
Of course the more interesting question would be: If this is what they discovered what about all the advanced hacking that they haven't uncovered - both in techniques and targets? If an election can be hacked so easily, what are the REAL experts influencing and stealing?
My recent Amazon deliver resulted in a $1200 (exchange rate equivalent) TV being left in a shop 6 miles away.
I knew it was on its way from the Amazon tracking, but the lovely deliver person at S**R just dropped it where it was convenient and headed on his (or her) way. I got a call from the shopkeeper who found my phone number on the label stuck to the manufacturer's carton, that said exactly what it was. Luckily, he was honest and let me know or he could have had a very nice christmas present.
Even now, 2 weeks later, Amazon still shows the package as undelivered.
After all, there are numerous high-profile billionaires who haven't called it quits despite possessing the luxury to retire
I think whoever wrote this has missed the point.
For these gazillionaires "work" is just another way to pass the time. It doesn't provide them (any more) with the necessary money to live on, so they have other goals for the work they do and the money they earn. Whether that is a rather adolescent "measuring up" contest, a messianic attitude to life, the desire to go down in history as past philanthropists have, or merely to have Mars' capital city named after them is irrelevant.
I would suggest that lottery winners (to take a simple example) who return to work when they have the means to live comfortably are showing a monumental lack of imagination or simply are scared of change - the unknown life of a rich person and the choices it requires. However, for most people the idea of not having to perform in the daily 9 - 5 is all they would wish for.
To achieve a one million - to - one ratio, requires 20 bits.
Now, I'm not conversant with the niceties of contrast ratio marketing (though I don't doubt it IS just marketing). But could this actually be usable, given the bit-depth of TV electronics and the dynamic range of digital video content?
It would also require a viewing room where the ambient light level was below the darkest "dark" from the screen, or the contrast ratio becomes (even more?) meaningless. I do hope this TV doesn't come with an illuminated on/off indicator, as that would surely make a mockery of any real-world experience.
And none of them happened with the over-priced, feature-poor, unreliable, first generation products that were available at the start.
Maybe one day there will be a device that can trace it's origins back to the slow, wobbly, objects that squirt little bits of plastic into barely recognisable shapes that we call "3-D printers". But those breakthrough machines will be much easier to use, they will not be restricted to making the sort of crap that a low-cost foreign manufacturer would be ashamed of and they will be designed to meet an actual need: not as a showcase of "because we can... isn't it Kule?" (answer: no)
Slashdot Mirror
Can't really comment on the quality of the hardware
I have a few of these (just purchased a couple of OPi-lite) and they seem to be just as good, hardware-wise, as the Raspberry. I also have a few NanoPi Neo's and the same applies to them.
If either of these two suppliers had software and the support for it, that matched the build quality of their hardware, they would be right up there with the RPi in terms of adoption, popularity and units sold. That is the RPi's only real advantage: its community of volunteers and the ecosystem those volunteers have built around the hardware.
If the combat space is going to be filled with $200 drones and $100 wheeled equivalents, then this sort of "asymetric warfare" needs an effective and cheap counter. But then, how do you prevent your adversary fom deploying the same cheap and effective technology against your expensive, offensive, weapons?
Artificial intelligence is highly adept at spotting patterns and making predictions that are much too small and subtle for humans to pick out
But all the patterns that AI extracts are historical. They all assume that the events in the future will be caused by, and will act out, the same things that happened in the past.
We have seen this with computerised trading: that all they can do is find a past pattern of actions and try to fit that to what is happening now and will continue into the future. AIs have no ability to understand when the rules have changed, or when new and previously unseen conditions need to be applied.
The UKs electricity generation often runs very, very, close to its limits in the winter. Mainly due to cost-cutting: why spend money on maintaining plant and excess capacity when it won't be used?
To employ AI to shave further percentage points and thereby run even closer to the limits simply reduces the margin for the unexpected. And being unexpected, you can't blame an AI for not spotting those patterns in the past.
A dangerous game.
Tim says we've "lost control of our personal data." This is not entirely accurate. We didn't lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley. It is stolen from you every day by people farmers;
Rubbish!
People gave it freely. They do not (still) consider it to have any value - maybe because a lot of it is completely fictitious. Whether that turns out to be mistaken or not has yet to be determined. Apart from the few cases where there has been actual theft, everyone who filled in their personal details for access to social media sites did so without duress. The overwhelming majority seem to have gone far beyond volunteering the bare minimum and some of the stuff that people post is startling in its intimacy.
It could be argued that "the people" don't understand what their personal data means. Why others want it and how it will be used. There is some small truth in that. However, website accounts can be closed, new ones opened. Email addresses are easily changed and online personas bear little resemblance to the actual people they purport to represent.
Our industry seems to value "cowboys
Yes. I have lost count of the number of times people have been praised and rewarded for fixing some "disaster" or outage. But without anybody ever asking how the problem occurred - frequently at the hands of the very same hero who then "saved" the company.
There seems to be the view in upper management that problems just happen: like earthquakes and floods. There is usually so much relief when the lights come back on (metaphorically) that everything leading up to an outage gets forgotten or forgiven. I even know of some individuals who, if not exactly creating problems, are very happy when there is an issue. Not just because it gives them the opportunity to be a "star", but because all the process-driven and procedural restrictions get tossed, and they have free rein to fix things by any means necessary.
,,, but making it available, is I assume still illegal. Since the originator cannot guarantee that none of the stream's recipients will make and keep (or even share) a copy of the material.
... to make people watch an advertisement before writing a comment. Though the sneaky way to do it would be to let people write the comment and then require them to watch the advertisement before they could commit it. But I expect by then. many would have forgotten what the article they were commenting on was about.
So it's a lot like a slightly more expensive CHIP
More so than you would imagine. getchip.com has been reporting CHIP as being unavailable for months, too.
Since these devices are component level products, limiting their availability (presumably because of limited production runs) makes them next to useless. I don't want a single unit to merely flash a few LEDs. I want one in EVERY hobby device I build. Selling them singly and then having none available for months makes them useless to me - as close as it's possible to get to vapourware without actually being non-existent.
So simply to compete, websites will promote FUD, warnings, threats. And the race to the bottom goes on with more shrill headlines and reports and more and more FAKE NEWS.
A possible fourth reason is that pre-2000, most tech reporting was intended for technically literate individuals. Ones who implicitly recognised dangers and didn't need them spelled out. But since "tech" has become mainstream, there are far more clueless idiots trying to do stupid things with technology. Maybe the negative articles simply reflect the (far) lower levels of competence among the audience for technology content?
Conferences are basically just a day off. No employer sets any expectations from conference attendance (except maybe to ensure that you bring back the conference material - to prove you actually went) and they seem to be used as treats for the non-essential staff that an employer can afford to be without for a few days.
The guy doesn't really seem to have much idea what the purpose of this product is. I'd hate to see how he reviewed Lego
And the year after, better still
etc.
It is only at the point when a buyer will spend less on buying and running an EV over its lifetime, than the person would spend on buying and running a car that uses petrol or diesel that it makes economic sense.
The next question would be that if your intention is to "save the planet", would the cost difference be better spent on an EV or by being donated to one of the causes advocating less climate change?
(Of course, there is a third reason: to be able to brag look at me, I've got an electric car! Aren't I trendy / environmentally responsible / rich)
However, its size will be anything but small. The machine is expected to fill a large building,
That's OK. To (mis)quote Thomas Watson, I doubt the world will need more than 5 quantum computers.
we don't have to sit in a plane but instead can sit in a train
So instead of sitting in a sealed container traveling through the air at 500 MPH, you will sit in a sealed container traveling through a tunnel at 500 MPH?
It doesn't seem like there are any benefits over air travel. Though there are many disadvantages. The biggest and most obvious is the lack of flexibility. You have to bore the tunnel and it only goes from one fixed point to another. The cost is enormous and the infrastructure is inflexible (literally and figuratively). Apart from that, tunnels need maintenance, you can't look out the windows, it is expensive to maintain the low pressure. This sort of "tunnel plane" will have all the security drawbacks of a real plane (without the ability to divert to a nearby station in case of an emergency), so we can expect the same degree of security theatre and delays at embarkation.
The only advantage I can see is that this train shouldn't be subject to disruption due to weather (and hopefully, it will be driverless). However, the crushing cost of digging and maintaining the tunnels will ensure that it is only ever going to be travel for the wealthy. The british/french Channel Tunnel - $15Bn at today's prices for 24 miles - should be all the warnings that people considering a project like this, should ever need.
This is one of the main conclusions of research conducted by anti-piracy firm Irdeto
I would have thought that a far higher (almost 100%) of the population would have viewed some pirated material, at least once in their lives.
But if the "survey" came out with a figure even close to 50%, it would be shooting itself in the foot by showing that the behaviour was not considered immoral by such a large proportion of the population that to make it illegal was questionable. And once the "everybody does it" card is played, it becomes impossible for the courts to prosecute, since no jury could, statistically, find against a defendant.
but a lot is going on in the classroom -- there is so much to look at inside it and out the window.
This is a little worrying, since we are told that a rich classroom environment stimulates the young mind. It almost sounds as if we should go back to the drab, austere, classrooms of past decades. That way the children will have few distractions and will be better able to pay attention to their teacher.
Early software was written because the author needed to perform a function that existing software didn't address: either in terms of utility or quality.
The PC magnified this need, with millions being sold but only crappy commercial software to run on it. Whether the free/share-ware in question was a Windows app or a different O/S, the same voids were filled for the same reasons. (If Windows software had started out as low-cost and high quality, would freeware have become so popular? Discuss.)
The argument now is whether that phase is over. Do we have enough apps? Can we (users) do all the things that we wish to, with the software that is available to us, now? Do we prefer to spend 99 on an app that has "star" ratings, user feedback, integrated installation is (almost) guaranteed not to make our hardware die, send SPAM or steal our data - or do we prefer to download something for zero cost and then spend hours trying to configure it and bend it to our will?
... just so long as nobody develops a robot that can screw up even the simplest of tasks, then blame it on someone else.
If the degree of "russian hacking" can be so easily foiled, it doesn't sound much like they were using master criminals or IT experts - just script-kiddie stuff that follows people around the internet every day. One would hope that if they have solid evidence that this originated ONLY from the russian intelligence services that they are a lot more certain of it than they appear to make out here. If that was the case, it seems like the fix is easy and well known.
One also assumes that the US intelligence services are doing exactly the same to the "bad guys" and are getting similar sorts of results.
Of course the more interesting question would be: If this is what they discovered what about all the advanced hacking that they haven't uncovered - both in techniques and targets? If an election can be hacked so easily, what are the REAL experts influencing and stealing?
I knew it was on its way from the Amazon tracking, but the lovely deliver person at S**R just dropped it where it was convenient and headed on his (or her) way. I got a call from the shopkeeper who found my phone number on the label stuck to the manufacturer's carton, that said exactly what it was. Luckily, he was honest and let me know or he could have had a very nice christmas present.
Even now, 2 weeks later, Amazon still shows the package as undelivered.
"So, are you guys going to be phoning Taiwan again, any time soon?"
After all, there are numerous high-profile billionaires who haven't called it quits despite possessing the luxury to retire
I think whoever wrote this has missed the point.
For these gazillionaires "work" is just another way to pass the time. It doesn't provide them (any more) with the necessary money to live on, so they have other goals for the work they do and the money they earn. Whether that is a rather adolescent "measuring up" contest, a messianic attitude to life, the desire to go down in history as past philanthropists have, or merely to have Mars' capital city named after them is irrelevant.
I would suggest that lottery winners (to take a simple example) who return to work when they have the means to live comfortably are showing a monumental lack of imagination or simply are scared of change - the unknown life of a rich person and the choices it requires. However, for most people the idea of not having to perform in the daily 9 - 5 is all they would wish for.
Now, I'm not conversant with the niceties of contrast ratio marketing (though I don't doubt it IS just marketing). But could this actually be usable, given the bit-depth of TV electronics and the dynamic range of digital video content?
It would also require a viewing room where the ambient light level was below the darkest "dark" from the screen, or the contrast ratio becomes (even more?) meaningless. I do hope this TV doesn't come with an illuminated on/off indicator, as that would surely make a mockery of any real-world experience.
None of these revolutions happened overnight.
And none of them happened with the over-priced, feature-poor, unreliable, first generation products that were available at the start.
Maybe one day there will be a device that can trace it's origins back to the slow, wobbly, objects that squirt little bits of plastic into barely recognisable shapes that we call "3-D printers". But those breakthrough machines will be much easier to use, they will not be restricted to making the sort of crap that a low-cost foreign manufacturer would be ashamed of and they will be designed to meet an actual need: not as a showcase of "because we can ... isn't it Kule?" (answer: no)