True, but don't forget that Apple, Android, and even WebOS have a several-year head start on Microsoft in the mobile space.
Several years.
Not quite. Windows Mobile OS was first released in 2003, and before that was pocket pc(2001?). Windows Mobile has been around longer than any of the other platforms that you mentioned.
In (my) engineering world, if you need the highly complex models that programmers can provide (such as a collision model) then you need much more mathematics than primary and secondary schools can provide, in order to understand the work you're doing.
It seems that teachers continually try to meld computers into homework and into the school day, but I fail to see where anything but formatting in the finished product is improved. More frankly, I've not yet seen any work (5th grade, so far) that would require anything more complex than a typewriter, a library and a dictionary. While they can be provided more efficiently today, there's nothing about a modern primary or secondary education that changes 2+2, or f(x)/(1+x)dx. My opinion (though perhaps faulty) remains that computers aren't needed for most primary and secondary education.
All of that said, my oldest is writing his most recent book report with Lyx, and I expect to buy soon, barring a veto by my spouse, a mindstorms robotic kit for my youngest. (The kid is wicked smart; takes after his lovely mother more than his stunted dad [me].)
. ..they're actually moving back to their old ways.
Maybe this way you speak of isn't so old. The Zaurus line was more popular in Japan than here (in the US). I was using my Zaurus sl-5500 until I bought a Nokia N810.
Sorry that I wasn't clear: I don't approve of what Anonymous is doing. It's clearly illegal, and it's about as mature, as a method of getting your point across, as a child's tantrum. It does nothing to further your agenda, and only pisses off the other party.
Has Anonymous really prevented him from speaking? It seems to me that right now, Anonymous is in the part of the conversation where the more childish of the two tries to shout down the other party. Gene Simmons will still be able to speak (even though he might sound like an asshat).
The trouble is that many firms (at least in the US) have extensive training, libraries, and a variety of AutoCAD add-ons. Although a Mac version is coming soon, for now, AutoCAD only runs on Windows. Further, there's lots of software for which there is no Linux or Mac analogue. While you can get engineering and scientific software for platforms other than Windows, there's too much that you can't get, quite aside from an individual firm's investment in a particular platform.
Ah. I didn't think about that part. This is another difference between the LO/OO.o split and the X.org/XF86 split, isn't it? Conversely, Oracle can simply change the license on OO.o, should they so choose. They own all of the copyright, no?
Didn't the license change drive much of the switch to x.org? I recall, and Wikipedia confirms, that Keith Packard had been trying some of his own things before then, but I don't recall that they were going very far. I thought that his treatment, then the change in license was what made the difference.
So far, OO.o is distributed under the same license. I seem to recall that Fedora (Red Hat) and Ubuntu (Canonical) will support LibreOffice for now, but do they have any obligation to do so? If LO doesn't draw other support, then what will stop them from running, hat in hand (so to speak), back to OpenOffice? What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
For the record, I tend to think that you're right. I'm just not willing to "predict" such an outcome for now. I can see circumstances which could drive it in either direction, or even a third direction, in which there's a great deal of cooperation between OO.o and LO.
Ya know: "native American" is not exactly a monolithic group. Being a descendant of north American aboriginal people, I just decided that I'm allowed to be offended for the entire group called "native American" when the label is misused. Not everybody who was here before the arrival of Europeans practiced "tree burials," so perhaps you ought to be more specific. Sioux tree burials? Nez Perce tree burials? Apache tree burials? Even this list isn't all-inclusive of the methods used in north America (pre-invasion) to bury the dead. [smaller nit to pick: that should really be native American, no Native American, just as it should be western European, not Western European. It's not necessary to capitalize every adjective.]
I'm sorry if the above paragraph is offensive; I don't mean to be. I do, though, dislike general assumptions or statements about aboriginal American peoples. We weren't (and are not) a monolithic culture.
It's a nice idea, but there are one or tworeligions that forbid or strongly discourage cremation. In fact, the preference for burial may (or may not; I didn't attempt a census) include a majority of the world's population. Are you sure that it's the current preference, badger exhumations aside?
I'm going to respond to your comment out of the order you presented.
Since this planetary gearset is what Ford originally patented. ..
Indeed, I don't think that there's anything on the Volt, or the Prius for that matter, that's patentable. I conceived (as have many others long before me) of this general type of drivetrain well before the Volt was an itch in Lutz's pants, so to speak.
Wtf, the planetary gearset IS the mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine.
If the Volt is using the same system, it's violating Toyota-patents on this.
Thanks for muddying the waters for me. Now I'll have to do my own research about the Prius drivetrain.:-)
The point I was trying to make is that the Volt ICE has no mechanical linkage, if GM is to be believed. I don't believe that they have any particular reason to be honest where profit is involved, except when they know that somebody else can provide testimony. It won't take long for some enterprising tinkerer to take this thing apart; if it can be shown that they've lied about the car that they've hyped, then there will be a clear risk to their profits. After their earlier EV, they have lots to lose with the Volt.
The planet and ring gears can also optionally by driven by the engine and a second assist electric motor when needed. . . . not previously known was that the engine can directly give torque to the wheels under certain circumstances (without going through a generator).
I read a Bloomberg article earlier today in which the notion that there is any mechanical linkage between the ICE and the wheels is denied by both a GM spokesman and somebody from 2953 Analytics.
Nick Richards, a GM spokesman, said the Volt always runs on electricity and has no mechanical link from the gasoline engine to the wheels.
The car’s four-cylinder gasoline engine powers a secondary electric motor, which turns the wheels, Tony Posawatz, the Volt’s vehicle line director, said in an interview. The car’s gas engine doesn’t directly power the wheels, he said. GM never disclosed that fact because the engineers saw it as a benefit that boosted the car’s fuel economy, he said.
And later:
“In a Prius, there is no mechanical linkage between the engine and the wheels -- it goes through a motor,” he said. “They use the engine to drive a direct-drive generator to drive the motor. The Volt does the same thing, it’s just that the Volt can run with electric power without an engine longer than pretty much any hybrid right now can.” [Attributed to Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics}
I didn't know that about the Prius. I thought that there was a mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine. Guess that I was wrong.
I saw the chart for the first time last week, when (I think) it was just a day or two old. It was missing at least one brand-new lawsuit even then. At this rate, it looks like it could become somebody's full time job gathering information about these wireless lawsuits.
Ah. That explains a thing or two. The others will still have put a hefty deposit (~$125,000) on something that may not happen, though. (I'm not trying to suggest that it won't, but there's always some uncertainty on future events. What if Richard Branson keels over tomorrow?)
AC is referring to cooperation between government and business. A few years ago, this was highly publicized and resulted in changes in several states' laws.
Here's a delay-based definition of LOS. (There are other definitions for LOS, but I like delay best. It bears the most relevancy to drivers. There's a lot of work that goes into deciding the delay numbers, but that's a pretty good quick definition. Wikipedia has a good definition that goes beyond the HCM definition. I couldn't find any pretty pictures, but this pdf shows approximately what we mean by the different levels of service.
I wish that I could read the article behind the NYT paywall. ugh. If somebody has read it, does the article mention adverse conditions like fog, rain, or even nighttime? What about conditions like snow and ice? If it can only handle calm, clear weather then it's only useful in a small portion of the country.
What brings things to a screaching halt is almost always a trigger: someone merging in a little too soon, et c. What that article said is not quite what you said: traffic capacity is highest when 40% of the drivers are willing to break the rules. There's little measure of efficiency in traffic operations.
Here's an article that discusses the issue. Take a look at the comments after the article, too. The first one sheds some light on the matter. Personally, I think that Adobe was simply scared of the possibility of native support within Office for exporting PDFs. I've worked with folks who use Acrobat for nothing but writing PDFs, and you can be sure that Adobe knows that there are lots of folks spending money on their software for one single feature.
I did the LA->San Jose drive up I5 about once every two months for four years. Maybe it has slowed down in the 10 years since I've moved out to Boston, but on I5 between San Jose and the Grapevine I could usually set the cruise control at 90, and just go for hours. At night, you used to get a bunch of trucks that would all cruise together at about 100.
I've been driving up and down I-5 regularly for the 9 1/2 years that I've lived here, and have never seen a truck doing 100. I was on CA 33 a few days ago, and did see a truck pushing 65. I've never seen any truck on one of the interstates doing any of the behaviour you describe. Are we talking about the same California?
The police must have been clamping down on speeding recently. I can't imagine any other reason for the numbers you're coming up with. Trucks rarely exceeding 55 mph? I never used to see those guys doing anything less than 70. Most of the time they defined the speed of traffic, and they were in a rush. You're not in any sort of official-looking vehicle, are you?
Nope, my car is an Integra; hardly official-looking. It sounds like, as you say, enforcement is much more than it was. Further, CA has experienced huge population growth over the last 20 years, and the freeways are considerably more congested than my wife says they were when she left 18 years ago. (The few times I've seen traffic numbers and been able to compare them to current numbers bears out my wife's hypothesis.)
I rather wish that traffic moved faster on I-5 when it does. The only time I'm on that freeway, I'm typically trying to go a long distance, and would love to go faster. Frankly, though, the cost of tickets here is a deterrent, and it's also just too much of a pain, with so much of the traffic only a few miles above the limit.
I really hate to disagree again, but I must. I arrived home last night (from Sacramento) at 12:30 AM, and had driven the opposite direction at 6:00 AM. There are some drivers that exceed 100 MPH, but that is definitely not the speed of the general flow. Hell's bells, the trucks rarely exceed 55 MPH.
This may be a matter of semantics. I'm a traffic engineer, and the definition of the flow speed is the average speed (or prevailing speed) of all of the cars on the road. . ..or in the case of I-5, where there are clearly two different flows, you might try to gauge the two different average speeds. In no case, though, has the flow speed on I-5 neared 100 MPH.
huh? It sure sounds like you're saying that the flow-of-traffic speed exceeds 100 mph, and that's just not the truth. Unfortunately, I've been in the annoying position of driving up and down I-5 between San Diego and Sacramento. I typically set the cruise control around 85, and find that I'm constantly adjusting my speed to wait for, or maneuver around slower traffic. Further, the truck traffic is so heavy that I think it would be very difficult if a significant portion of the traffic were exceeding 100 mph.
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True, but don't forget that Apple, Android, and even WebOS have a several-year head start on Microsoft in the mobile space.
Several years.
Not quite. Windows Mobile OS was first released in 2003, and before that was pocket pc(2001?). Windows Mobile has been around longer than any of the other platforms that you mentioned.
In (my) engineering world, if you need the highly complex models that programmers can provide (such as a collision model) then you need much more mathematics than primary and secondary schools can provide, in order to understand the work you're doing.
It seems that teachers continually try to meld computers into homework and into the school day, but I fail to see where anything but formatting in the finished product is improved. More frankly, I've not yet seen any work (5th grade, so far) that would require anything more complex than a typewriter, a library and a dictionary. While they can be provided more efficiently today, there's nothing about a modern primary or secondary education that changes 2+2, or f(x)/(1+x)dx. My opinion (though perhaps faulty) remains that computers aren't needed for most primary and secondary education.
All of that said, my oldest is writing his most recent book report with Lyx, and I expect to buy soon, barring a veto by my spouse, a mindstorms robotic kit for my youngest. (The kid is wicked smart; takes after his lovely mother more than his stunted dad [me].)
. . .they're actually moving back to their old ways.
Maybe this way you speak of isn't so old. The Zaurus line was more popular in Japan than here (in the US). I was using my Zaurus sl-5500 until I bought a Nokia N810.
Sorry that I wasn't clear: I don't approve of what Anonymous is doing. It's clearly illegal, and it's about as mature, as a method of getting your point across, as a child's tantrum. It does nothing to further your agenda, and only pisses off the other party.
No, Microsoft did it.
Has Anonymous really prevented him from speaking? It seems to me that right now, Anonymous is in the part of the conversation where the more childish of the two tries to shout down the other party. Gene Simmons will still be able to speak (even though he might sound like an asshat).
some nice applications, including CAD, Arch. . .
The trouble is that many firms (at least in the US) have extensive training, libraries, and a variety of AutoCAD add-ons. Although a Mac version is coming soon, for now, AutoCAD only runs on Windows. Further, there's lots of software for which there is no Linux or Mac analogue. While you can get engineering and scientific software for platforms other than Windows, there's too much that you can't get, quite aside from an individual firm's investment in a particular platform.
Ah. I didn't think about that part. This is another difference between the LO/OO.o split and the X.org/XF86 split, isn't it? Conversely, Oracle can simply change the license on OO.o, should they so choose. They own all of the copyright, no?
Didn't the license change drive much of the switch to x.org? I recall, and Wikipedia confirms, that Keith Packard had been trying some of his own things before then, but I don't recall that they were going very far. I thought that his treatment, then the change in license was what made the difference.
So far, OO.o is distributed under the same license. I seem to recall that Fedora (Red Hat) and Ubuntu (Canonical) will support LibreOffice for now, but do they have any obligation to do so? If LO doesn't draw other support, then what will stop them from running, hat in hand (so to speak), back to OpenOffice? What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
For the record, I tend to think that you're right. I'm just not willing to "predict" such an outcome for now. I can see circumstances which could drive it in either direction, or even a third direction, in which there's a great deal of cooperation between OO.o and LO.
Ya know: "native American" is not exactly a monolithic group. Being a descendant of north American aboriginal people, I just decided that I'm allowed to be offended for the entire group called "native American" when the label is misused. Not everybody who was here before the arrival of Europeans practiced "tree burials," so perhaps you ought to be more specific. Sioux tree burials? Nez Perce tree burials? Apache tree burials? Even this list isn't all-inclusive of the methods used in north America (pre-invasion) to bury the dead. [smaller nit to pick: that should really be native American, no Native American, just as it should be western European, not Western European. It's not necessary to capitalize every adjective.]
I'm sorry if the above paragraph is offensive; I don't mean to be. I do, though, dislike general assumptions or statements about aboriginal American peoples. We weren't (and are not) a monolithic culture.
It's a nice idea, but there are one or tworeligions that forbid or strongly discourage cremation. In fact, the preference for burial may (or may not; I didn't attempt a census) include a majority of the world's population. Are you sure that it's the current preference, badger exhumations aside?
I'm going to respond to your comment out of the order you presented.
Since this planetary gearset is what Ford originally patented. . .
Indeed, I don't think that there's anything on the Volt, or the Prius for that matter, that's patentable. I conceived (as have many others long before me) of this general type of drivetrain well before the Volt was an itch in Lutz's pants, so to speak.
Wtf, the planetary gearset IS the mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine.
If the Volt is using the same system, it's violating Toyota-patents on this.
Thanks for muddying the waters for me. Now I'll have to do my own research about the Prius drivetrain.:-)
The point I was trying to make is that the Volt ICE has no mechanical linkage, if GM is to be believed. I don't believe that they have any particular reason to be honest where profit is involved, except when they know that somebody else can provide testimony. It won't take long for some enterprising tinkerer to take this thing apart; if it can be shown that they've lied about the car that they've hyped, then there will be a clear risk to their profits. After their earlier EV, they have lots to lose with the Volt.
The planet and ring gears can also optionally by driven by the engine and a second assist electric motor when needed. . . . not previously known was that the engine can directly give torque to the wheels under certain circumstances (without going through a generator).
I read a Bloomberg article earlier today in which the notion that there is any mechanical linkage between the ICE and the wheels is denied by both a GM spokesman and somebody from 2953 Analytics.
Nick Richards, a GM spokesman, said the Volt always runs on electricity and has no mechanical link from the gasoline engine to the wheels.
The car’s four-cylinder gasoline engine powers a secondary electric motor, which turns the wheels, Tony Posawatz, the Volt’s vehicle line director, said in an interview. The car’s gas engine doesn’t directly power the wheels, he said. GM never disclosed that fact because the engineers saw it as a benefit that boosted the car’s fuel economy, he said.
And later:
“In a Prius, there is no mechanical linkage between the engine and the wheels -- it goes through a motor,” he said. “They use the engine to drive a direct-drive generator to drive the motor. The Volt does the same thing, it’s just that the Volt can run with electric power without an engine longer than pretty much any hybrid right now can.” [Attributed to Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics}
I didn't know that about the Prius. I thought that there was a mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine. Guess that I was wrong.
I saw the chart for the first time last week, when (I think) it was just a day or two old. It was missing at least one brand-new lawsuit even then. At this rate, it looks like it could become somebody's full time job gathering information about these wireless lawsuits.
Ah. That explains a thing or two. The others will still have put a hefty deposit (~$125,000) on something that may not happen, though. (I'm not trying to suggest that it won't, but there's always some uncertainty on future events. What if Richard Branson keels over tomorrow?)
$45,000,000/300=~$150,000. Sounds more like they've already bought a ride than just put down a deposit.
AC is referring to cooperation between government and business. A few years ago, this was highly publicized and resulted in changes in several states' laws.
Here's a delay-based definition of LOS. (There are other definitions for LOS, but I like delay best. It bears the most relevancy to drivers. There's a lot of work that goes into deciding the delay numbers, but that's a pretty good quick definition. Wikipedia has a good definition that goes beyond the HCM definition. I couldn't find any pretty pictures, but this pdf shows approximately what we mean by the different levels of service.
I wish that I could read the article behind the NYT paywall. ugh. If somebody has read it, does the article mention adverse conditions like fog, rain, or even nighttime? What about conditions like snow and ice? If it can only handle calm, clear weather then it's only useful in a small portion of the country.
What brings things to a screaching halt is almost always a trigger: someone merging in a little too soon, et c. What that article said is not quite what you said: traffic capacity is highest when 40% of the drivers are willing to break the rules. There's little measure of efficiency in traffic operations.
Here's an article that discusses the issue. Take a look at the comments after the article, too. The first one sheds some light on the matter. Personally, I think that Adobe was simply scared of the possibility of native support within Office for exporting PDFs. I've worked with folks who use Acrobat for nothing but writing PDFs, and you can be sure that Adobe knows that there are lots of folks spending money on their software for one single feature.
I know architects from the west coast, who spend a good deal of time in Beijing these days.
I did the LA->San Jose drive up I5 about once every two months for four years. Maybe it has slowed down in the 10 years since I've moved out to Boston, but on I5 between San Jose and the Grapevine I could usually set the cruise control at 90, and just go for hours. At night, you used to get a bunch of trucks that would all cruise together at about 100.
I've been driving up and down I-5 regularly for the 9 1/2 years that I've lived here, and have never seen a truck doing 100. I was on CA 33 a few days ago, and did see a truck pushing 65. I've never seen any truck on one of the interstates doing any of the behaviour you describe. Are we talking about the same California?
The police must have been clamping down on speeding recently. I can't imagine any other reason for the numbers you're coming up with. Trucks rarely exceeding 55 mph? I never used to see those guys doing anything less than 70. Most of the time they defined the speed of traffic, and they were in a rush. You're not in any sort of official-looking vehicle, are you?
Nope, my car is an Integra; hardly official-looking. It sounds like, as you say, enforcement is much more than it was. Further, CA has experienced huge population growth over the last 20 years, and the freeways are considerably more congested than my wife says they were when she left 18 years ago. (The few times I've seen traffic numbers and been able to compare them to current numbers bears out my wife's hypothesis.)
I rather wish that traffic moved faster on I-5 when it does. The only time I'm on that freeway, I'm typically trying to go a long distance, and would love to go faster. Frankly, though, the cost of tickets here is a deterrent, and it's also just too much of a pain, with so much of the traffic only a few miles above the limit.
I really hate to disagree again, but I must. I arrived home last night (from Sacramento) at 12:30 AM, and had driven the opposite direction at 6:00 AM. There are some drivers that exceed 100 MPH, but that is definitely not the speed of the general flow. Hell's bells, the trucks rarely exceed 55 MPH.
This may be a matter of semantics. I'm a traffic engineer, and the definition of the flow speed is the average speed (or prevailing speed) of all of the cars on the road. . . .or in the case of I-5, where there are clearly two different flows, you might try to gauge the two different average speeds. In no case, though, has the flow speed on I-5 neared 100 MPH.
huh? It sure sounds like you're saying that the flow-of-traffic speed exceeds 100 mph, and that's just not the truth. Unfortunately, I've been in the annoying position of driving up and down I-5 between San Diego and Sacramento. I typically set the cruise control around 85, and find that I'm constantly adjusting my speed to wait for, or maneuver around slower traffic. Further, the truck traffic is so heavy that I think it would be very difficult if a significant portion of the traffic were exceeding 100 mph.
I wonder if that's why these guys changed their name from ebox to zentyal?