Maybe someone can clear this up for me. Apple drops out of EPEAT because some of their more recent devices can't be recycled. They try to deflect attention by claiming that it doesn't matter if they can't be recycled because they made them using green manufacturing processes. This strikes me as someone saying "it doesn't matter if the brakes don't work because we have a hybrid engine". Secondly, several people have pointed out that you can give them back to Apple to "recycle" but no one ever defines what that means. Every single recycling professional has stated that you can't recycle aluminum that is bonded to glass. Period. Apple does not nor have they claimed to have some magic process that allows them to do what no one else can do in this respect. So what does giving the devices to Apple to "recycle" really mean? Does it mean that Apple just dumps them along the roadside when no one is looking in a cynical "out of sight out of mind" way? Do they "recycle" them by giving them to poor third world countries and let them throw them away? I've yet to see this explained. There is also no economical way to recycle batteries and plastic that have been bonded together. I'd like to hear Apple address this clearly and with out all of the fancy dancing and deflection. To say that we can't meet the requirements for recycling as required by EPEAT but that doesn't matter because we did other "green things" is like saying "filling the landfills with polluting junk is ok as long as we were careful when we made the junk in the first place". It's avoiding the issue in much the same way that the Wizard screams to Dorothy not to look behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. Move along. You're HOLDING IT WRONG!
Learning is a collaboration. The student is paid to teach by getting a job when they graduate. The teacher is paid to teach. When either side fails then the student fails. It's not one or the other. There are way too many students who think that tuition is payment for a passing grade whether they work or not. Life does not work that way.
I completely agree with this. Attrition is not an unfortunate side effect. It is a planned result. When I started in the Engineering curriculum at the University of Illinois, one of my first Engineering classes was a huge auditorium full of hundreds of new students. The Dean of the school stood before the class and announce that 20 out of every 100 people there would fail. He also made it clear that they would not fail because they were not up to the task, they would fail because the grade curve would be adjusted to make sure that 20% of the students failed. The added pressure was supposed to make us work harder I suppose. What it achieved was to convince a lot of people to go straight to their advisers and change majors. I had a similar experience in math courses. Professors that we never saw taught classes by video tape monitored by TAs who didn't give a shit about whether or not you learned the material. It had a lot less to do about learning and a lot to do with "paying your dues". First year classes were more of a hazing experience than a learning experience.
Actually that's not true. Equipment of this type was and is routinely stored in basements as well as entire buildings. I know because I've worked on them for years.
Actually, while 60s era mainframes did require significant maintenance by the time the late 70s came around up-time was much better. I still have a late 70s mini-computer that I keep around for laughs that routinely gets about a year and a half between reboots, running 11 users and multi-tasking for each user. As for features that come and go, the IBM 7030 had instruction pipe-lining and look-ahead (what Intel calls hyper-threading) way back in the 60s. In fact it could have as many as 11 instructions in the pipeline at any time. (Though 4 was typical) That went away in the era of the microprocessor, not because it was a bad idea, but because it wasn't possible to implement in early primitive Intel processors. Only after technology caught up again did it reappear as hyper-threading.
Didn't Star Trek have an episode similar to this? A centuries old war fought by computers and proxy? It only ended when war was made ugly again. The future is here and parts of it scare the crap out of me.
I just received a notice from State Farm Insurance that if I allow them to collect OnStar data I "MIGHT" get a discount on my insurance. Uhhh... yeah... I'll be sure to do that. (NOT) I'm fairly certain that this is only the tip of the iceberg. How long before the car automatically calls the police when you exceed the speed limit?
Actually that's not true. Some grey parrots in particular have shown the ability to use language, combing words correctly to describe things they have never seen before.
It's been my experience that accountants are the people with the most distance between them and reality. A number of years ago I worked for a computer company that was experiencing 30%+ annual growth. The president and co-founder decided to retire. The company moved the CFO into the president's position. Mr brilliant bean counter decided to make the company more profitable by terminating all of the sales force. Those hefty salaries and bonuses were a huge cost center. Now the balance sheet looked all profitable. Six months later the company was GONE and he never knew why sales stopped. He actually said, "but we still have the marketing department. I don't understand." As the years have passed I've seen this kind of tunnel vision from the accounting departments over and over and over. The stories are legion.
It's actually more complex than you know. The problem has many layers. First is the problem of decoding the data and figuring out how that is encoded. It's not just "a pit is a one and no pit is a zero". There's more to it than that. Is it a limited run length code? Is it a Non-Return to Zero code? What parts of the data are information and what parts are house keeping for the file structure? Then add the error correction algorithm. Now you have raw data but what is that data? Is it text? Is it photos? Is it software? Let's say it was video. Now you have to figure out how which of the many video formats and encoding and compression CODECs and algorithms was used. Since none of them would still be in use that won't be easy. Now you have some decoded data but how do you display it? What is the color representation? Is it RGB? Is is CYMK? Is it something else? It is NTSC? Is it raster or some form of vector? Is it interlaced or progressive? What is the frame size? What is the frame rate? In the end, it could take years and many units of currency to figure out what's on the disc and display it.
When NASA found the lost lunar tapes they had no way to read them any more and that wasn't that long ago. They had to find some old tape drives in some guys garage and rebuild them before the data could be recovered. At one time data was stored on 7-track magnetic tape. It was the most widely used standard of the time. Now, unless you can find one of those really rare old drives the information on those tapes is just lost. Then there is that once widely used standard called the 8 inch floppy disk. and on and on...
Marks on paper last for hundreds or thousands of years. Information on electronic media lasts until Apple decides to discontinue it with no notice. This century will, in the long term, be the most undocumented century since the stone age when it's all said and done.
Of course the reason for using cloud based platforms is that they are cheap. Now you tell me that if I want them to be reliable they're not cheap. Soooo.... why use the cloud again? Oh that's right... it's the new buzz word.
You can warm up your car in the winter before going out to sit in an unbearably cold car. Orrrrr.... you can waste your cheating wife by putting her drugged self in the car in the garage and then taking the train downtown. Start up the car once your alibi is established and voila... suicide.
Just saying...
Your basing your argument on the assumptions that she did none of the things you suggest. Verizon also had the option, once they received a summons, to solve the problem out of court. I see that they didn't do that either.
I heartily agree with this. I've seen it in my own former company. Ineffective management things that one programmer is the same as another, so just hire the cheaper one. I recently saw this as my former boss chose a new programmer to replace one that had recently left. AFTER he was hired he discovered that the programmer had never worked in the language or environment that was currently in use. His response was "Does that matter?".
My problem is that my US Representative is Joe Walsh. A bigger idiot, corporate lick-spittle and traitor to the American citizen never existed. Writing to him is a huge waste of time. (I know I've tried.) Calling him is worse. You're lucky if you ever get past voicemail. (I never have.) Joe doesn't want to hear from the "little people". The only way to get his attention is to have "Corp." after your name and a check in your hand.
Your experience with Comcast is very likely related to where you are located. I live in a NW suburb of Chicago. Literally the very worst service I have ever received from any company was from Comcast. Outages that lasted for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Outages several times a year. Technicians that I stayed home for waiting for them to arrive and they never came. Technicians who eventually came to the house and said "I don't know what's wrong" and left, and closed the ticket. (This happened more than once.) Bandwidth that made dialup look like a miracle it was so bad. Two different routers that literaly over heated and melted. (and yes they were in a ventilated area.) Replacement equipment that was used and dirty and didn't work. Comcast screwed with packets that belong to Skype to make sure the quality was terrible. (Oh but their VOIP brand was just fine.) The list goes on and on. It was so bad that I finally dumped my cable TV completely and switched over to AT&T business DSL. Mind you AT&T is not my favorite company either but the service is rarely if ever down and if I have a problem they fix it. DSL at 6 Mbps is better than Comcast 22 Mbps that delivers 150Kbps and is down more than up. So for those of you who have "never been happier with the amazing orgasmic experice that is Comcast"... good for you. I certainly won't be doing business with them again anytime soon.
You'll find much more complete information here. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMZ6GSVYVE_index_0.html Unfortunately Discovery is the web site that turns science into an infomercial complete with annoying ads.
At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I remember back in the late 70's when this was a problem in early designs of mini-computers. Then we used to see single bits get flipped and crash computers from a variety of sources including cosmic radiation and alpha particles that came from the spontaneous decay of elements in the ceramic chip housings. More recently, when I purchased my 2005 Cadillac CTS it experienced a variety of problems similar to this when I would drive through a toll station that was equipped with RFID ID systems. Behaviours including sudden acceleration, engine stalling, indicator lights on the instrument panel going "crazy", On-Star calling for help when nothing was wrong, causing the driver's seat to suddenly drive forward to the steering wheel (making it really hard to steer), etc. At the time the only solution was to pull over, shut off the car, remove the key, open the door, wait for everything to shut down and then restart. After many frustrating weeks of "we can't duplicate the problem" it was discovered that the car had faulty shielding on one of the cables that makes up the in-car network. Once fixed the "gremlins" went away.
The real crime here is that, because the problem can't be replicated on demand, Toyota is blaming the behaviour on attention seeking owners. This bizare response was recently repeated on the floor of Congress by one of Toyota's congressional tools. (I mean duly elected government representative.)
So if I understand the position of these legislators I could properly restate their postion as:
'The big companies pay us money and then tell us what to think. Therefore, we think that the big companies should be allowed to screw their customers anytime they want. If they are not allowed to screw their customers then they might stop investing in their core business. Since we are corrupt shills, we have agreed to support our corporate sponsors in defeating any regulation that might protect consumers from being screwed thus maximizing their profits and our contributions.'
There, that seems more clear.
I suppose by "re-used" you mean reissued. I currently have 3 illegal aliens using my SSN right now. I've spoken to the Social Security Administrtion. They know about these people. They confirmed it. They also told me that they can't do anything about it because they don't pass information to law enforcement agencies. I spend untold hours every year correcting entries into my credit reports from these lawbreaking, bad check writing, no bill paying assholes. It's a great system we have.
For those of you are are just bitter about life in general and need to complain.
Just to clear a bit of fog and confusion. Unlike most of the people responding, I own one so I'm not totally full of crap. 1. $309 seems a bit pricey but then the books don't cost as much as paper book. In fact they cost quite a bit less. Most of the books I've purchased have cost less than $3. Some less. That price also pays for lifetime access to the EVDO network which is used to deliver the content within 2 minutes of purchase to the book. Yes you can do some web browsing as well though that's a bit painful given the interface. The device also plays MP3 files for music while you read or audio books. The screen is electronic paper. No backlight. It can be read indoors or in the brightest sun. No problem. So far the price doesn't seem that bad. 2. If you buy books from Amazon they are DRM encoded. If you don't want to buy DRM books, download any of the thousands of free books available online and email them to the Kindle. That's really all there is to it. If you have PDF files then email them to the Kindle. That works too. 3. You can buy additional batteries. 4. A copy of all of your purchases is archived at Amazon and can be downloaded to a replacement device at any time. They can also be shared with anyone in your family with a Kindle on the same account. Finally, you can keep copies on an SD card that slips into the Kindle or on your PC via the USB cable. (which can also be used to load content.) 5. The battery charge lasts about 2 weeks with the radio off and about 3 days with the radio on. 6. It can do full text search across all of your content. 7. It can look up and define words and phrases. 8. You can annote the books. 9. you can clip content for use elsewhere. 10 etc. etc. etc. It's not a bad deal just because Oprah likes it anymore than it is a good deal becasue she likes it. It's just a decent device at a decent price
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Maybe someone can clear this up for me. Apple drops out of EPEAT because some of their more recent devices can't be recycled. They try to deflect attention by claiming that it doesn't matter if they can't be recycled because they made them using green manufacturing processes. This strikes me as someone saying "it doesn't matter if the brakes don't work because we have a hybrid engine". Secondly, several people have pointed out that you can give them back to Apple to "recycle" but no one ever defines what that means. Every single recycling professional has stated that you can't recycle aluminum that is bonded to glass. Period. Apple does not nor have they claimed to have some magic process that allows them to do what no one else can do in this respect. So what does giving the devices to Apple to "recycle" really mean? Does it mean that Apple just dumps them along the roadside when no one is looking in a cynical "out of sight out of mind" way? Do they "recycle" them by giving them to poor third world countries and let them throw them away? I've yet to see this explained. There is also no economical way to recycle batteries and plastic that have been bonded together. I'd like to hear Apple address this clearly and with out all of the fancy dancing and deflection. To say that we can't meet the requirements for recycling as required by EPEAT but that doesn't matter because we did other "green things" is like saying "filling the landfills with polluting junk is ok as long as we were careful when we made the junk in the first place". It's avoiding the issue in much the same way that the Wizard screams to Dorothy not to look behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. Move along. You're HOLDING IT WRONG!
Learning is a collaboration. The student is paid to teach by getting a job when they graduate. The teacher is paid to teach. When either side fails then the student fails. It's not one or the other. There are way too many students who think that tuition is payment for a passing grade whether they work or not. Life does not work that way.
I completely agree with this. Attrition is not an unfortunate side effect. It is a planned result. When I started in the Engineering curriculum at the University of Illinois, one of my first Engineering classes was a huge auditorium full of hundreds of new students. The Dean of the school stood before the class and announce that 20 out of every 100 people there would fail. He also made it clear that they would not fail because they were not up to the task, they would fail because the grade curve would be adjusted to make sure that 20% of the students failed. The added pressure was supposed to make us work harder I suppose. What it achieved was to convince a lot of people to go straight to their advisers and change majors. I had a similar experience in math courses. Professors that we never saw taught classes by video tape monitored by TAs who didn't give a shit about whether or not you learned the material. It had a lot less to do about learning and a lot to do with "paying your dues". First year classes were more of a hazing experience than a learning experience.
and yet, after going on and on about how good this product is, you never mention WHAT it is.
Actually that's not true. Equipment of this type was and is routinely stored in basements as well as entire buildings. I know because I've worked on them for years.
Actually, while 60s era mainframes did require significant maintenance by the time the late 70s came around up-time was much better. I still have a late 70s mini-computer that I keep around for laughs that routinely gets about a year and a half between reboots, running 11 users and multi-tasking for each user. As for features that come and go, the IBM 7030 had instruction pipe-lining and look-ahead (what Intel calls hyper-threading) way back in the 60s. In fact it could have as many as 11 instructions in the pipeline at any time. (Though 4 was typical) That went away in the era of the microprocessor, not because it was a bad idea, but because it wasn't possible to implement in early primitive Intel processors. Only after technology caught up again did it reappear as hyper-threading.
Didn't Star Trek have an episode similar to this? A centuries old war fought by computers and proxy? It only ended when war was made ugly again. The future is here and parts of it scare the crap out of me.
I just received a notice from State Farm Insurance that if I allow them to collect OnStar data I "MIGHT" get a discount on my insurance. Uhhh... yeah... I'll be sure to do that. (NOT) I'm fairly certain that this is only the tip of the iceberg. How long before the car automatically calls the police when you exceed the speed limit?
Actually that's not true. Some grey parrots in particular have shown the ability to use language, combing words correctly to describe things they have never seen before.
I just reached into my desk drawer and pulled out my SD card with built-in 2 way WiFi that I bought years ago. How is this new?
It's been my experience that accountants are the people with the most distance between them and reality. A number of years ago I worked for a computer company that was experiencing 30%+ annual growth. The president and co-founder decided to retire. The company moved the CFO into the president's position. Mr brilliant bean counter decided to make the company more profitable by terminating all of the sales force. Those hefty salaries and bonuses were a huge cost center. Now the balance sheet looked all profitable. Six months later the company was GONE and he never knew why sales stopped. He actually said, "but we still have the marketing department. I don't understand." As the years have passed I've seen this kind of tunnel vision from the accounting departments over and over and over. The stories are legion.
It's actually more complex than you know. The problem has many layers. First is the problem of decoding the data and figuring out how that is encoded. It's not just "a pit is a one and no pit is a zero". There's more to it than that. Is it a limited run length code? Is it a Non-Return to Zero code? What parts of the data are information and what parts are house keeping for the file structure? Then add the error correction algorithm. Now you have raw data but what is that data? Is it text? Is it photos? Is it software? Let's say it was video. Now you have to figure out how which of the many video formats and encoding and compression CODECs and algorithms was used. Since none of them would still be in use that won't be easy. Now you have some decoded data but how do you display it? What is the color representation? Is it RGB? Is is CYMK? Is it something else? It is NTSC? Is it raster or some form of vector? Is it interlaced or progressive? What is the frame size? What is the frame rate? In the end, it could take years and many units of currency to figure out what's on the disc and display it. When NASA found the lost lunar tapes they had no way to read them any more and that wasn't that long ago. They had to find some old tape drives in some guys garage and rebuild them before the data could be recovered. At one time data was stored on 7-track magnetic tape. It was the most widely used standard of the time. Now, unless you can find one of those really rare old drives the information on those tapes is just lost. Then there is that once widely used standard called the 8 inch floppy disk. and on and on... Marks on paper last for hundreds or thousands of years. Information on electronic media lasts until Apple decides to discontinue it with no notice. This century will, in the long term, be the most undocumented century since the stone age when it's all said and done.
Of course the reason for using cloud based platforms is that they are cheap. Now you tell me that if I want them to be reliable they're not cheap. Soooo.... why use the cloud again? Oh that's right... it's the new buzz word.
You can warm up your car in the winter before going out to sit in an unbearably cold car. Orrrrr.... you can waste your cheating wife by putting her drugged self in the car in the garage and then taking the train downtown. Start up the car once your alibi is established and voila... suicide. Just saying...
Your basing your argument on the assumptions that she did none of the things you suggest. Verizon also had the option, once they received a summons, to solve the problem out of court. I see that they didn't do that either.
I heartily agree with this. I've seen it in my own former company. Ineffective management things that one programmer is the same as another, so just hire the cheaper one. I recently saw this as my former boss chose a new programmer to replace one that had recently left. AFTER he was hired he discovered that the programmer had never worked in the language or environment that was currently in use. His response was "Does that matter?".
My problem is that my US Representative is Joe Walsh. A bigger idiot, corporate lick-spittle and traitor to the American citizen never existed. Writing to him is a huge waste of time. (I know I've tried.) Calling him is worse. You're lucky if you ever get past voicemail. (I never have.) Joe doesn't want to hear from the "little people". The only way to get his attention is to have "Corp." after your name and a check in your hand.
Your experience with Comcast is very likely related to where you are located. I live in a NW suburb of Chicago. Literally the very worst service I have ever received from any company was from Comcast. Outages that lasted for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Outages several times a year. Technicians that I stayed home for waiting for them to arrive and they never came. Technicians who eventually came to the house and said "I don't know what's wrong" and left, and closed the ticket. (This happened more than once.) Bandwidth that made dialup look like a miracle it was so bad. Two different routers that literaly over heated and melted. (and yes they were in a ventilated area.) Replacement equipment that was used and dirty and didn't work. Comcast screwed with packets that belong to Skype to make sure the quality was terrible. (Oh but their VOIP brand was just fine.) The list goes on and on. It was so bad that I finally dumped my cable TV completely and switched over to AT&T business DSL. Mind you AT&T is not my favorite company either but the service is rarely if ever down and if I have a problem they fix it. DSL at 6 Mbps is better than Comcast 22 Mbps that delivers 150Kbps and is down more than up. So for those of you who have "never been happier with the amazing orgasmic experice that is Comcast" ... good for you. I certainly won't be doing business with them again anytime soon.
Seriously. This sort of crap is why I had my cable pulled out and told Comcast to jam it up their corporate asses sideways. Who needs them?
True that.
You'll find much more complete information here. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMZ6GSVYVE_index_0.html Unfortunately Discovery is the web site that turns science into an infomercial complete with annoying ads.
At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I remember back in the late 70's when this was a problem in early designs of mini-computers. Then we used to see single bits get flipped and crash computers from a variety of sources including cosmic radiation and alpha particles that came from the spontaneous decay of elements in the ceramic chip housings. More recently, when I purchased my 2005 Cadillac CTS it experienced a variety of problems similar to this when I would drive through a toll station that was equipped with RFID ID systems. Behaviours including sudden acceleration, engine stalling, indicator lights on the instrument panel going "crazy", On-Star calling for help when nothing was wrong, causing the driver's seat to suddenly drive forward to the steering wheel (making it really hard to steer), etc. At the time the only solution was to pull over, shut off the car, remove the key, open the door, wait for everything to shut down and then restart. After many frustrating weeks of "we can't duplicate the problem" it was discovered that the car had faulty shielding on one of the cables that makes up the in-car network. Once fixed the "gremlins" went away. The real crime here is that, because the problem can't be replicated on demand, Toyota is blaming the behaviour on attention seeking owners. This bizare response was recently repeated on the floor of Congress by one of Toyota's congressional tools. (I mean duly elected government representative.)
So if I understand the position of these legislators I could properly restate their postion as: 'The big companies pay us money and then tell us what to think. Therefore, we think that the big companies should be allowed to screw their customers anytime they want. If they are not allowed to screw their customers then they might stop investing in their core business. Since we are corrupt shills, we have agreed to support our corporate sponsors in defeating any regulation that might protect consumers from being screwed thus maximizing their profits and our contributions.' There, that seems more clear.
I suppose by "re-used" you mean reissued. I currently have 3 illegal aliens using my SSN right now. I've spoken to the Social Security Administrtion. They know about these people. They confirmed it. They also told me that they can't do anything about it because they don't pass information to law enforcement agencies. I spend untold hours every year correcting entries into my credit reports from these lawbreaking, bad check writing, no bill paying assholes. It's a great system we have.
For those of you are are just bitter about life in general and need to complain. Just to clear a bit of fog and confusion. Unlike most of the people responding, I own one so I'm not totally full of crap. 1. $309 seems a bit pricey but then the books don't cost as much as paper book. In fact they cost quite a bit less. Most of the books I've purchased have cost less than $3. Some less. That price also pays for lifetime access to the EVDO network which is used to deliver the content within 2 minutes of purchase to the book. Yes you can do some web browsing as well though that's a bit painful given the interface. The device also plays MP3 files for music while you read or audio books. The screen is electronic paper. No backlight. It can be read indoors or in the brightest sun. No problem. So far the price doesn't seem that bad. 2. If you buy books from Amazon they are DRM encoded. If you don't want to buy DRM books, download any of the thousands of free books available online and email them to the Kindle. That's really all there is to it. If you have PDF files then email them to the Kindle. That works too. 3. You can buy additional batteries. 4. A copy of all of your purchases is archived at Amazon and can be downloaded to a replacement device at any time. They can also be shared with anyone in your family with a Kindle on the same account. Finally, you can keep copies on an SD card that slips into the Kindle or on your PC via the USB cable. (which can also be used to load content.) 5. The battery charge lasts about 2 weeks with the radio off and about 3 days with the radio on. 6. It can do full text search across all of your content. 7. It can look up and define words and phrases. 8. You can annote the books. 9. you can clip content for use elsewhere. 10 etc. etc. etc. It's not a bad deal just because Oprah likes it anymore than it is a good deal becasue she likes it. It's just a decent device at a decent price