Anonymous is everyone you depend on. They're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. They make your bed. They guard you while you're asleep. They drive the ambulances. They direct your call. They are cooks and taxi drivers and they know everything about you. They process your insurance claims and credit card charges. They control every part of your life.
"They are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday they'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but they won't. And they're just learning this fact."
While poetic, that's not very true (I realize you probably know this, but I feel like I should chime in). Yes, I know that's just an interesting quote from Fight Club, but its not accurate for 4chan's anon. 4Chan's anon is mostly just fat teenage boys. And some older people. But mostly fat teenage boys. Although anon is no one in particular, it tends to be the people that have jack shit else to do other than spend time on 4chan. So they don't guard anyone, or drive ambulances, or direct your call. Though they will run your raids in WOW, or x-ray some picture you got off of facebook of a girl you want to see naked. I wish it was as poetic as Fight Club, but it's just not. -Taylor
That's not subject to copyright law. It's a trade secret, but the parts are not subjected to copyright, and neither are the plans. It's not anymore subject to copyright than the results of last nights sports game.
And the machine path is even less protected than the designs are. It's governed based upon the rules of physics, not creativity and finding an efficient way of doing it is in and of itself a spur to innovation.
I'm pretty sure the results of sports games actually are subject to copyright. At least, the MLB claims rights to the results and licences them to the people that distribute the information en mass (ie, a reporter saying who won seems to be fine, but websites that catalog and list all results have to pay). I don't know much about it, or how legal it is, but that is what happens. My friend wanted to make an app with sports results, and he found that they're hard to come by for free.
And even if a part is not protected, the machine path should be. I design parts and program CNC machines, and it takes real work to make a good CNC program. It is not just the laws of physics, its how well I utilize those laws. We have another guy that knows a bit about CNC programming, by my programs are vastly superior because I've been doing it for many years. That is no different than a computer program, and if someone stole my program and used it to make copies of the parts, I'd generally want to sue them for theft and unauthorized reproduction. If they instead bought a part, and then reverse engineered it and made some themselves, I would feel much less wronged. -Taylor
Really, not letting most users or applications modify the OS is a good thing. Microsoft (and others) have had a TERRIBLE model in permitting this. Third-party stuff has no business altering the foundation of the system's operation.
Now, not letting an application that doesn't want to monkey with the OS get installed is probably going too far. I mean, who's gonna run an OS they can't put an app on? That's broken.
Define "app".
ChromeOS allows the offline install of webapps like Google Docs, which allows you to use every regular function of google docs offline, with no web connection. You can create, save, and edit documents, including saving them to external media, without an internet connection. You can even print them if you have a network connection, even if there is no internet.
How is that not an app?
ChromeOS is not an operating system like you are used to. That doesn't automatically mean its a bad idea. -Taylor
With a reliance on constant connectivity and no hard drive, a Chrome notebook could be described as an overgrown smart phone with a keyboard.
So, unless the article is mistaken (which is possible)... that would be a dumb terminal, with no storage.
This may not be the device for you, but it may be the device for a lot of people. It's worth pointing out that over half a million people buy smartphones every day that also walk away from a mountain of desktop-computer annoyances.
Hey, I'm all about being able to buy and run whatever device you like. I'm just trying to make sense of this device as it's described -- and, I was responding to the first-post which asked if it was more locked down than Apple's stuff.
From the sounds of it, it's markedly more locked down than my iPad. I can absolutely see this being good for many things. Not sure I'd want one, but it's also a prototype -- so it's a little premature to say anything about it.
The article is mistaken. Other reviews have noted that the device has onboard storage and, at this stage, allows at least a crude capability to browse the files. You can save pictures and other media to the drive, I think. And anyway they're still expanding that, but it seems to be within their plan to do it.
Also, the web-connected apps like google docs can still be wholly used offline. So it then is no different than having a laptop with a word processor. It is not fully reliant on an internet connection.
*and* it has a free connection to Verizon for 200mb a month (more starting at $10/mo) so you're less likely to be out of range than if you only had wifi.
I just wrote a bunch thinking you meant extrusion a-la play dough (extrude a shape and then do something with that shape), but I finally realized that you meant FDM machines, which extrude fine rods of plastic into layers for 3d printing.
So I can say now that actually, that is a good idea. I started and now run our CNC machine shop and have for 4 years, and I was thinking recently how it would be cool to buy the extrusion head from a repwrap and put on in a tool holder in our CNC. You could sell those heads for $1000 and people would buy them all day long. If you have a CNC, you already have everything except the (very cheap) print head.
But the problem is software. I could write something but it would take a lot of time. It could easily be done though and would be awesome.
So yeah, they should be combined. Actually, CNC mills should have the option of a 3D print head and a laser cutting head, in addition to the regular cutting tools. They all require the same mechanisms and combining all 3 kinds of machines would be extremely useful. I have $220k worth of CNC equipment that I can use at any time, and I still find myself wishing I had a laser cutter. Cutting thin sheet materials in the CNC is a big PITA, and if I had a laser head it would be great. It would also be great if we had a 3D print head for prototyping. I can prototype anything in a few hours by actually CNCing it like normal, but that takes a lot of work. If I could just hit print and leave for the day, I wouldn't care if it took 15 hours to make. That would be worth a couple grand to us for sure.
They will all merge, for sure.
What I really want to see though is a major reduction in the cost and time required for making PCBs. If I could print out a PCB in a few hours or less, for less than a few bucks, I would be making new things all the time. Since it costs $100 and takes a week (or $20 and 3 weeks with something like BatchPCB), it limits how many things I want to actually make.
When PCB production gets as easy as home 3D printing will be, things are going to get crazy. I still haven't come up with a really good method for making good reliable PCBs thats cheaper than what we do now. The best I can think of is using a laser and pre-made copper clad. Solder mask is important too though. Maybe it could be sprayed on and then lasered off in the necessary areas.
If you could make a good PCB quickly *with* a solder mask, you'd be set.
Oh, and the cost of materials isn't the expensive part for the CNC, it's the complexity of the programming and setup. The 3D printing machines nearly eliminate programming and setup. That is their real advantage. -Taylor
Once you have a phone which is fast enough to play video and has a battery that lasts all day, the biggest improvements are going to come as software update and you won't care about the hardware any more than you currently care whether you have a 2.6GHz CPU vs. a 3GHz CPU -- both are fast enough to do whatever so nobody cares anymore.
Except that wireless providers are historically terrible at providing software updates. Apple bucked this trend a bit, and some Android phones have gotten one or two updates. Carriers are still the gatekeepers for the vast majority of phones, though. They want to sell new hardware, not provide new software.
That's why I will do my best to avoid buying phones from wireless providers. I got a Nexus One as soon as I could and have loved it ever since. I get the best updates asap and never have to deal with carrier BS. I can even tether for free, without any hacking! I love it. The Nexus S will be in the same boat, though personally I have more faith in HTC hardware than Samsung. I also feel that the lack of MicroSD was a terrible decision. But the "Nexus" brand as an idea is great. Google came forward yesterday with clarified branding - "Nexus" means a pure unadulterated google experience, free from carrier BS. I like that. -Taylor
And when the hoard of iPhone users flood another carrier (Verizon?) when at&t loses its exclusive contract with Apple, maybe two things will happen. 1. The speeds on at&t's network will increase 2. The call quality/service will increase. at&t will have to try harder, to keep customers because you won't have to go there if you want an iPhone. I have been with them for 8 years, never had a problem. It will just be nice to walk into an at&t store and not have to look to see if you accidentally didn't wonder into an Apple store LOL.
Yeah, lots of people say that: "I've had AT&T for years and never had a problem." But how can you know? You've *never* had a problem? Every cell network has problems. You don't have reception everywhere, none of the networks do. So how much reception is acceptable? Have you ever gone on vacation to somewhere remote and lost reception? Yes, we shouldn't focus on technology on vacation, but what if you just needed to make one call? I think every cell user in the world has experienced that.
So then, what is acceptable? If you're hiking up in the middle of colorado, maybe you don't get reception. Or maybe camping somewhere remote. At some point, we all accept that cell phones don't go everywhere. But if you've only had one network, how can you know what is normal compared to everyone else?
Well, I had Verizon for 8 years and then switched to AT&T about 3 years ago. I've noticed consistently less 3G coverage even now (but especially right when switching) and generally worse coverage in remote areas. In fact, when I had Verizon, one of my good friends had a similar phone on AT&T, and we're geeks so I'd always tease that I had 3G when he didn't, and we'd do speed tests and I'd always come out on top. We went camping in Big Sur and only those with Verizon had reception. I actually did go hiking in Colorado and sent him an e-mail from 12000 feet teasing him that I had reception, knowing that, from how often he didn't, it was unlikely he would have there.
Now I have AT&T because work pays for it, but it is noticeably worse.
I hear a lot of people saying "I've had AT&T for 8 years and it's always been fine", but for many of us, unless we're geeky enough to compare cell reception, there may be no true way of knowing what's "fine" and what's "excellent". We may not all need reception when camping, but hell, I lose reception just driving to my mom's house in the Santa Cruz mountains 30 minutes from Silicon Valley. I'd be happier if I didn't.
I mean, if you're happy you're happy. But it may just be a case of "ignorance is bliss". -Taylor
Bad Summary / RTFA. They say "our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent - the equivalent of just one call in a thousand - of the industry leader." NOT that they have fewer than 0.1% dropped calls.
Yeah, but even that way is mighty sketchy wording. AT&T knew what they were doing when they worded it that way. -Taylor
The analog control is in the form of the multi-touch thumb bar, which appears to have two nubs to help position your thumbs. Might work alright (i hope).
Not a sort of control I'd like. This sort of thing detects movement adequately but not brilliantly and is no good for precision control. The position is the centre of your thumb. That's a large area so very coarse.
Yeah, it's certainly a compromise. Likely a big one. But I never did like even the low profile analog sticks on the PSP, so I'm not sure what they'd be able to do that was much better without it being enormous.
Hopefully the rest of it is good and they don't screw it all up like they usually do. If anything I'm just excited for the prospect of improved interest in android gaming. -Taylor
Except that it showed nothing. All I saw was a slider running Android with a d-pad and buttons where the keyboard should be. There wasn't even an analog pad.
Listen, I don't want to be a pessimist but until video footage surfaces that had some form of gaming content, I wouldn't get too excited yet. The really pessimistic side of me wonders if someone didn't dummy up an Android app and called it "Playstation". I'll ignore that little voice for the time being though.
The nerd in me would like you to keep that plate of crow warm. The concept looks cool (except they better have some form of analog control) so now show me the substance to seal the deal.
The analog control is in the form of the multi-touch thumb bar, which appears to have two nubs to help position your thumbs. Might work alright (i hope). This device would be hard to fake. That's a lot of components to fabricate even to make the outside. And it does appear to be the unreleased Android 2.3, so really only a manufacturer would be able to have that yet. So I guess some *other* company could be making a phone that looks like this and someone could pretend it's a Sony device, but that seems unlikely.
The *real* problem with an automated material delivery system is preventing terrorists from loading up a giant bomb into one. And that is something that has frustrated me for a long time.
What's the difference between this and terrorists loading up a giant bomb in a truck and "delivering" it to your house?
They are similar, but the tube thing is a little worse. First, the tubes might go underneath a building. Setting off a bomb there might be an easier way of taking it down than setting it off in front. Also, they can escape far from the scene of the crime without committing suicide. The current crop of terrorists might be okay with suicide, but if that changes, they'd be happy to know there was an automated delivery system. Also, for convenience, these systems would unload very close to your building, and may bypass traditional security systems if they are only intended for goods, and not people. This means that a bomber might be able to get much closer to a building than with a truck.
It's not *much* different from a truck, but it does make terrorism noticeably easier. -Taylor
You could have an above ground solution which would be much easier to maintain. You could call them "TRAINS".
I agree below, but I'm realizing now - why do we need to build another interconnected network of physical routes for material transportation? We already have one called *roads*!
It would be far cheaper to come up with better automated driving systems than to dig up an entire country to route a bunch of tubes.
Roads are everywhere, for the most part. Any place that doesn't have roads would have just as hard of a time with getting tubes installed.
We already have a great infrastructure for designing and maintaining trucks. If we make them electric and remove the driver's cabin, they could be very simple and easy to maintain.
Again, almost everything is already in place for this except the automated driving part. Why don't we just fix that? For the cost of the proposed 5 mile test circuit for tubes, we could fund more automated driver research than probably all the useful automated driving research in history. To my knowledge it's mostly Audi/Stanford, Google, and some various colleges around the world that have put much energy into this. I bet they've spent less then 15 million pounds total on all this. -Taylor
That's not the same. Trains aren't routed. They do extremely well with long distance deliver effectiveness. They do extremely poorly with short distance efficiency. Two completely different problems. Trains solve weight*distance/energy. This purports to solve #ofdestinations/energy.
I dunno. A slight variation on trains and this could work well. Just make smaller trains. Actually, that's what they should do - these induction motor powered tubes can't really be routed over ground as easily as trains can be, for lowering cost in places where weather isn't an issue.
And someone said below that we don't want a train station leading into every supermarket... but we already have large dropoff areas for Semi Trucks at the back of most supermarkets (dunno about in cramped cities, but around where I live that's how it works). If you can make the train station small and give it automated offloading, it could be pretty compact.
And really, linear induction motors are a terrible idea. If they are talking about making passive moving elements with linear induction motors on the tunnel side of things, then you need a continuous line of copper coils all the way down the tunnel. If you instead put a regular electric motor *inside* the moving element (the pill/traincar thing) then you only need enough copper to wind that motor, plus the wires to deliver the power. That is an enormous reduction in the amount of copper needed, and allows heavy mover cars to have bigger motors, and small mover cars to have smaller motors.
The more I think about this, trains absolutely make the most sense.
If we re-think train systems for dynamic routing and robotic unloading, this could all be pretty simple. Much better than all these tubes. And it could still be underground sometimes.
Check out the train system this volkswagen factory uses in the middle of a large city:
The *real* problem with an automated material delivery system is preventing terrorists from loading up a giant bomb into one. And that is something that has frustrated me for a long time. We could do lots of great things with technology if it weren't for the potential for abuse being so high.
That's an old article and does not jive with my current experience. I signed up for unlimited data for my Android-based phone on Verizon 2 months ago for $30/mo. The usage meter on the phone that Verizon provides says "unlimited" (versus the voice and SMS limits the meter shows) and they are very explicit that the tethering plan is an extra fee.
I checked their site and it seems that you are right. I thought I remembered them having a 5GB cap. I knew that article was a year old, but people are often on older plans. Looks like you lucked out and got a good plan though!
This is what people mean about journalistic bias. No matter what the topic, no matter what the victim, journalists are always able to slant stories in a negative direction like this. What's the story? New network offers great speeds? Awesome! But no, the guy comes up with a negative interpretation and makes that the focus of the entire article. It happens again and again, and anyone who points it out gets shouted down as obviously journalists are white knights of integrity and are smarter than everyone else. That's an awful lot of undeserved respect for people who were Communications majors.
There have been plenty of stories about the speed of Verizon's network. This is about something else. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't post stories unless they're positive? It's newsworthy that, although the plans offer great speeds, they offer very low data caps compared to the speeds. As someone who might be switching to Verizon when they get 4G phones, I'm glad that I've been reminded of this.
I mean seriously, you get as little as 1/2 hour of data a month for your $50? That is worth talking about. -Taylor
This is equivalent to telephone companies going back to party lines. True, you'd have a smaller number of unhappy people with NAT'ed web. But I think that the number of P2P users would have some part in it. Then you also have the fact that bad users are usually banned from web sites based on IP address. If that practice doesn't change, then you'd have one bad neighbor ruining it for the entire neighborhood.
Yeah, there'd be peripheral crap and like I said it's a shitty solution, but I don't think it would cause a large uproar.
Plus, the sites people get banned from are usually forums and interest-specific sites, so a neighbor might not even notice if they are banned from a forum they don't visit. I'm sure it would still happen, but it wouldn't be extremely common. And people would stop IP-banning if NAT was that common. -Taylor
Well...for it to be called "inter" net, interconnection would have to be possible. I'd say that's a fundamental premise. It's like the difference between the telephone and television. The television is a consumption device, but the telephone is an interconnection device. Without an IP, you lose that.
I'm pretty sure you'd lose that argument. With NAT people could still access the web, so >=98% of the users wouldn't give a shit. As long as the ISP offers a real IP to anyone that requests one, I don't think a judge would even hear a lawsuit. The number of people that asked for a real IP would be so low, they would likely not even need to charge extra. If 98% of their customers are fine with NAT, it frees up a lot of IPs for the rest of the people.
Of course, that's a shitty solution and i think it's dumb as hell that they didn't move to IPv6 5 years ago, but my point was just that a judge won't see your principles, they'd see the consequences of what was happening. If an ISP used NAT but gave a real IP to anyone that asked, the consequences would be pretty low, I think.
Of course, I'm not actually sure what the effects of ISP-wide NAT really are, but I know that if they can get the "web" working and people can e-mail, twitter, and facebook, they're not going to complain. If the users that do complain can get a free real IP address, it seems like a fair solution (again, to a problem that should have been avoided anyway, but thats another issue). -Taylor
I have to ask the older among us (i'm in my 20's), have things always been so silly in politics? I mean, they've always been silly, but *this* silly? It seems like things are getting over the top crazy.
Well, Juvenal was complaining about it almost 2000 years ago. I figure no, it's not really getting worse, it's just that its way of being bad keeps shifting so it seems to be getting worse.
Well, I'm not talking about 2000 years ago. Obviously that example proves things have been pretty bad before. But then around 1776 things were pretty good. People cared about politics and saw it as a serious pursuit for our freedom. I guess I'm wondering, have things gotten worse since I was born? Or over the last 20-50 years have they been about the same level of silliness?
If they're getting worse, I worry if there was any way to fix it. If we could come to our senses.
The scary thing I see is that Bread and Circuses *works* right up to the point where everything comes crashing down. And it's easy. So it seems like that would be the lowest-entropy solution to politics and therefore the most likely in the long term. Just give everyone enough to shut them up without actually fixing anything. Is there any good research on methods of governing specifically designed to avoid that? -Taylor
Wow, you just helped me figure out how to describe how I've been feeling for the last few years. I'd never came across that reference before. I'm seriously going to read into this more now. This is exactly how things are going.
I have to ask the older among us (i'm in my 20's), have things always been so silly in politics? I mean, they've always been silly, but *this* silly? It seems like things are getting over the top crazy. It's not even partisan - I feel like both sides just want to look good for the next news story. I read about the net neutrality thing the FCC wants to do, and the republicans vowed to oppose "anything" the FCC proposes. Really? Anything? What if it's reasonable? They are literally saying that they have no interest in entertaining reasonable discourse. They are just trying to look good to the idiots who *want* partisan politics. It's like "FU democrats! We won't listen to anything you say!" And it's not just republicans, I think the dems do it just as much (lets not argue if either side does it more). But if our politicans won't even listen to what the other side has to say, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING THERE?
Things seem to have just gone insane. Somebody let me know if it's just my young age or if they really are getting worse. -Taylor
It depresses me that the we can't even coordinate together on something as trivial as moving to IPv6 when IPv4 addresses are clearly running out. How the fuck can we ever coordinate when our planet is in REAL trouble like if an asteroid is going to hit or even climate change?
Or like, if there was a giant oil leak in the gulf?
Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous is everyone you depend on. They're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. They make your bed. They guard you while you're asleep. They drive the ambulances. They direct your call. They are cooks and taxi drivers and they know everything about you. They process your insurance claims and credit card charges. They control every part of your life.
"They are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday they'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but they won't. And they're just learning this fact."
While poetic, that's not very true (I realize you probably know this, but I feel like I should chime in). Yes, I know that's just an interesting quote from Fight Club, but its not accurate for 4chan's anon. 4Chan's anon is mostly just fat teenage boys. And some older people. But mostly fat teenage boys. Although anon is no one in particular, it tends to be the people that have jack shit else to do other than spend time on 4chan. So they don't guard anyone, or drive ambulances, or direct your call. Though they will run your raids in WOW, or x-ray some picture you got off of facebook of a girl you want to see naked.
I wish it was as poetic as Fight Club, but it's just not.
-Taylor
That's not subject to copyright law. It's a trade secret, but the parts are not subjected to copyright, and neither are the plans. It's not anymore subject to copyright than the results of last nights sports game.
And the machine path is even less protected than the designs are. It's governed based upon the rules of physics, not creativity and finding an efficient way of doing it is in and of itself a spur to innovation.
I'm pretty sure the results of sports games actually are subject to copyright. At least, the MLB claims rights to the results and licences them to the people that distribute the information en mass (ie, a reporter saying who won seems to be fine, but websites that catalog and list all results have to pay). I don't know much about it, or how legal it is, but that is what happens. My friend wanted to make an app with sports results, and he found that they're hard to come by for free.
And even if a part is not protected, the machine path should be. I design parts and program CNC machines, and it takes real work to make a good CNC program. It is not just the laws of physics, its how well I utilize those laws. We have another guy that knows a bit about CNC programming, by my programs are vastly superior because I've been doing it for many years. That is no different than a computer program, and if someone stole my program and used it to make copies of the parts, I'd generally want to sue them for theft and unauthorized reproduction. If they instead bought a part, and then reverse engineered it and made some themselves, I would feel much less wronged.
-Taylor
Really, not letting most users or applications modify the OS is a good thing. Microsoft (and others) have had a TERRIBLE model in permitting this. Third-party stuff has no business altering the foundation of the system's operation.
Now, not letting an application that doesn't want to monkey with the OS get installed is probably going too far. I mean, who's gonna run an OS they can't put an app on? That's broken.
Define "app".
ChromeOS allows the offline install of webapps like Google Docs, which allows you to use every regular function of google docs offline, with no web connection. You can create, save, and edit documents, including saving them to external media, without an internet connection. You can even print them if you have a network connection, even if there is no internet.
How is that not an app?
ChromeOS is not an operating system like you are used to. That doesn't automatically mean its a bad idea.
-Taylor
From TFA:
So, unless the article is mistaken (which is possible) ... that would be a dumb terminal, with no storage.
Hey, I'm all about being able to buy and run whatever device you like. I'm just trying to make sense of this device as it's described -- and, I was responding to the first-post which asked if it was more locked down than Apple's stuff.
From the sounds of it, it's markedly more locked down than my iPad. I can absolutely see this being good for many things. Not sure I'd want one, but it's also a prototype -- so it's a little premature to say anything about it.
The article is mistaken. Other reviews have noted that the device has onboard storage and, at this stage, allows at least a crude capability to browse the files. You can save pictures and other media to the drive, I think. And anyway they're still expanding that, but it seems to be within their plan to do it.
Also, the web-connected apps like google docs can still be wholly used offline. So it then is no different than having a laptop with a word processor. It is not fully reliant on an internet connection.
*and* it has a free connection to Verizon for 200mb a month (more starting at $10/mo) so you're less likely to be out of range than if you only had wifi.
Its pretty awesome, really.
I just wrote a bunch thinking you meant extrusion a-la play dough (extrude a shape and then do something with that shape), but I finally realized that you meant FDM machines, which extrude fine rods of plastic into layers for 3d printing.
So I can say now that actually, that is a good idea. I started and now run our CNC machine shop and have for 4 years, and I was thinking recently how it would be cool to buy the extrusion head from a repwrap and put on in a tool holder in our CNC. You could sell those heads for $1000 and people would buy them all day long. If you have a CNC, you already have everything except the (very cheap) print head.
But the problem is software. I could write something but it would take a lot of time. It could easily be done though and would be awesome.
So yeah, they should be combined. Actually, CNC mills should have the option of a 3D print head and a laser cutting head, in addition to the regular cutting tools. They all require the same mechanisms and combining all 3 kinds of machines would be extremely useful. I have $220k worth of CNC equipment that I can use at any time, and I still find myself wishing I had a laser cutter. Cutting thin sheet materials in the CNC is a big PITA, and if I had a laser head it would be great. It would also be great if we had a 3D print head for prototyping. I can prototype anything in a few hours by actually CNCing it like normal, but that takes a lot of work. If I could just hit print and leave for the day, I wouldn't care if it took 15 hours to make. That would be worth a couple grand to us for sure.
They will all merge, for sure.
What I really want to see though is a major reduction in the cost and time required for making PCBs. If I could print out a PCB in a few hours or less, for less than a few bucks, I would be making new things all the time. Since it costs $100 and takes a week (or $20 and 3 weeks with something like BatchPCB), it limits how many things I want to actually make.
When PCB production gets as easy as home 3D printing will be, things are going to get crazy. I still haven't come up with a really good method for making good reliable PCBs thats cheaper than what we do now. The best I can think of is using a laser and pre-made copper clad. Solder mask is important too though. Maybe it could be sprayed on and then lasered off in the necessary areas.
If you could make a good PCB quickly *with* a solder mask, you'd be set.
Oh, and the cost of materials isn't the expensive part for the CNC, it's the complexity of the programming and setup. The 3D printing machines nearly eliminate programming and setup. That is their real advantage.
-Taylor
Once you have a phone which is fast enough to play video and has a battery that lasts all day, the biggest improvements are going to come as software update and you won't care about the hardware any more than you currently care whether you have a 2.6GHz CPU vs. a 3GHz CPU -- both are fast enough to do whatever so nobody cares anymore.
Except that wireless providers are historically terrible at providing software updates. Apple bucked this trend a bit, and some Android phones have gotten one or two updates. Carriers are still the gatekeepers for the vast majority of phones, though. They want to sell new hardware, not provide new software.
That's why I will do my best to avoid buying phones from wireless providers. I got a Nexus One as soon as I could and have loved it ever since. I get the best updates asap and never have to deal with carrier BS. I can even tether for free, without any hacking! I love it. The Nexus S will be in the same boat, though personally I have more faith in HTC hardware than Samsung. I also feel that the lack of MicroSD was a terrible decision. But the "Nexus" brand as an idea is great. Google came forward yesterday with clarified branding - "Nexus" means a pure unadulterated google experience, free from carrier BS. I like that.
-Taylor
And when the hoard of iPhone users flood another carrier (Verizon?) when at&t loses its exclusive contract with Apple,
maybe two things will happen.
1. The speeds on at&t's network will increase
2. The call quality/service will increase.
at&t will have to try harder, to keep customers because you won't have to go there if you want an iPhone.
I have been with them for 8 years, never had a problem. It will just be nice to walk into an at&t store and
not have to look to see if you accidentally didn't wonder into an Apple store LOL.
Yeah, lots of people say that: "I've had AT&T for years and never had a problem." But how can you know? You've *never* had a problem? Every cell network has problems. You don't have reception everywhere, none of the networks do. So how much reception is acceptable? Have you ever gone on vacation to somewhere remote and lost reception? Yes, we shouldn't focus on technology on vacation, but what if you just needed to make one call? I think every cell user in the world has experienced that.
So then, what is acceptable? If you're hiking up in the middle of colorado, maybe you don't get reception. Or maybe camping somewhere remote. At some point, we all accept that cell phones don't go everywhere. But if you've only had one network, how can you know what is normal compared to everyone else?
Well, I had Verizon for 8 years and then switched to AT&T about 3 years ago. I've noticed consistently less 3G coverage even now (but especially right when switching) and generally worse coverage in remote areas. In fact, when I had Verizon, one of my good friends had a similar phone on AT&T, and we're geeks so I'd always tease that I had 3G when he didn't, and we'd do speed tests and I'd always come out on top. We went camping in Big Sur and only those with Verizon had reception. I actually did go hiking in Colorado and sent him an e-mail from 12000 feet teasing him that I had reception, knowing that, from how often he didn't, it was unlikely he would have there.
Now I have AT&T because work pays for it, but it is noticeably worse.
I hear a lot of people saying "I've had AT&T for 8 years and it's always been fine", but for many of us, unless we're geeky enough to compare cell reception, there may be no true way of knowing what's "fine" and what's "excellent". We may not all need reception when camping, but hell, I lose reception just driving to my mom's house in the Santa Cruz mountains 30 minutes from Silicon Valley. I'd be happier if I didn't.
I mean, if you're happy you're happy. But it may just be a case of "ignorance is bliss".
-Taylor
Bad Summary / RTFA. They say "our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent - the equivalent of just one call in a thousand - of the industry leader." NOT that they have fewer than 0.1% dropped calls.
Yeah, but even that way is mighty sketchy wording. AT&T knew what they were doing when they worded it that way.
-Taylor
The analog control is in the form of the multi-touch thumb bar, which appears to have two nubs to help position your thumbs. Might work alright (i hope).
Not a sort of control I'd like. This sort of thing detects movement adequately but not brilliantly and is no good for precision control. The position is the centre of your thumb. That's a large area so very coarse.
Yeah, it's certainly a compromise. Likely a big one. But I never did like even the low profile analog sticks on the PSP, so I'm not sure what they'd be able to do that was much better without it being enormous.
Hopefully the rest of it is good and they don't screw it all up like they usually do. If anything I'm just excited for the prospect of improved interest in android gaming.
-Taylor
Except that it showed nothing. All I saw was a slider running Android with a d-pad and buttons where the keyboard should be. There wasn't even an analog pad.
Listen, I don't want to be a pessimist but until video footage surfaces that had some form of gaming content, I wouldn't get too excited yet. The really pessimistic side of me wonders if someone didn't dummy up an Android app and called it "Playstation". I'll ignore that little voice for the time being though.
The nerd in me would like you to keep that plate of crow warm. The concept looks cool (except they better have some form of analog control) so now show me the substance to seal the deal.
The analog control is in the form of the multi-touch thumb bar, which appears to have two nubs to help position your thumbs. Might work alright (i hope).
This device would be hard to fake. That's a lot of components to fabricate even to make the outside. And it does appear to be the unreleased Android 2.3, so really only a manufacturer would be able to have that yet.
So I guess some *other* company could be making a phone that looks like this and someone could pretend it's a Sony device, but that seems unlikely.
The *real* problem with an automated material delivery system is preventing terrorists from loading up a giant bomb into one. And that is something that has frustrated me for a long time.
What's the difference between this and terrorists loading up a giant bomb in a truck and "delivering" it to your house?
They are similar, but the tube thing is a little worse. First, the tubes might go underneath a building. Setting off a bomb there might be an easier way of taking it down than setting it off in front. Also, they can escape far from the scene of the crime without committing suicide. The current crop of terrorists might be okay with suicide, but if that changes, they'd be happy to know there was an automated delivery system.
Also, for convenience, these systems would unload very close to your building, and may bypass traditional security systems if they are only intended for goods, and not people. This means that a bomber might be able to get much closer to a building than with a truck.
It's not *much* different from a truck, but it does make terrorism noticeably easier.
-Taylor
Using Chrome 8 without incognito, i got... nothing.
It didn't even show me startpanic.com.
So maybe... don't use incognito?
You could have an above ground solution which would be much easier to maintain. You could call them "TRAINS".
I agree below, but I'm realizing now - why do we need to build another interconnected network of physical routes for material transportation? We already have one called *roads*!
It would be far cheaper to come up with better automated driving systems than to dig up an entire country to route a bunch of tubes.
Roads are everywhere, for the most part. Any place that doesn't have roads would have just as hard of a time with getting tubes installed.
We already have a great infrastructure for designing and maintaining trucks. If we make them electric and remove the driver's cabin, they could be very simple and easy to maintain.
Again, almost everything is already in place for this except the automated driving part. Why don't we just fix that? For the cost of the proposed 5 mile test circuit for tubes, we could fund more automated driver research than probably all the useful automated driving research in history. To my knowledge it's mostly Audi/Stanford, Google, and some various colleges around the world that have put much energy into this. I bet they've spent less then 15 million pounds total on all this.
-Taylor
That's not the same. Trains aren't routed. They do extremely well with long distance deliver effectiveness. They do extremely poorly with short distance efficiency. Two completely different problems. Trains solve weight*distance/energy. This purports to solve #ofdestinations/energy.
I dunno. A slight variation on trains and this could work well. Just make smaller trains. Actually, that's what they should do - these induction motor powered tubes can't really be routed over ground as easily as trains can be, for lowering cost in places where weather isn't an issue.
And someone said below that we don't want a train station leading into every supermarket... but we already have large dropoff areas for Semi Trucks at the back of most supermarkets (dunno about in cramped cities, but around where I live that's how it works).
If you can make the train station small and give it automated offloading, it could be pretty compact.
And really, linear induction motors are a terrible idea. If they are talking about making passive moving elements with linear induction motors on the tunnel side of things, then you need a continuous line of copper coils all the way down the tunnel. If you instead put a regular electric motor *inside* the moving element (the pill/traincar thing) then you only need enough copper to wind that motor, plus the wires to deliver the power. That is an enormous reduction in the amount of copper needed, and allows heavy mover cars to have bigger motors, and small mover cars to have smaller motors.
The more I think about this, trains absolutely make the most sense.
If we re-think train systems for dynamic routing and robotic unloading, this could all be pretty simple. Much better than all these tubes. And it could still be underground sometimes.
Check out the train system this volkswagen factory uses in the middle of a large city:
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/11/09/video-inside-volkswagens-cutting-edge-transparent-factory-in-d/
The *real* problem with an automated material delivery system is preventing terrorists from loading up a giant bomb into one. And that is something that has frustrated me for a long time. We could do lots of great things with technology if it weren't for the potential for abuse being so high.
-Taylor
That's an old article and does not jive with my current experience. I signed up for unlimited data for my Android-based phone on Verizon 2 months ago for $30/mo. The usage meter on the phone that Verizon provides says "unlimited" (versus the voice and SMS limits the meter shows) and they are very explicit that the tethering plan is an extra fee.
I checked their site and it seems that you are right. I thought I remembered them having a 5GB cap. I knew that article was a year old, but people are often on older plans. Looks like you lucked out and got a good plan though!
-Taylor
I have unlimited data on Verizon, and I get over 1 mbps.
You don't have unlimited data if you have this "unlimited" plan:
http://slashdot.org/story/09/11/09/068255/Verizon-Droid-Tethering-Comes-At-a-Hefty-Price
-Taylor
Why the hell are you measuring bandwidth in seconds? And why do you need over 5 GB on your phone?
The new 4G data plans are not for phones, they're for USB 4G modems for laptops. Verizon hasn't announced 4G phones or their data plans.
-Taylor
This is what people mean about journalistic bias. No matter what the topic, no matter what the victim, journalists are always able to slant stories in a negative direction like this. What's the story? New network offers great speeds? Awesome! But no, the guy comes up with a negative interpretation and makes that the focus of the entire article. It happens again and again, and anyone who points it out gets shouted down as obviously journalists are white knights of integrity and are smarter than everyone else. That's an awful lot of undeserved respect for people who were Communications majors.
There have been plenty of stories about the speed of Verizon's network. This is about something else. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't post stories unless they're positive? It's newsworthy that, although the plans offer great speeds, they offer very low data caps compared to the speeds. As someone who might be switching to Verizon when they get 4G phones, I'm glad that I've been reminded of this.
I mean seriously, you get as little as 1/2 hour of data a month for your $50? That is worth talking about.
-Taylor
This is equivalent to telephone companies going back to party lines. True, you'd have a smaller number of unhappy people with NAT'ed web. But I think that the number of P2P users would have some part in it. Then you also have the fact that bad users are usually banned from web sites based on IP address. If that practice doesn't change, then you'd have one bad neighbor ruining it for the entire neighborhood.
Yeah, there'd be peripheral crap and like I said it's a shitty solution, but I don't think it would cause a large uproar.
Plus, the sites people get banned from are usually forums and interest-specific sites, so a neighbor might not even notice if they are banned from a forum they don't visit. I'm sure it would still happen, but it wouldn't be extremely common. And people would stop IP-banning if NAT was that common.
-Taylor
Well...for it to be called "inter" net, interconnection would have to be possible. I'd say that's a fundamental premise. It's like the difference between the telephone and television. The television is a consumption device, but the telephone is an interconnection device. Without an IP, you lose that.
I'm pretty sure you'd lose that argument. With NAT people could still access the web, so >=98% of the users wouldn't give a shit. As long as the ISP offers a real IP to anyone that requests one, I don't think a judge would even hear a lawsuit. The number of people that asked for a real IP would be so low, they would likely not even need to charge extra. If 98% of their customers are fine with NAT, it frees up a lot of IPs for the rest of the people.
Of course, that's a shitty solution and i think it's dumb as hell that they didn't move to IPv6 5 years ago, but my point was just that a judge won't see your principles, they'd see the consequences of what was happening. If an ISP used NAT but gave a real IP to anyone that asked, the consequences would be pretty low, I think.
Of course, I'm not actually sure what the effects of ISP-wide NAT really are, but I know that if they can get the "web" working and people can e-mail, twitter, and facebook, they're not going to complain. If the users that do complain can get a free real IP address, it seems like a fair solution (again, to a problem that should have been avoided anyway, but thats another issue).
-Taylor
I have to ask the older among us (i'm in my 20's), have things always been so silly in politics? I mean, they've always been silly, but *this* silly? It seems like things are getting over the top crazy.
Well, Juvenal was complaining about it almost 2000 years ago. I figure no, it's not really getting worse, it's just that its way of being bad keeps shifting so it seems to be getting worse.
Well, I'm not talking about 2000 years ago. Obviously that example proves things have been pretty bad before. But then around 1776 things were pretty good. People cared about politics and saw it as a serious pursuit for our freedom. I guess I'm wondering, have things gotten worse since I was born? Or over the last 20-50 years have they been about the same level of silliness?
If they're getting worse, I worry if there was any way to fix it. If we could come to our senses.
The scary thing I see is that Bread and Circuses *works* right up to the point where everything comes crashing down. And it's easy. So it seems like that would be the lowest-entropy solution to politics and therefore the most likely in the long term. Just give everyone enough to shut them up without actually fixing anything. Is there any good research on methods of governing specifically designed to avoid that?
-Taylor
why the hell does the media pay so much attention to her?
Because she is even more hilarious than when Tina Fey makes fun of her.
Well, they're both pretty funny, but unlike Tina Fey, Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin all the time.
Nope. Bread and circuses.
Wow, you just helped me figure out how to describe how I've been feeling for the last few years. I'd never came across that reference before. I'm seriously going to read into this more now. This is exactly how things are going.
I have to ask the older among us (i'm in my 20's), have things always been so silly in politics? I mean, they've always been silly, but *this* silly? It seems like things are getting over the top crazy. It's not even partisan - I feel like both sides just want to look good for the next news story. I read about the net neutrality thing the FCC wants to do, and the republicans vowed to oppose "anything" the FCC proposes. Really? Anything? What if it's reasonable? They are literally saying that they have no interest in entertaining reasonable discourse. They are just trying to look good to the idiots who *want* partisan politics. It's like "FU democrats! We won't listen to anything you say!" And it's not just republicans, I think the dems do it just as much (lets not argue if either side does it more). But if our politicans won't even listen to what the other side has to say, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING THERE?
Things seem to have just gone insane. Somebody let me know if it's just my young age or if they really are getting worse.
-Taylor
It depresses me that the we can't even coordinate together on something as trivial as moving to IPv6 when IPv4 addresses are clearly running out. How the fuck can we ever coordinate when our planet is in REAL trouble like if an asteroid is going to hit or even climate change?
Or like, if there was a giant oil leak in the gulf?
So, I keep hearing all this news about them running low... What happens when we run out?
-Taylor