To look cool carrying around a device that has the dimensions of a normal tablet but the processing power of a wish.com tablet. I'd much rather just carry a phone and a ultra portable laptop around than this stupid thing. Many companies tried to sell these kinds of devices back in the early 2000s but they never sold well because they sucked. They didn't have the power of a normal laptop and we're only marginally better than the smartphones of the time. What is this supposed to replace? It's not going to replace a modern smartphone and certainly doesn't have enough power to replace a laptop or even a flagship tablet. These are neat toys but that's really all they are.
At the time I bought that "boat anchor" (which was fine as I was only using it in my car) iPod was not there. So yes I bought it. And when iPod came into existence it was to be used with the most pathetic piece of software I've ever seen so I bought Zen instead which in my opinion was better for my use.
If you are doing something so well and making tons of money, why spend money on what will absolutely ruin your core business? Personal computers weren't just going to supplement the copier business, they would seriously ruin it. But there was also a chance computers would flop so why spend the money on trying to ruin your core business and not succeed? People found uses for computers that the pioneers could never imagine so why would some CEO be any more imaginative? Disruptive tech usually doesn't come from the big companies, it comes from little guys who can take the risk because they have nothing else to fall back on. The big companies only get into it when they see that there is an actual market.
Kodak gets picked on unfairly. They weren't completely blind to the digital camera revolution, they produced the first digital camera prototype but it was laughably incapable. Their problem was building a business model that took a cut from every picture snapped, from film to processing to printing. There was nothing in the digital camera model that could duplicate that revenue stream; even if they had sold every digital camera ever made, it would not have saved them. Their final undoing was overestimating the importance of printed pictures, in the end it turned out people would rather see their pictures on their screens.
In some places, Uber is just a front-end for a bunch of taxi companies to let you hail them. I remember doing this in Athens, the app just calls a taxi for you. Although I don't remember if I paid through the app or paid the driver directly.
In an employee owned corporation, you would get some say in leadership. Although it's possible that in a large enough corporation, it would be an indirect democracy. You vote for board members who vote for the company leadership.
While various municipalities and nations might classify co-ops as corporations legal wise, I don’t think the average person jumps to thinking of a co-op when you say corporation
Even if you could manage to find some ADSL+ equipment, you are going to tap out at around 48Mbps, I'm not sure if you can push unshielded, twisted 2-pair wire any faster. One downside would be that all of the phone jacks in the house are tied together, it would be a A->B kind of connection. I regularly get much faster speeds with my powerline adapters and if you have multiples paired, they create an actual network on the powerlines.
If you've got two pair, you can probably run 100BaseTx, even if the cable is not up to cat5 spec, especially if the runs are short and separated from other lines; Ethernet specs are for 100 meter distances most of which is in a tight conduit with other high frequency data transmissions. Old in-home phone wiring is likely not tightly packed or very long.
If you've got an old house with old telephone wiring, it's probably wired as a bus, if you want to re-use that for ethernet, you'll want to split it up so each phone jack gets wired as two ethernet jacks; one in each direction. If you're using ethernet in the room, you'll need a (small) switch, and you'll want to be careful to buy 10/100 switches if you've only got two pair as Ethernet autonegotiation can easily do the wrong thing and you don't want to pay for managed switches in each room. If there's no ethernet use in a room, still wire it up for two ports, but put a small patch cable between the two.
If you've got star topology phone wiring, there's a better chance of cat5 cabling and 4-pair and you can run gigE. GigE will sometimes run on cat3 for small distances too though. The only question is if the central location where the star wires meet is convenient for a switch. In a pinch, you can use a PoE powered switch and power it from one of the other ends of the star.
Of course, some houses are a mix of star and bus or generally some form of tree. Anywhere that there's a branch, you want to put one ethernet port for each direction. And hopefully all the branches are accessible.
There's really no need for DSL equipment in your own home, unless you've only got one pair wiring.
>If you've got two pair, you can probably run 100BaseTx
Well, 100BASE-TX will also run on single pair in half-duplex mode.
Alternatively you can also use powerline adapters over any cabling (twisted pair/coax/whatever). Just instead of connecting adapter prongs to power socket, connect to your cable and feed there enough power to supply the adapters. Around 50V DC (as commonly used by PoE supplies) will probably be enough.
> Well, 100BASE-TX will also run on single pair in half-duplex mode.
I mean, kind of, but I don't know how you get network cards to run on a single pair? I'm actually interested, because if it works for 100BaseTx, it probably also works for 10BaseT, and I've got 10BaseT half duplex device I'd like to network, but only one pair available (there's a 3-pair cable run, but two are used for voice communication). I've tried a commercial product (ETSLAN Monoline Balun), but while I can get it to work a bit when testing on parts of the line, it doesn't work across the whole line; if I can just wire something more simple, that'd be worth a try too.
You just connect single pair, it should auto-negotiate if other device supports it, otherwise you need to set mode in network card settings manually. https://i.imgur.com/xIsJJiN.png
So just connect pin one and three to the white wire and two and six to the solid color wire on both ends and it should work as long as both ends are half-duplex?
I would think the NICs would sense their own transmissions and declare a local collision?
I'm sorry, I got things mixed up. You're right there would a collision with their own transmission. So there needs to be circuit that cuts offs their RX port while it is transmitting.
Oh, you can push old aluminum phone wire faster than 48 Mbps! The VDSL2 service I use can reach up to 135 Mbps, and while the wiring in my apartment is new, the building's isn't at all.
The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control of the US has perpetuated English even more so. If the Anglo countries all sank into the ocean, I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. China would be the major trading power and without the need to work with America, there would be little need to continue with English as years progress.
There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.
> There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.
There are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context. Look at it this way: you don’t need the characters when you’re listening to someone speak, so why wouldn’t you be able to sound out the phrase from pinyin and understand its meaning?
> There are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context.
But wouldn't that lose something? My understanding is a lot of the puns specifically rely on the characters to force a different reading than the context would imply (or to evade censorship by having many ways to write the same sounds).
Well I would still say French would be dominant over Mandarin for several reasons. Technological advantages include current nuclear collaboration on the vast coast of China. China still does not have key infrastructure to self support.
I remember watching an episode where they planned to build a partially subterranean home all within some sort of triangle shaped junkyard that sat on the interior of a block of townhomes. Completely ridiculous idea but when you've got lots of money, why not? There were two basement levels and then two planned above ground levels except they ran out of money for the top floor and stopped there. Who wants to live in that terrible location in a house where most of the living space is in a basement? They could have built a lovely country mansion or even a very nice normal house in the suburbs. Instead, they waste money on unique but stupid ideas.
An interesting idea but the whole point of a passport is to prove which country are a citizen of. Countries set their visa policies to accept or deny based on passport origin. A US passport can get you a visa quickly in most places in the world but a North Korean passport would likely not. If I can simply pay for a World Passport, what incentive do they have to diligently verify my documents? Obviously a country could produce fake passports for their own citizens but that would be for some specific reason like espionage. Maybe a small country would produce a passport for me with a big bribe but I'm guessing the countries willing to do so are at the bottom of the list of "most accepted passports". Allowing anyone to get a passport with little scrutiny just devalues the passport. Perhaps in a more enlightened time, something like a UN passport would allow stateless people to travel easily to countries that would accept it.
No, most countries allow you to purchase a citizen and depending on your ancestry or knowledge of several country constitutions you could just walk in and demand citizenship.
St. Kitts & Nevis, accepted over 100 places, fairly powerful, purchase price at about 100k. Real estate can be a trust where you have partial ownership of a parcel which value is in excess of any amount needed to prove financial interest.
Antigua and Barbuda, same 100k gets you papers and a passport in a week with 150+ countries.
Price doubles for St. Lucia, but you're talking about 150 countries of visa free for 200k.
UN passports actually are highly suspicious, simply because of the diplomatic ties it contains - and bad image you can present the country in. You're there to highlight a political event, not to take leisure or secure travel. Very different circumstances.
