miratrix

iSuppli estimates that 3G radio adds about $25 to the cost of iPad (http://www.isuppli.com/teardowns-manufacturing-and-pricing/n...) so at $50, I'd imagine that Amazon's probably recouping the cost of baseband hardware + development time and effort, and not much else.

It's amazing to think that they can throw in the free 3G access on top on the hardware for just $50 extra. I guess they're counting on low browser and web usage due to the e-ink screen...

And I hope you stop putting words into my mouth. I just said that there are 5 sources of energy (solar, lunar, geothermal, nuclear, and fossil fuels) on earth. Also, you're also factually incorrect regarding the Sun being the only energy source. The lunar / tidal energy is due to the gravity between the earth and the moon, and the geothermal energy is due to the gravity of the earth itself. Fact of the matter is that there is no silver bullet that'll solve all our energy problems ala Star Trek unless there's a breakthrough in something like nuclear fusion.

The paper you cite assume 100% uranium recovery from uranium contained within the Ocean waters, which holds most of recoverable uranium on Earth. The Japanese have some interesting research that they're doing to recover the seawater Uranium using a giant sponge like device, but it hasn't been proven yet whether it's possible to extract uranium from seawater in net-energy-positive manner, not to mention most of the seawater being fairly inaccessible.

I don't understand your hostility, as I've mentioned over and over again that I am in agreement that Nuclear power has gotten the short end of the shaft, and that more investment is needed. All I was trying to do is to say that there are benefits of investing in pure renewables like wind and solar - wind energy is already almost cheap enough to compete with other conventional energy sources even without the PTC. And as a working engineer in a tiny startup struggling to fix the very issues that you bring up (and completely re-imagine the wind industry as it exists if we succeed), I'm not a mouth piece of this large wind power conglomerate that you seem to make me out to be.

I'd highly recommend reading David MacKay's "Without the Hot Air" which is available free on PDF at http://www.withouthotair.com/ . David is much more eloquent than me and has done far more research into the issues at play here.

Most studies indicate between 2 and 3 bird strikes per wind turbine, with far more birds being killed by cats, buildings, glass, cars, etc. Turbines are also below 500m, which typically is the floor for the path of migratory birds.

The noise for the wind turbine comes from mostly the gearbox, though there are efforts under way to reduce that, including completely eliminating the gearbox from the design.

But at this point, I think debating with you on point to point is a little... pointless, so I'll just leave this:

On earth, there are 5 sources of energy. Unlike in 1900, we now have a pretty damn good understanding of physics to know that this is all we get.

- We have energy coming from the Sun. There's a fair bit of it, and there might be enough to sustainably allow us to live. This gives us Wind / Solar power. - We have energy coming from the moon. Tidal power does work in some places, but it's magnitudes smaller than the energy from the Sun. - We have carbon fuels - We have nuclear fuels - We have geothermal energy... though efforts to tap that has produced only earthquakes so far.

That's all we get, unless someone goes out and develops cheap fusion power (highly unlikely situation - fusion reactions produce a lot of neutrons which are very difficult to deal with). I don't think there is any other "alternative energy sources".

For the human species to survive on Earth over the long haul, we need a way to sustain our lifestyle with the energy coming from the Sun. In Oil / Gas / Coal, we're just living off previously stored solar energy.

There is only a limited amount of nuclear fuel on Earth (not counting something like deuterium deuterium fusion reactions which likely will never be feasible in full scale) - granted, the amount of fuel we have with right technology (fast breeder reactors, thorium reactors, etc) will last a period measured in centuries, not decades.

Even as someone who's working in the wind energy industry, I believe that nuclear power is clean and safe energy source that we should be actively developing and perfecting, and I'm in agreement with you that nuclear option has gotten the short end of the shaft.

However, the pure renewables like Wind and Solar do have a place in the conversation, and many of issues you cite are overblown (wildlife impact/noise) or technically solvable (wind stopping - there are papers showing that by tying the entire eastern seaboard into a single grid, you can ensure certain amount of base load capacity). There are still unexplored places for wind energy (deep offshore, high altitude) that hold a lot of promise, with technology that already have been developed.

If we have the will to go ahead with a full blown nuclear option, then by that time, we'd have the will to go ahead with updating our transmission infrastructure. And if we ever end up in a pure electric transportation sector, we'll have 250 million batteries-on-a-wheel that can soak up the extra generating capacity on windy/sunny days and dump it out on cloudy/still days, with nuclear likely providing the baseload capacity.

I see transitions from coal to natural gas, then to nuclear, but as a stepping stone while we perfect the pure renewable solution which is the only thing that will ensure the survival of human species unless we decide to go gallivanting across the universe collecting resources from other planets. Even then, energy dense nuclear fuel will be too valuable to waste in heating up homes and food - they'll be closely guarded as a means to get to those said energy dense planets.

Camera Bits make both MacOSX and Windows versions of the Photo Mechanic, and even says so in the article. I thought the netbook bit was for people who're looking for lightweight solution, especially since there are many netbooks with built-in network capabilities?

Considering that Photo Mechanic is a fairly expensive piece of niche software for very specific use in the workflow of professional photographers, I thought the points they made were fairly valid. Maybe the EXIF copying can be worked around, but it still won't address the RAM size, no robust connection options for CF, no names for the pictures, and all the other little things that the article mentions that makes or breaks a software like that.

If you look in the flickr image you linked, I think the description basically makes the point made in the article - In the flickr description, the author describes 6 steps across 2 different apps to just take some pictures, upload it, and share it with friends. Camera Bits guys are saying that until that becomes a 3 step operation in a single app, it's a no-go in their specific niche market.

Would you mind going out of the country? I don't exactly know how University of Waterloo's co-op program works for an American working in Canada, but I'd highly recommend University of Waterloo (in Waterloo, Ontario, about 2 hours from Toronto, 4 hours from Detroit, and 2 from Buffalo).

Before I start, I'll start by stating that I'm a U. Waterloo alum, though from Computer Engineering, not CS... so what I'm describing in terms of their CS programs might not be entirely accurate... and that I might be a bit biased.

1. Co-op (or internships). University of Waterloo's CS and engineering degrees are all 5 years long, with year-round 4 month terms in which you're either studying or working. You have 8 study terms and 6 work terms in those 5 years, and in the work terms, you're hired in real life companies and work in real life jobs working on real life projects, for companies like Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, etc. Not only that, you get paid a decent salary (enough for me to completely cover my tuitions + living costs) and wide network of people to start from when you're finished your degree and a nice thick resume to get balls rolling. The University actually hires a bunch of people to go out and look for jobs, and if you're good, you'll several offers from some of the top names in tech companies. The flip side, though, is that companies will expect real work out of you.

2. Waterloo's CS department is actually under the Faculty of Mathematics, which shows you how seriously they take the mathematical roots of CS. I've been told that they're very mathematically rigorous in their studies, and their success can be seen from the Waterloo's rankings in ACM programming competitions, as well as experts who teach in the field (like the people who invented elliptic curve cryptography, etc)

3. Waterloo has very liberal policies for Professors getting to keep much of their research, patents, and IP on their own instead of assigning it to the University, so a lot of professors are looking to get started on their research and spinning out. You'll see a streak of entrepreneurship from both the students and the faculty there.

4. At least in the computer engineering curriculum, they never teach you any computer languages. The first introductory class I took was in C++, but basics of C++ was covered by a TA in help session. The data structures and algorithms class is in Java, but the language itself was covered by another TA in a single help session while the professor focused on the actual data structures and algorithms, not how to write and compile java code. Through your 5 years, concepts are taught, but not the specifics... or that's at least how I felt. After the 5 degrees, I think I got most of the basic concepts to the point where I understand how computers actually work at a fundamental level, and I know how to get through the "abstraction" layers that so many people seem to have issues with. If you understand how a transistor works, it'll give you a better understanding of why writing to a flash device is different from other memories. If you understand how flash devices work, then it'll give you a better understanding of why you need different file systems to support it. If you understand how the file systems work, it'll give you a better understanding of why, for instance, opening a file with a million small files might be slow in some systems... and so on and so forth. I think one of the biggest thing that I got out of the school (besides not having a debt + thick rolodex + all the intangibles like friend network, etc) was 5 years of just learning and thinking about the concepts are all inter-related, so that when something fails, you have the required tools and knowledge to actually dig into it and figure out what's underneath all that abstraction that everyone takes for granted.

I know this is little bit long winded, but I'm of the opinion that the 4 years spent in college will not be a waste... On the flip side, it's my understanding that the college qualities vary wildly in US (I once talked to a Professor who turned down a tenure track position at one US college where they were told they don't have classes on Fridays because of Football Pep Rallys are on Fridays!!!). BUT, if you find a right school, just the people you're going to meet and befriend I think is worth it all by itself. It's really going to be what you make out of it.

Hope this helps.

I don't think being locked down to a specific FPGA is as big a deal as you think. In professional circles, FPGA choice is mostly a matter of your company being an Altera shop or a Xilinx shop, and which FPGA they've used in the past. For large customers, FPGA companies work quite closely with their customers so things like support and availability of parts at the quantity required means far more than exactly what features are in where. For many hobbyists, typically what matters is what peripherals ship with the cheapest dev kit as much as how many LUTs and memory blocks are on the chip.

But, on the flip side, some of the most annoying and agonizing decisions that you end up making over a lifecycle of a project is whether to upgrade to the newer / newest releases of various software. As you guys undoubtedly know, setting up these software is not trivial, and getting it to a point where a reasonable workflow exists can be pretty damn painful. And with every upgrade, you might get a nice compilation and synthesis speed upgrade coupled with a memory bug here and configuration but there. Something that some people might have a use for, is ability to target not just across different chips, but different versions of the software, not as a chip selection utility, but more as a tool selection utility might make a little more sense, where you provide fine control over exactly which version of tools are being used, as well as commonly used knobs for configuring the various parameters of place and route & synthesis options (of which there are plenty)

Even with that, though, I don't know if this is a service that a lot of people will find useful. As sybreon points out, IP cores are a huge part of FPGA development flow and I don't really see a way to easily handle that aspect of things. Many of the IP cores spit out encrypted HDL and I think pretty much every tool vendor has a different format that they can handle. Also, a lot of people are pretty tied to their simulator of choice, with libraries and custom TCL scripts to massage things just right, and I'd imagine it'd be difficult to move things like that over (though I did not go through the signup process to try things out myself).

I've been out of FPGA arena for couple of years now, but I think places to focus within the FPGA marketplace, especially in areas where people will pay real $$, is in testing and verification. Back in the days, many people used FPGA like they would a software compiler - try few lines of code, hit compile, check it out, rinse and repeat. With the increasing complexity of the designs due to ever increasing gate count, trying to develop like that doesn't work so well. If you could, for instance, take in a verilog or vhdl module, do some simple analysis to figure out input / output ports and the sensitivity list, and beat the crap out of it (using both user-defined data set and random / smart / fuzz sets), you might have something there...