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Slashback: Dry Mars, Wet Doc, Keyboard Teaser
Optimus keyboard may have a real release date? Jacket writes to tell us that the much talked about Optimus keyboard has a suggestive message on their website. With "Good things come in small packages February 1, 2006" could it be possible that this holy grail (for some) keyboard could be available in our near future?
Yet another delay for Blackberry court case. ahsile writes "TheGlobeandMail.com is reporting that 'NTP Inc., the company suing Research in Motion Ltd over the Blackberry e-mail service, wants more time to respond to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's preliminary rejections of its patents.'
Lakebed theory on Mars all wet? Sensible Clod writes "The Meridiani Planum region on Mars, long believed to have been covered with water millions of years ago, may not have been so wet after all, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder. From the article: 'The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits. Known as Meridiani Planum, the region may have been more geologically similar to volcanic regions in parts of North America, Hawaii or Europe.'"
US-CERT statistics not all they are cracked up to be? jtshaw writes "Tectonic has an interesting article about the latest US-CERT stats. The actual vulnerabilities for a hand full of OS's after wading through the data: Microsoft Windows - 44, Apple Mac OS X - 21, IBM AIX - 21, HP-UX - 15, SCO Unix - 9, Red Hat Linux - 7, Suse Linux - 12, Debian Linux - 10, Gentoo Linux - 5, FreeBSD - 13, NetBSD - 2. It appears to me that commercial unix systems and open source *nix systems did pretty well compared to Windows on the vulnerability front."
Stem cell papers, confirmed fakes. An anonymous reader writes "The committee created to investigate stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk has confirmed that his first and second papers were faked. 'dashing hopes that his work is a breakthrough in treatments for diabetes and Parkinson's disease. [...] The panel backed Hwang's claim that he cloned the world's first dog.'"
FTC objects to Netflix settlement. AtariDatacenter writes "Although some question the validity of a recent lawsuit against Netflix, many users were up in arms about the terms of the settlement, which seemed like more of a marketing gimmick. Today, we learned that The Federal Trade Commission agreed, and asked the judge to reject the terms of the settlement."
New Crossover Office fixes,among other things, WMF exploit. ubuntuincleelum writes "Just on the heels of the announcement of new WMF security vulnerabilities Codeweavers is releasing Crossover Office 5.0.1. A bugfix release, this release features a fix for the original WMF bug. Among the changes in this release: Improved support for Gnome, improvements in Debian packaging and improvements in general for operability on Debian and Debian Derivatives."
Some antivirus company I can't remember right now made a WMF fix that worked on Win 98/ME, too, and I haven't seen that reported.
Of course, Avery J. Parker reported on his blog that he just couldn't get anything to infect Win98 using the WMF flaw, so it may not be that necessary to have a patch.
The message "good things come in small packages" to me suggest that there will be a single button version of this keyboard as there is a display on the button, it can be any button you wish .. A - Z 0-9..
Otherwise maybe they mean a 1x1 pixel button pack...or.. oh i just don't know, i find those suggestive messages too clever for me as i lack any imagination(TM)...
one thing I do know is that musicians are going gaga over this thing.
-Sj53
Optimus keyboard may have a real release date
Its highly unlikely that they will release a product by 1 Feb (a a resonable price , say $500). The price of high res OLED displays (required for each key!) is simple too expensive even now. Maybe we will see that in 2007. Notice that their site does not have a clear release date (which it would to hype up the launch).
Rampart craters and the recent radar imaging have pretty much proven that Mars had water. While the volcanic gas theory for the formation of spherules is plausible, I doubt it is correct. Spherules were identified by both rovers. With the other water evidence, it would be *very* consistent for the spherules to have formed by water. But to form in two locations vastly far apart seems unlikely.
The original stats are not incorrect in the sense that they do not represent the data. However, the corrected data is now pared so the smaller numbers make linux look more secure. Statistically, it is underrepresented so you can't take a lot away from the new numbers.
It is software, but gives you the same functionality as the optimus keyboard for (f/F)ree...
:( maybe they'll create a nice Gnome version in the future...
http://www.qliner.com/hotkeys
Windows only at the moment
Known as Meridiani Planum, the region may have been more geologically similar to volcanic regions in parts of North America, Hawaii or Europe.'"
Which means it bears no similarity to volcanic regions in New Zealand?
If you click on the Answers link on that page for the Optimus keyboard, it says: It's in the initial stage of production. We hope it will be released in 2006. It will cost less than a good mobile phone. It will be real. It will be OS-independent (at least it's going to be able to work in some default state with any OS). It will support any language or layout. Moscow is the capital of Russia. Each key could be programmed to produce any sequence. It will be an open-source keyboard, SDK will be available. Some day it will be split (and made "ergonomic"). It will most likely use the OLED technology (e-paper is sooo slow). Our studio is located two blocks from the Kremlin. It will feature a key-saver. Keys could be animated when needed. It has a numeric keypad because we love it. There's no snow in Moscow in summer. It will be available worldwide (why not?) OEM is possible (why not?)
ACME Septic. We're #1 in the business of #2.
A keyboard with not only a number pad but also the extra columns of program keys is not exactly a small package.
Be nice if it's real, but I'm pretty dubious.
Netflix should offer something like 'get a used DVD of your choice' as the settlement. I'll love that, no crappy upgrades which automatically charge the credit card if I forget to cancel.
Note: I don't even know if these work. Avery reported that he couldn't get any exploits to actually run on Win 98. Use at your own risk.
Attrition.org posted a nice rant about this on 1/2/2006.
/. users made quite a few comments about the US-CERT line of BS at http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/31/081 2210&from=rss
http://www.osvdb.org/blog/?p=79
Likewise, good ole
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits.
The famed 'blueberries' present in the Martian sediments are concretions. On Earth they only form in the presence of water. They are very widespread in the sedimentary layers of Meridiani. The article gives no alternate explanation. Such concretions are not present in the fumurole-altered sediments of Solfatara Crater. That does not mean the Martian sediments are not volcanoclastic in origin, but the case for water immersion is still strong.
an ill wind that blows no good
With those buttons, it's going to be expensive. And everybody how most keyboards are nowadays: after a year or two of intense use, they're ruined. So, this Optimus better have mechanical keyswitches, or even hall effect sensors; or else, it'd be a waste of a good idea.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Are they only delivering the keys?
Don't expect the results of the inquiry to reflect reality, just what they want people to believe. He may have made those breakthroughs, or he may have done much worse than they say. It is immaterial.
I had a dog long before this guy cloned one.
Perhaps the submitted meant "the first to sucessfully clone a dog"
Talking of dogs, you can sponsor the poor beggers here (after looking at the one I sponsor)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The only two keys: "DO" and "Undo". The software is supposed to be able to figure out (correctly!), what to do (or undo).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I dont see that keyboard happening this year, maybe not at all.
7 63/2/) to EBook readers(http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/29/sony-to -announce-us-e-book-reader/), I think it can do the job for a fairly static keyboard(less power usage too).
They obviously dont even have a protype worth photographing because all their pictures are CG.
The whole thing makes me suspicious.
It says "It will cost less than a good mobile phone". I really cant see that happening. The displays will cost alot, but the microcontrollers to make this thing be "OS-independent" would put it over $200-$300 alone I think.
"It will most likely use the OLED technology (e-paper is sooo slow)."
Its just a keyboard...If E-Ink is good enough and cheap enough for everything from Wristwatches(http://compuquart.com/content/view/1
Above of all to me the silliness on their answers page("Moscow is the capital of Russia." etc..) shows they arent very serious.
but i'm not sure i want to pay as much for a keyboard as i would for a high end video card...
what is it with computers lately... first they want me to pay for 2 video cards (sli, crossfire) then two processor cores.....Now with the $500 keyboards....
I'm going to have to take out a 2nd mortgage when i upgrade my current pc at this rate....
jeeze....
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/beta/home.php?x=arti cles&id=10
Confirmed by Microsoft according to the article.
In 2003, Microsoft took an average of three months to issue patches for problems reported to them. In 2004, that time frame shot up to 134.5 days, a number that remained virtually unchanged in 2005.
I'm certain that critical flaws for other OSes are always fixed faster.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Has anyone else noticed that the keyboard layout is almost identical to a Sun Type 6.
Those Keys are pretty swank, though I don't really see the point in it, Who looks at the keyboard when they type anyway?
What could be better than a jet powered motorcycle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l6GTHLSWE
That's one for each user, fantastic!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Attach what to your laptop? Your dick or your keyboard? Well, I guess technically, the former is already attached to your laptop.
I've gotten in the habit of using a temp card number for most of my online purchases, mostly so I don't have to go through the annoyance of changing the card numbers on all my subscriptions if some website's credit card database gets hacked and the bank has to invalidate the cards of all the site's customers. It's also a decent way to protect myself against credit card fraud.
> Do you mean Win98 itself or the patches?
:)
Both
After I had some time I checked my collection of old burnt CD's. I found 10 from 96 and 10 were good. I had 3 different brands of CD. While 10 CD's may not be any way statiscally indicative. If the things had an absolute max life of 5 years you owuld have expected at least 1 not to read. I also found a couple from 98,99 and 2000 all good as well. I have to ask what agenda does the guy promulgating the short CD life theory have ?? Is IBM starting to manufacture a new tape drive tech ?
Screw the settlement. If you don't like Netflix, drop it. Bunch of fucking whiners.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
It was a small typo on the web page. The release date is April 1, 2006.
Author of Enyo: Up and Running from O'Reilly Media
If you look at the keys, they're 32x32 icons. That's not very high-rez, and those are the concept pictures: the real thing may use 16x16 or less.
Likewise, my understanding was that the larger the display, the more expensive it becomes. This, like chips, is because of the increasing fragility and the increasing likelyhood of a manufacturing defect sending it all to pot. But these are postage-stamp size screens, and as such should be much cheaper.
And except for the red background in one of the pictures, the normal keys are all black and white. They'll probably dump the red and go with B&W images on the regular keyboard keys, further driving down cost.
A bunch of low-rez postage-stamp sized color screens, and about 90 low-rez black-and-white keys? And about a million miles of tiny little wires? Should be do-able in 300 bucks. If they needed to drive costs down further, go traditional LCD on all of the normal keys with one big glowing backlight... that I could see coming in at 100 or less, though looking pretty crappy.
On the other hand, realistically they're probably not launching on Feb 1st. That's probably when they will make the announcement about the release date, or even announce the date they will announce the release date.
The ______ Agenda
I am a Touch Typist and I see no use to having every keycap be changable. The advantage of having the keys static is that you can touch type very very quickly. Changing what a key does is doable today but would be confusing since you probably would not move the keycaps around on your keyboard every time you changed the layout (i.e. from application to application) but having software that would do this doesn't seem to be particularly useful in most cases. Ok, having the "Web Keys" or "Application Keys" or whatever those new extra keys are called that will launch various applications have dynamic keycaps and be easily programable would be nice, and I could see where having the line number displayed on the down arrow key might be nice in vi (ok, vim) but really, most people who need to know that either use a graphical editor that displays the current line number or knows the key commands necessary for their editor of choice to show them. I certainly would not pay $500 for one of these keyboards.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Chuck Moore once produced a Forth system with a three-key keyboard. Chords were supported, so you could key seven different patterns. That system was an exercise in minimalism; the CPU only had about 4000 transistors, and generated the waveforms for a color TV in software. It was an elegant dead end.
I am sure everyone agrees here, if that keyboard will last for a while, it is definately a good investment...
the jokes tell YOU!
Moscow is the capital of Russia
dude, these are former soviets...these kind of jokes are funny to them...that doesn't mean their product is going to suck...you are culturally illiterate my friend
Thank you Dave Raggett
With an OLED keyboard, you could have animations or live alterations too. Playing a game where your weapons slowly charge... suddenly instead of a "null" icon in the corner you have a big bad bomb icon. Really it could make various interactive tasks a bit more interactive, even in business/etc programs - depending on what you are doing.
I'll take it a step further.
Combine the Fingerworks zero force keyboard with the o-led display. Now that would be a serious keyboard!
The above is not worth reading.
In the laboratory -- i.e., on Earth -- blueberries have also been demonstrated to form in the presence of high-intensity electric arcs -- e.g., lightning. A lightning-strike on Earth releases enough energy (if efficiently employed) to excavate an 85-foot crater, but most of its energy is dissipated in the atmosphere ("boom!"). On Mars there's very little atmosphere to absorb such energy, so it's reasonable to expect a profound effect on the surface, although excavation is not necessarily the most prevalent among them. It's hard to know whether to expect more or less intense arcing on Mars; conditions are very different from Earth, and anyway Earth lightning's generative mechanism is very poorly understood (e.g. sprites were not predicted).
In fact, if you zoom into any dark area of the Martian surface (as imaged by the Global Surveyor) you'll find the darkness is composed of thousands of criscrossed black tracks of what they like to call "dust devils", which have been acknowledged to be primarily an electrical phenomenon.
Ignoring electrical phenomena presents theorists with two problems: first, they have to invent some other system to account for observations (e.g. surface water) and, second, they have to explain why the known electrical phenomena can have no observable effects, particularly not those they've just attributed to something else. Usually they dispense with the latter, and expect (rightly so far) that few will point out the omission.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Not all permutations of fingers can be held up at a time without substantial discomfort, or (in some cases) far enough to clearly disambiguate between "up" and "down" when surrounding fingers are in the fully opposing state.
Now, this might not be true for you -- but that would make you a mutant.
That various reporters managed to mis-construe this seemingly obvious fact is only peripherally CERT's fault. I've been on the inside of enough news stories to know that very few facts make it past a news editor's desk unscathed.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Instead of "Punch the monkey" banner ads, we might see something like "chase your moving Escape key around the keyboard" or "every damn key suddenly maps to "OK"...
Seriously, it does seem promising, but like most improved keyboard designs, we'll probably never see it adopted. It's a problem of human inertia.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Fulgurites will not be perfectly spherical like the blueberries, they tend to be flattened shapes. Nor would they be uniformly distributed in the host rock. Also the blueberries were examinied closely enough to see that they are not made of glass like fugerites. They are mostly hematite. I can't say much about lightning conditions on early Mars, except that lightning is less likely to discharge in a thinner atmosphere. But with all of the particulates flying around in the atmosphere I wouldn't be surprised if it occured.
an ill wind that blows no good
And I thought that animated GIFs were annoying: no way I'd want a carnival of winky-lights dancing all over my keyboard, even if having modal key labels turned out to be a good idea.
This'd be a fine replacement for some touch-screens, since you'd get the flexibility of updatable labels with the usability of actual, pressable buttons. But in the case of a general purpose PC keyboard, I'm afraid that I'd find your revolution in human-computer interaction, uh, "revolting".
Mind the Gap
If lightning is "less likely ... in a thinner atmosphere", that means charges build up longer before it discharges, releasing more energy when it does. However, a thinner atmosphere (particles or no) is no inherent limit on lightning. What matters is ionization and dielectric breakdown. Ionization depends largely on short-wave ultraviolet exposure, which is higher on Mars because it has no ozone layer.
Incidentally, how do you imagine those "particulates flying around in the [wispy] atmosphere" get there -- thundering herds of wildebeest? Towering convection columns? The only plausible force available to loft the mass of those enormous dust storms is itself electrostatic.
Zap the soil lying there right on the surface and see what happens. Yes, loose hematite balls.
You don't know what your are talking about. Here is a picture of a Fulgerite. The lighting discharge gives the dendritic tubes cylindrical symetry. They are not spherical. Also the process of annealing does not fractionate hematite from the surrounding rocks. How would a lightning strike do that.
Incidentally, how do you imagine those "particulates flying around in the [wispy] atmosphere" get there -- thundering herds of wildebeest? Towering convection columns? The only plausible force available to loft the mass of those enormous dust storms is itself electrostatic.
Again, a crazy idea. If you are suggesting that dust is levitated into the atmosphere by electrostatic forces? Absurd. Dust enters the atmosphere through saltation. Sand size grains are picked up by wind and impact back to the ground kicking dust into the turbulent boundary layer and suspension. This is great reference on the process.
an ill wind that blows no good
I am assuming that computer scientists like electrical engineers will set a threshold for "on" and anything beyond the threshold is considered to be a one. That is, the finger does not have to be completely extended to count as one. That makes it easy to do, also you will find it easier if you keep your palms facing you as you are counting.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Nobody said anything about current fractionating anything from rocks. When we look at the places where blueberries are found we find nearly pure hematite soil, the natural place to get the material for a hematite spheroid. "Lightning strike"? Is that the only sort of electrical discharge possible?
If you find the notion of electrical activity lofting dust absurd, it must be because you have paid too little attention to the analyses of Martian "dust devils", nor to recent measurements on terrestrial tornadoes. What's absurd is to imagine that Mars's atmosphere is thick enough to suspend dust in just the way it happens here.
I don't actually think an absolute threshold would necessarily cut it -- in practice, the furthest I can extend my left ring finger with the surrounding fingers fully withdrawn is close enough to the furthest I can withdraw said finger with the surrounding fully extended as to leave some difficulty in interpreting between the two states without using the surrounding fingers as context.