He was dealing with abandonment issues. was they really so hard for you to understand? or do you think Rich = perfect?
The movie didn't show us what his deal is. Did he believe the rumors that his dad had run away, and was hiding? Did he believe his dad was dead? Was it the not knowing that got him?
Is it too much to ask, that they give me a single line of dialog spelling out just what his deal is? "It has always eaten at me... what if he really did run away?" or "He must be dead, but not knowing for certain is driving me crazy." The movie had a long scene with Alan that was the perfect place to do this.
And how many orphans are there in this world, possibly even orphaned at a younger age than Sam Flynn? How many of those orphans are pathetic emos who let that one fact, that they were orphaned, totally define who they are? And why should I cheer for an emo guy being emo?
And why did he stop being emo? Again even a single line of dialog would have done wonders. "Now I know my Dad didn't leave my by choice, so now I can stop whining and I'll wave my hand and put Alan in as CEO." Eh, that's a clunky line of dialog, but the ending seemed forced and clunky to me anyway.
While there are some excellent story ideas, what you, and many others, fail to understand is that the computers the digital world is a custom built job.
Now, here you are doing something that I do sometimes also: you are filling in details in the story that were never there. Sometimes, when I like something that has flaws, I'll start inventing back story that explains things.
We were never told anything about the nature of the computer. All we know is that it is at least two decades old, and had never had even one second of downtime in over two decades (I wanted to see a UPS and a generator nearby).
Why wouldn't ENCOM become the dominate freight company?
Again, we were never told why, but clearly the technology remained secret and undeveloped. It's hard to believe that something that was possible in 1980 would be completely overlooked and undiscovered for the next 30 years.
Filling in the back story, I can speculate that CEO Kevin Flynn of Encom had the teleportation project shut down, and collected the equipment for his own use. But what happened to the scientists who invented the equipment? Why didn't they work on it some more, write papers about it, talk to colleagues about it?
And why would an algorithm become flesh and blood by stepping through this "portal"? Did the algorithm have simulated blood all along? But only Sam bled when injured, Quorra's arm did that shattering thing, yet she was able to leave the computer world.
There are two IMAXes. The original IMAX is a film format, where each frame is about the size of the palm of your hand. The new digital IMAX is, well, digital.
The first IMAX 3D movie I saw was years ago, with the film format. I had to wear a big "shutter" mask that was heavy (likely due to batteries). I believe that there was just a single projector, and the active shutters were necessary to do 3D.
These days I only go to a digital IMAX theatre for 3D, and they have two digital projectors and all you need are polarized glasses. I'm particularly happy that the digital format never gets scratched up; you can go see a movie weeks after it opened and the quality is perfect.
I live in the Seattle area, and there are at least four digital IMAX theatres in the area, plus the original two film IMAX theatres at the Pacific Science Center by the Space Needle.
On the scale of 0 through 10, I'd give this movie a 10 for visuals, a 10 for music and sound effects, a 10 on costumes, a 4.5 on story and about a 3 on heart.
Those of us with some love for the original movie are somewhat more inclined to let the lack of heart slide, or to view it through nostalgia-tinted eyes and not think about it too much.
One of the basic problems is that I didn't like most of the main characters. I found it hard to empathize with Sam Flynn; he was incredibly privileged yet pointlessly emo. (By the end of the movie, he has set aside his emo-ness but I'm not sure quite why, probably because I don't understand why he was so emo to start with.) Kevin Flynn was more of the actual protagonist than Sam, but he spent much of the movie doing nothing and saying that doing nothing was the right thing to do; and the scene where he is reunited with his son didn't have the emotional impact it deserved. (From Kevin Flynn's point of view, he hadn't seen his son in centuries at least, centuries where it must have eaten at him to wonder what was happening in the real world.) CLU was an unsatisfying villain, especially if you compare him to Sark and MCP from the original. The only character I actually liked was Quorra.
It would have helped if we could have seen more emotion. Did Sam believe his father had run away and abandoned him? That would explain the emo, but we didn't get a scene that suggested it. Did Kevin feel hatred for CLU, for the horrible things CLU had done? Did he feel anguish, that something he created had gone so far wrong? He talked about the situation like some sort of chess game: "Any move we make helps him win" or something like that.
Despite the flaws, I'm glad I saw it, and I actually hope they will make another one right away. I wish they would get a really good script for the next one, one with a bit more heart. All this needed was a better script and it could have been a great movie instead of just a good one.
P.S. As a geek, I care about continuity, and there were egregious continuity breaks with the original. Programs in the original just wanted to drink some electricity, but now they have actual food and drink. In the original, Kevin Flynn had powers because he was a user; in this movie, Sam Flynn didn't seem to have any user powers, and Kevin Flynn had rather limited powers for someone who had had centuries to refine them. (I wanted to see the two of them fighting together like a pair of Jedi.) Did I want to see bits? *+YES+* Did the movie have any? *-NO-* And it would have been great to see Cindy Morgan in at least a cameo. (I wish the plot line had said that Sam had been adopted by Alan and Lora after Kevin disappeared!)
The costumes look totally different, but I don't count that as a continuity violation; it was UNIX now instead of an IBM mainframe, so of course all the programs were cooler-looking.
P.P.S. There were some cool plot ideas in the TRON 2.0 video game, and I would like to see those ideas used in future movies. What if shadowy government agencies got the TRON laser technology, and started sending agents into the Internet to spy on computers, sabotage systems, or even assassinate people? What if data errors during the laser digitizing process caused people to go insane or even become mutant-looking monsters in the computer world? How about a scene where someone (say, Alan) is in grave danger in the real world and Sam has to protect him from the computer world, by hacking?
Hopefully this is a whoosh and there's some sarcasm I'm missing or something...
The whole article is loaded with jokes.
"If it stopped there, I'd be a healthier man. But then I see the ridged bonnet [...] The taste of Red Thunderbird fills my mouth. I'm young again - I'm dancing."
Did you really even wonder if this guy was serious? He even provided a link where you can read about Thunderbird, in case you didn't get the joke.
"I spent years building the connections in my brain that this is trying to abuse."
"It's not powerful enough to run modern games, but that's like complaining that, erm, a Mary Whitehouse sex doll doesn't have Bluetooth."
"I'm going to play Bruce Lee for 20 minutes, unplug it, then spend weeks cultivating a tiny blind spot that means I never have to consider the reasons for my actions."
Yes, there was sarcasm in plenty.
steveha
Re:This is an essential check on police power
on
Recording the Police
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· Score: 1
It seems that some of the cases in TFA - such as when a girl records the cops detaining and beating her boyfriend - would not fall under this, since she's technically not "interacting" with them. Yet common sense dictates that it should be equally protected.
Sure. I didn't mean to restrict the right of recording to just the person the cops are after. It should be legal at all times for anyone to record the police when they are on duty. If someone is in court, he/she should be able to introduce video from any source: girlfriend, bystanders, whatever. But I agree we should put restrictions in place that would prevent making a web site of "Cops, Where They Live, and Their Vulnerable Family Members".
It should also be recognized as illegal for cops to go around a crowd, demanding that people hand over their recording devices in an effort to erase the recordings. (That has happened; read the article.)
Really, it's already impossible to keep people from surreptitiously photographing or recording police. Making it illegal won't stop it from happening.
The police, most of the time, are arresting people who need to be arrested. Those people tend to lie. So there is this huge bias: if the suspect says one thing, the cop says something else, most of the time the cop's version gets more weight.
But this makes a huge problem when a cop is willing to just make stuff up. The authors of the Constitution never imagined personal video recorders, but I am certain they would approve of their use by citizens as a check on government power.
All that said, I would support a law making it illegal to record police officers and post their images, names, home address, list of family members, etc. on the Internet. Police officers are entitled to some privacy when off duty, and I really don't want to see criminals start targeting the families of police officers to discourage them from making arrests.
But it must be legal to record one's interactions with any government agents, and it must be legal to introduce that recording in court as part of one's defense.
If you read the article linked from Bruce Schneier's posting, you will find that courts have actually ruled that an interaction with a police officer and a citizen is not "public" unless there are lots of other people around. So, if there are plenty of witnesses to corroborate your story, you can legally record the police; but if it is just you and the cop, it's a felony to record the police. That's just insane and must change.
I have also noticed that often, when I read about a really egregious incident involving the TSA or law enforcement, the government officials involved will claim that the citizen was acting "aggressive" or "provoking trouble". And as the article says, official recordings that might prove things one way or the other seem to go missing sometimes.
Citizens must be allowed to record their interactions with government, and at a minimum use the recordings in court as part of their defense.
There are an amazingly large number of Star Wars fan films, and you can find them at TheForce.net. There are some really good ones. I recommend Duality and Bounty Trail.
By the way, this was the Spiderman fan film I was looking for: The Green Goblin's Last Stand. "The total production budget was $400, and it shows. However, it also shows what a small group of motivated individuals are capable of when they are focused on a single goal."
Finally, you have only to look through YouTube to find *lots* of people who are making cool features. Pretty much anything by FreddieW, lots of stuff by jaymegutierrez (anyone on Slashdot really should watch "Clean the Fan"), Smosh ("Cat Soup").
We notice that new educational technology is always piloted in the affluent schools of cities where good students and good teachers are present. As a result the educational gains from such technology are marginal and educational technology is considered over-hyped and under-performing. We propose that the highest technology should be developed for and piloted in the remotest areas first.
Wow. That makes a lot of sense to me.
How does the old saying go? The best school in the world is a log with a student on one end and Plato on the other. (I'd pick Richard Feynman or Issac Asimov rather than Plato, but you get the idea.) If a student can be taught directly by a really good teacher, you don't need a lot of fancy stuff.
Contrariwise, educational technology can make a big difference in remote areas. With decent computers and access to textbooks, the Internet, etc. the students can end up surpassing any available teachers.
First, the 7.62x51mm (.308 Winchester) round doesn't generate "much more recoil" than the 5.56x45mm. It is heavier but nothing that is unreasonable.
The actual problems are not so much the recoil, but rather (0) a 7.62 battle rifle will be significantly heavier than an M16, (1) the 7.62 ammo is significantly heavier and bulkier than 5.56 ammo, and (2) a 7.62 battle rifle is not practical to fire full-auto. These issues are tied up with the recoil, but recoil isn't the primary problem.
Would you agree with the above? I appreciate the correction, by the way. I should have known better than to simply say "recoil" was the problem.
Second, the 7.62x51mm round is STILL in general issue in weapons other than the M16.
I didn't think I implied that 7.62 is no longer used. I was specifically talking about the general-issue rifle for the armed forces being changed to a 7.62 rifle, which I do not believe will ever happen.
I didn't say it, but the reason for a debate over 5.56 or 7.62 is because there is already lots of 7.62 in the supply chain, as you noted. If they were to adopt some third new cartridge, they would complicate their logistics. A cartridge in-between 5.56 and 7.62 was never, I guess, deemed worth the complication, but this new 25mm grenade is.
IMO, the M14 is far superior to the M16 in all but the tightest confines and even that can be overcome with a folding stock and shorter barrel configuration just like they were with the development of the M4 and Commando versions of the M16.
Now that is an interesting idea. I wonder just how light you could make an M14 variant and still have it be practical? Make it semi-auto only, of course.
And, BTW, the M4 (16" barrel vs 20") is actually the standard issue weapon for the US military, at least the Army, now.
The basic M16 is well under a thousand dollars. But a fully tricked-out M16, with a range-finding night vision scope mounted on it, costs a lot more than a basic M16! On the gripping hand, not many troops get the fully tricked-out version.
I read some articles about the OICW, and I was dubious about the cost. Some OICW apologists argued that it wasn't really going to be that much more expensive than the M16, and they used the most expensive M16 numbers they could find. IIRC it was on the order of $10,000 or more.
Also, I wonder how the price of $35,000 is being computed. If they are amortizing the R&D costs for two decades of research, that would tend to make the weapon look more expensive. I doubt that the manufacturing cost is that high. But I'm not an expert.
Hmmm, for what it's worth: Wikipedia projects the cost per weapon at $25,000.
I'm not an expert on military stuff, but I have been interested in this and I have read articles about it over the years.
This came out of research that started many years ago, the OICW program.
The original vision was that every soldier might get a fancy grenade launcher like this as his/her primary weapon. But you don't dare use a grenade if an enemy is at very close range (perhaps attacking with something as simple as a pointed stick), so the OICW was supposed to have a close-range, defensive capacity: a "kinetic energy" weapon, i.e., bullets. The result was a heavy, complex, expensive weapon that didn't make anyone happy.
But I guess the research to produce the fancy grenade launcher paid off, and here is the result.
I was always troubled by the 25mm projectile size. Can a 25mm projectile contain enough explosives to produce the desired effect when it air-bursts? I guess so, if they are deploying it.
For general issue, it will continue to be the M16 family for the foreseeable future. I have read the occasional article about the military starting to wish it had a rifle of intermediate calibre between the 5.56mm of the M16 and the 7.62mm used before the M16. In desert engagements, ranges might be farther than the M16 can comfortably handle; in jungle terrain, foliage can sometimes deflect the 5.56 bullet. But nobody wants to try to generally issue the 7.62 mm again, as it has much more recoil than the 5.56, and it would be a pain to introduce some sort of new ammo.
But now this new, fancy grenade launcher looks like it shall fill in the gap: it shoots a relatively massive projectile at up to 500 metres point effect, and up to 1000 meters area effect (source: Wikipedia). The ammo will be much more expensive than 5.56 ammo, and it will need batteries and special training besides; but if it really works as promised, it should be very cost-effective. (Even if you spent many dollars in ammo on attacking the enemy, if it decisively stops the attack from the enemy before he inflicts casualties, you have come out ahead.)
As I said, I am no kind of expert and I welcome corrections if I said anything wrong here.
I know someone who used to be a senior audio guy at Microsoft. While he was there, he tried to get improved standards for motherboard audio: for example, he wanted the signal-to-noise ratio to be similar to what you can get on a $20 portable music player. For a while, the "Designed for Windows" sticker required basic quality from the onboard audio. There was fierce pushback from some big names in industry (I won't name names unless he tells me it's okay to do so) and in the end, Microsoft relented. Margins are thin in the PC business, and they insisted on the right to use cheap (i.e., lousy) audio components.
I am not at all surprised that you can make a big improvement by spending $30 on a sound card. At work, we don't use motherboard audio at all; we usually use USB or FireWire audio devices. (I do sometimes use the built-in audio on a Mac laptop. Apple seems to have spent the extra five cents or whatever it is, and used decent audio parts.)
For $30 or less, you can get a USB audio device that will give you nice clean stereo. I have been buying the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage; they changed the design since I bought one but I'll bet the quality is still fine.
For multichannel playback, you can get a $100 device made by ESI called the GigaPort HD. The audio quality is fine, but the drivers sometimes have issues. For $400 to $500 you can get an Edirol UA-101 (or maybe it's branded as a "Cakewalk" UA-101); that has 10 channels in and 10 channels out (8 analog and an optical S/PDIF).
By the way, for headphones, I really like the Sennheiser HD555 headphones that were mentioned in TFA. Lightweight, comfortable, excellent quality, and very reasonably priced (under $90 on Amazon last I checked).
There are plenty of so-called businessmen out there with grandiose plans of converting biomass to energy without any pollution. Unfortunately, this sounds like one of them.
If you read the related links, you will see that GPI really can produce a quality product; according to this page you can take the output of their test plant and pour it into the tank of a diesel truck and it will just work. And if you read the claims, it seems it doesn't pollute the air while doing it (impurities from the input stream come out the far end as some sort of solid). Some combustible gas is produced as a by-product of the reaction (methane, I guess) and they plan to burn that to provide power to operate the plant, making it self-fueling. (The same thing is true of the Changing Worlds plant that converts turkey offal to oil.) In short, if these web pages are true, GPI is not making "grandiose claims" that aren't true.
Also, GPI seems to have some real problems paying bills on time. That has nothing to do with the technology. (And the Washington state DoE shutting them down didn't exactly help GPI to pay their bills on time.)
It seems the DoE shut them down because the DoE believes that GPI should have filed some paperwork related to burning trash. GPI went to the federal EPA and got a ruling that their process does not fall into the category of burning trash, and thus the DoE was wrong to require trash-burning paperwork.
I'm wondering if GPI could have avoided the problems by talking to the DoE more up front. One of the articles quoted a DoE representative as saying that the DoE had no idea what might come out of this plant, since nobody from GPI had filed any paperwork. But GPI filed paperwork with the EPA... are we to believe they withheld details of their process from the Washington state government but were willing to disclose the details to the EPA? If so, why?
I can't sleuth out the truth by reading all the newspaper articles on the web, so I don't know for sure what exactly is going on. I just hope that they get this thing going... efficiently turning waste into usable fuel is a win every way you look at it.
They claim they can produce diesel at a cost of less than $0.80 per gallon; at gas stations near me, diesel costs over four times that much, so they ought to be able to sell all the diesel they can make at a tidy profit. Then maybe they can pay back all the people to whom they owe money.
In August of 2009, GPI was shut down by Washington state's Ecology Department who said GPI had "not provided adequate compliance with the environmental air quality regulations." This was cleared on September 8, 2010 by an EPA ruling that support's GPI's claim and reverses Washington state's Ecology Department's claim that placed the GPI process in the class of incinerators, which it is not.
So the government of my state caused major problems for GPI, and the federal government had to overrule the state. That's just great.
According to TFA, GPI's plant operates using "a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP)" yet the state Department of Ecology (DoE) insisted on regulating the plant as if it were an incinerator plant, which it clearly isn't.
We have a liberal Democrat for a governor, the Democrats have a complete lock on the state legislature, and plenty of liberal voters. Our governor claims to be in favor of the environment, in favor of business that helps the state, in favor of jobs, etc. Where was she when the state DoE was causing these problems?
I really wonder at the politics behind this. If this is random bureaucrats just being pointlessly bureaucratic, why didn't any other part of government get involved and help resolve this? Where were the state senators and representatives from the Pasco area? Did the governor just never hear of this, and if so, how is that possible?
If I were governor and something like this happened, I would very publicly intervene. There's no political downside! The governor has more power than bureaucrats at the DoE, and the voters would love to hear that a green energy project was helped out. So why didn't that happen?
P.S. This of course reminds me of the other thermal depolymerization plant, the plant in Carthage, Missouri that processed turkey offal into energy and fuel. That plant was shut down several times, over allegations of a bad smell; the bad smell was reported at least once on a day that the plant wasn't operating. Eventually they installed upgraded scrubbers on their exhaust stacks and resumed operation. The company, Changing World Technologies went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I guess the TDP plant was shut down. That seems crazy to me; the price of crude oil is high, so they should be able to run their plant at a profit. I guess they are just in too much trouble financially to even run the plant right now?
I hope this "CDP" plant in Pasco works out better than the Changing Worlds one did.
Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power
Perhaps it does, perhaps it does! If, that is, you can build the device such that it can run off of built-in solar. That's the real trick, isn't it.
A simple four-function calculator trivially can run of a little photocell, and this has been true for decades. So why didn't OLPC simply put a little photocell on the XO-1? Because a little cheap photocell doesn't produce anywhere near the needed power needed by an XO-1.
And, the hand-cranked power is a particularly irritating straw man. A long, long, time ago, when OLPC was just an idea, they thought about a hand crank, and even made a mockup of what it might look like. But it was never made. Reasons: 0) some kids live in places with a decent electrical grid, so there is no need to add the cost of a generator to every single laptop; 1) an external generator can be trivially replaced if it breaks, without the laptop itself needing to be repaired; 2) a crank built-in to the laptop adds mechanical cranking strain on the laptop, necessitating the laptop being made sturdy in otherwise-needless ways; and 3) little kids are not known for their arm strength, so a generator that could be operated by leg muscles was deemed better. OLPC announced that a pull-cord generator would be the human powered generator, but as far as I can tell from a few quick Google searches just now, the pull-cord generator is still vapor.
I recently sent my XO-1 to India for use by the Bharti Integrated Rural Development Society (B.I.R.D.S.) and I looked into a solar array for it. I found one for about $200 that should operate an XO-1 continuously and charge the battery in about an hour. I also found lots of other solar arrays that cost way more than that. So, the most affordable solar array I found cost more than the XO-1. As I understand it, the B.I.R.D.S. school has electrical power only when they run their generator, which is a few hours a day, so my hope is that the XO-1 will be useful just with the generator power. (Conveniently, the power supply on an XO-1 accepts any AC from 100 to 240 Volts, at 50 or 60 Hz, so they should be able to just plug it in with a plug adapter.)
Note that TFA says "...the I-slate is the first of a series of electronic notepads being built around a new class of low-energy-consumption microchips under development...". So, one of the reasons the OLPC XO-1 isn't powered with a little solar array is that it was developed half a decade ago, and the new ultra-low-power chips are, well, new.
Isn't it enough to say "This is a cool new technology and I'm excited about it" rather than talking about how much better it is compared to a half-decade-old technology?
P.S. I put an 8 GB flash card in the SD card slot on the XO-1. On the card I put a copy of Wikipedia for Schools, which takes up about 4 GB; then I put some health and medical books and a bunch of classic fiction books (for students to read when studying English). I updated the OS on the OLPC to the latest build, and installed a typing tutor program (Typing Turtle) from Sugar Labs. I found a public-domain copy of The Elements of Style and a few other free textbooks. Finally, I put a few books on Python Programming. I haven't had any email back from B.I.R.D.S. telling me anything, so I have no idea how it's working out.
I have to say, an XO-1 loading books straight off an SD card is a pretty nice book reading platform! And with the backlight off, to read books in monochrome, battery life should be pretty good. I'm hoping they will find the XO-1 to be useful.
Oh, and here is a version that doesn't slurp the whole file into memory. You could count some really large files with this one. from collections import Counter
def file_chars(name):
for line in open(name):
for ch in line:
yield ch
# set "itr" (iterable) to generator instance for file itr = file_chars("post") lst = Counter(itr).most_common(10) print(lst)
I like using Python for this sort of thing. Here's a Python 3 program to find the top 10 and print them: from collections import Counter s = open("post").read() # read in entire file as a single string lst = Counter(s).most_common(10) # find top 10 chars # lst is a list of tuples: (char, count) print(lst) # prints list
It's likely more efficient than spinning up six processes, but more importantly I think it is pretty easy to understand (and it was easy to write).
You could do this whole thing in two lines (one for the import, one to do everything) but it's ugly: from collections import Counter print(Counter(open("post").read()).most_common(10))
All Oracle did was buy Sun. There isn't some sort of magical evil contagion that instantly infected OpenOffice.org; the software is no different than it was before the sale.
Now, Oracle could potentially direct OpenOffice.org development to go down the path of evil. They could change the license under which OO.o is distributed to an unacceptable one. They could do all sorts of things! But they haven't had time to do it yet, and by the time they get their evil ducks in a row, LibreOffice will be up and running.
Little-known fact: many (most?) Linux distros are already shipping a non-pure OO.o. There is a collection of patches that were never part of the official OO.o, called Go-oo, and distros have been shipping Go-oo instead of the pure Oo.o.
I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches, leaving us with two office suites: Oracle OO.o, and LibreOffice. And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice and leave Oracle OO.o completely irrelevant and unloved. (Consider the situation with Xfree86 and X.org. In that case, the switchover happened in a stunningly short period of time.)
The worst-case scenario is that Oracle adopts some license that keeps LibreOffice from merging Oracle patches, and then Oracle funds a development team to make giant improvements to Oracle OO.o; then the community might have to choose between the free LibreOffice and the Oracle offering. But even there, I am not actually worried. The current state of OpenOffice is usable. Even if Oracle poured huge resources into OO.o development, what could they really offer to tempt us away from LibreOffice? A toolbar with giant icons? A dancing paperclip? Meanwhile, if all that LibreOffice does is simply to fix bugs, improve speed, and rewrite to end Java dependencies, I for one would be completely happy.
If you use OO.o on Windows, just don't take any updates until LibreOffice is ready, and you will be fine. Or better yet, simply start getting your installers from the Go-oo web site. If you use Linux, you almost certainly can simply trust your distro to do a good job of keeping your office suite relatively evil-free.
Oracle may be evil, but they aren't magically evil. Don't worry about this.
P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.
My point is that patents are not achieving their goal of promoting Progress. Patents have been granted on things that are IMHO obvious, such as using two fingers to make a pinching motion. Only companies with lawyers, and a library of patents to cross-license, have a chance. This is stifling Progress, rather than promoting it.
I am not calling for an end to patents. I make my living writing software, and if there were no patents, the company for which I work wouldn't have the money to pay me. But the current situation is insane.
are you by any chance an expert in the particular field
No, I'm merely someone with common sense.
Seems that's one of the requirements, not "armchair expert" who slept at a Howard Johnson's.
This is a wonderfully strange ad hominem attack! I don't know if I can match this, but:
You don't know anything, you hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer.
Because we all know that without these patents, Apple would never have bothered to produce devices with multitouch, nor would Motorola, nor would anybody. And really, the whole idea of using compound gestures like pinching is completely non-obvious. And we wouldn't want little startup companies to make multitouch products; we only want big companies with lawyers to be able to do it.
Can't you just feel the Progress?
Go, Apple! Cry havoc and let slip the lawyers of litigation!
I just watched that video. The BGA reballing process appears to be:
0) Remove all the old solder. First he melted it with a soldering iron and got a ball of solder, which he rolled off. Then he applied a solder wick (with the soldering iron to heat it) and scrubbed gently all over the chip package surface. Finally he wiped the chip package with a cloth soaked in some liquid (a solvent I'd guess).
1) Paint the chip package with some sort of goop.
2) Put a shield on the chip package. This shield has holes that match where the new solder balls must go.
3) Apply some sort of metal powder from a jar. The powder appears to be solder balls, each one just the right size to fit through the holes in the shield. He gently wiped the powder this way and that until there was one solder ball per hole (more or less). Then he took a pair of needle tweezers and carefully moved one ball at a time until there was exactly one solder ball per hole, with no holes empty.
4) Apply heat from a heat gun. Clearly this was to melt the solder balls and make them attach to the chip package.
5) Pop the shield off, and hold up the reballed BGA to the camera so we can see its perfection.
I guess the rest of the process is to very carefully drop the chip package where you want it to go, and convince the solder to melt. How do you do that? You mentioned a "reflow oven"? I Googled that, and there are lots of different ovens out there. I even saw a page for using an ordinary toaster oven for the purpose.
Looks like pretty finicky work to do by hand, but not completely impossible.
As a Brit, I follow the US space programme with intereset, because it's the best hope the human race has for getting off this rock.
Sadly, I don't quite agree. I think the best hope comes from the private companies like SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, and the like.
The Space Shuttle was not safe enough and not reusable enough. It could carry large payloads to low orbit, infrequently, and it had only about a 99% chance of not killing everyone on board. And sadly, I have no reason to think that any new orbiter built by NASA would really be better. (And I mean actually built, as opposed to studying it for a while and then not building anything.)
What we really need is a "space pickup truck", a vehicle that can carry a small payload to orbit, then return and do it again with minimum turnaround time. The space shuttle took massive amounts of labor to service between flights, while a 747 lands, gets refueled, and takes off again; we need a vehicle more like a 747. Yes, this is harder for a spacecraft than an airplane, but it has to be possible to do better than the Space Shuttle.
Implied in this concept is that the vehicle can't have large pieces falling off and burning up. Ideal would be single stage to orbit, but two stage to orbit might be required in the early days. Again, a huge Space Shuttle sized payload is not required; four passengers and 1000 kg of cargo is plenty. (You would sometimes want a heavy lift launch, but there are non-reusable launchers already existing that would serve.)
Once we have several companies with reliable, reusable vehicles, the cost to get people and satellites and such into orbit will plummet, and the really exciting stuff could happen. Build a real space station, with large fuel tanks; build a "moon shuttle" that never needs to do anything other than go between the Earth and the moon, and moon travel could become routine. Once you are in Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
Here's how you get a meaningful presence in space: build something that works, fly it. Learn how to build a better one, build that, fly it. Repeat. Once that iterative cycle gets going, we will get launch vehicles far better than anything NASA will come up with. (The modern NASA, I mean. NASA used to know how to do this! They put men on the moon with an iterative cycle like I just described: they started with simple rockets, pretty much just V2s, then iterated until they knew how to build the Saturn V. Then, for some reason, NASA decided they didn't need to iterate at all for the Space Shuttle; they designed the whole thing on paper, built it, done. I'm amazed it worked as well as it did, given the complete lack of iteration.)
Ideally, I'd like to see some sort of space cannon to deliver things like oxygen, dried food, jet fuel, and the like. Something that can send a lot of stuff up really cheaply.
The exciting future of space travel will come when space travel becomes boringly routine. I look forward to the day when we start to need space traffic controllers, to make sure that none of the several spacecraft in orbit get in each others' way.
I used to know someone who had worked for an alarm monitoring company. She said the chairs and other furniture were used 24 hours a day, yet the accountants were depreciating them like ordinary office furniture. As a result, the furniture was not replaced often enough and was falling apart and uncomfortable. Make sure to plan on fast depreciation for your furniture.
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He was dealing with abandonment issues. was they really so hard for you to understand? or do you think Rich = perfect?
The movie didn't show us what his deal is. Did he believe the rumors that his dad had run away, and was hiding? Did he believe his dad was dead? Was it the not knowing that got him?
Is it too much to ask, that they give me a single line of dialog spelling out just what his deal is? "It has always eaten at me... what if he really did run away?" or "He must be dead, but not knowing for certain is driving me crazy." The movie had a long scene with Alan that was the perfect place to do this.
And how many orphans are there in this world, possibly even orphaned at a younger age than Sam Flynn? How many of those orphans are pathetic emos who let that one fact, that they were orphaned, totally define who they are? And why should I cheer for an emo guy being emo?
And why did he stop being emo? Again even a single line of dialog would have done wonders. "Now I know my Dad didn't leave my by choice, so now I can stop whining and I'll wave my hand and put Alan in as CEO." Eh, that's a clunky line of dialog, but the ending seemed forced and clunky to me anyway.
While there are some excellent story ideas, what you, and many others, fail to understand is that the computers the digital world is a custom built job.
Now, here you are doing something that I do sometimes also: you are filling in details in the story that were never there. Sometimes, when I like something that has flaws, I'll start inventing back story that explains things.
We were never told anything about the nature of the computer. All we know is that it is at least two decades old, and had never had even one second of downtime in over two decades (I wanted to see a UPS and a generator nearby).
Why wouldn't ENCOM become the dominate freight company?
Again, we were never told why, but clearly the technology remained secret and undeveloped. It's hard to believe that something that was possible in 1980 would be completely overlooked and undiscovered for the next 30 years.
Filling in the back story, I can speculate that CEO Kevin Flynn of Encom had the teleportation project shut down, and collected the equipment for his own use. But what happened to the scientists who invented the equipment? Why didn't they work on it some more, write papers about it, talk to colleagues about it?
And why would an algorithm become flesh and blood by stepping through this "portal"? Did the algorithm have simulated blood all along? But only Sam bled when injured, Quorra's arm did that shattering thing, yet she was able to leave the computer world.
steveha
I mean, he destroyed CLU with just a thought.
But the only way he could do that was to destroy himself at the same time! Why? I dunno, but that's the way Quorra explained it early on.
(And I should have known it would therefore happen. Chekhov's Gun and all that.)
steveha
There are two IMAXes. The original IMAX is a film format, where each frame is about the size of the palm of your hand. The new digital IMAX is, well, digital.
The first IMAX 3D movie I saw was years ago, with the film format. I had to wear a big "shutter" mask that was heavy (likely due to batteries). I believe that there was just a single projector, and the active shutters were necessary to do 3D.
These days I only go to a digital IMAX theatre for 3D, and they have two digital projectors and all you need are polarized glasses. I'm particularly happy that the digital format never gets scratched up; you can go see a movie weeks after it opened and the quality is perfect.
I live in the Seattle area, and there are at least four digital IMAX theatres in the area, plus the original two film IMAX theatres at the Pacific Science Center by the Space Needle.
steveha
On the scale of 0 through 10, I'd give this movie a 10 for visuals, a 10 for music and sound effects, a 10 on costumes, a 4.5 on story and about a 3 on heart.
Those of us with some love for the original movie are somewhat more inclined to let the lack of heart slide, or to view it through nostalgia-tinted eyes and not think about it too much.
One of the basic problems is that I didn't like most of the main characters. I found it hard to empathize with Sam Flynn; he was incredibly privileged yet pointlessly emo. (By the end of the movie, he has set aside his emo-ness but I'm not sure quite why, probably because I don't understand why he was so emo to start with.) Kevin Flynn was more of the actual protagonist than Sam, but he spent much of the movie doing nothing and saying that doing nothing was the right thing to do; and the scene where he is reunited with his son didn't have the emotional impact it deserved. (From Kevin Flynn's point of view, he hadn't seen his son in centuries at least, centuries where it must have eaten at him to wonder what was happening in the real world.) CLU was an unsatisfying villain, especially if you compare him to Sark and MCP from the original. The only character I actually liked was Quorra.
It would have helped if we could have seen more emotion. Did Sam believe his father had run away and abandoned him? That would explain the emo, but we didn't get a scene that suggested it. Did Kevin feel hatred for CLU, for the horrible things CLU had done? Did he feel anguish, that something he created had gone so far wrong? He talked about the situation like some sort of chess game: "Any move we make helps him win" or something like that.
Despite the flaws, I'm glad I saw it, and I actually hope they will make another one right away. I wish they would get a really good script for the next one, one with a bit more heart. All this needed was a better script and it could have been a great movie instead of just a good one.
P.S. As a geek, I care about continuity, and there were egregious continuity breaks with the original. Programs in the original just wanted to drink some electricity, but now they have actual food and drink. In the original, Kevin Flynn had powers because he was a user; in this movie, Sam Flynn didn't seem to have any user powers, and Kevin Flynn had rather limited powers for someone who had had centuries to refine them. (I wanted to see the two of them fighting together like a pair of Jedi.) Did I want to see bits? *+YES+* Did the movie have any? *-NO-* And it would have been great to see Cindy Morgan in at least a cameo. (I wish the plot line had said that Sam had been adopted by Alan and Lora after Kevin disappeared!)
The costumes look totally different, but I don't count that as a continuity violation; it was UNIX now instead of an IBM mainframe, so of course all the programs were cooler-looking.
P.P.S. There were some cool plot ideas in the TRON 2.0 video game, and I would like to see those ideas used in future movies. What if shadowy government agencies got the TRON laser technology, and started sending agents into the Internet to spy on computers, sabotage systems, or even assassinate people? What if data errors during the laser digitizing process caused people to go insane or even become mutant-looking monsters in the computer world? How about a scene where someone (say, Alan) is in grave danger in the real world and Sam has to protect him from the computer world, by hacking?
steveha
Hopefully this is a whoosh and there's some sarcasm I'm missing or something...
The whole article is loaded with jokes.
"If it stopped there, I'd be a healthier man. But then I see the ridged bonnet [...] The taste of Red Thunderbird fills my mouth. I'm young again - I'm dancing."
Did you really even wonder if this guy was serious? He even provided a link where you can read about Thunderbird, in case you didn't get the joke.
"I spent years building the connections in my brain that this is trying to abuse."
"It's not powerful enough to run modern games, but that's like complaining that, erm, a Mary Whitehouse sex doll doesn't have Bluetooth."
"I'm going to play Bruce Lee for 20 minutes, unplug it, then spend weeks cultivating a tiny blind spot that means I never have to consider the reasons for my actions."
Yes, there was sarcasm in plenty.
steveha
It seems that some of the cases in TFA - such as when a girl records the cops detaining and beating her boyfriend - would not fall under this, since she's technically not "interacting" with them. Yet common sense dictates that it should be equally protected.
Sure. I didn't mean to restrict the right of recording to just the person the cops are after. It should be legal at all times for anyone to record the police when they are on duty. If someone is in court, he/she should be able to introduce video from any source: girlfriend, bystanders, whatever. But I agree we should put restrictions in place that would prevent making a web site of "Cops, Where They Live, and Their Vulnerable Family Members".
It should also be recognized as illegal for cops to go around a crowd, demanding that people hand over their recording devices in an effort to erase the recordings. (That has happened; read the article.)
Really, it's already impossible to keep people from surreptitiously photographing or recording police. Making it illegal won't stop it from happening.
steveha
The police, most of the time, are arresting people who need to be arrested. Those people tend to lie. So there is this huge bias: if the suspect says one thing, the cop says something else, most of the time the cop's version gets more weight.
But this makes a huge problem when a cop is willing to just make stuff up. The authors of the Constitution never imagined personal video recorders, but I am certain they would approve of their use by citizens as a check on government power.
All that said, I would support a law making it illegal to record police officers and post their images, names, home address, list of family members, etc. on the Internet. Police officers are entitled to some privacy when off duty, and I really don't want to see criminals start targeting the families of police officers to discourage them from making arrests.
But it must be legal to record one's interactions with any government agents, and it must be legal to introduce that recording in court as part of one's defense.
If you read the article linked from Bruce Schneier's posting, you will find that courts have actually ruled that an interaction with a police officer and a citizen is not "public" unless there are lots of other people around. So, if there are plenty of witnesses to corroborate your story, you can legally record the police; but if it is just you and the cop, it's a felony to record the police. That's just insane and must change.
I have also noticed that often, when I read about a really egregious incident involving the TSA or law enforcement, the government officials involved will claim that the citizen was acting "aggressive" or "provoking trouble". And as the article says, official recordings that might prove things one way or the other seem to go missing sometimes.
Citizens must be allowed to record their interactions with government, and at a minimum use the recordings in court as part of their defense.
steveha
There are an amazingly large number of Star Wars fan films, and you can find them at TheForce.net. There are some really good ones. I recommend Duality and Bounty Trail.
http://www.theforce.net/
A few years back I saw a good Spiderman fan film. I Google searched it and stumbled upon a web site devoted to fan films:
http://www.fanfilms.net/index.php
By the way, this was the Spiderman fan film I was looking for: The Green Goblin's Last Stand. "The total production budget was $400, and it shows. However, it also shows what a small group of motivated individuals are capable of when they are focused on a single goal."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Goblin's_Last_Stand
Finally, you have only to look through YouTube to find *lots* of people who are making cool features. Pretty much anything by FreddieW, lots of stuff by jaymegutierrez (anyone on Slashdot really should watch "Clean the Fan"), Smosh ("Cat Soup").
http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew
http://www.youtube.com/user/jaymegutierrez
http://www.youtube.com/user/smosh
And you 5secondfilms is awesome. They make 5 movies a week; they aren't all gold, but some of them are absolutely classic.
http://5secondfilms.com/
steveha
From the article:
Wow. That makes a lot of sense to me.
How does the old saying go? The best school in the world is a log with a student on one end and Plato on the other. (I'd pick Richard Feynman or Issac Asimov rather than Plato, but you get the idea.) If a student can be taught directly by a really good teacher, you don't need a lot of fancy stuff.
Contrariwise, educational technology can make a big difference in remote areas. With decent computers and access to textbooks, the Internet, etc. the students can end up surpassing any available teachers.
steveha
If anyone is going to be alight in the whole Wikileaks debacle, its going to be the lawyers.
That's sort of an incendiary comment. You're playing with fire, here; you don't want to flame lawyers, they might get hot under the collar.
steveha
First, the 7.62x51mm (.308 Winchester) round doesn't generate "much more recoil" than the 5.56x45mm. It is heavier but nothing that is unreasonable.
The actual problems are not so much the recoil, but rather (0) a 7.62 battle rifle will be significantly heavier than an M16, (1) the 7.62 ammo is significantly heavier and bulkier than 5.56 ammo, and (2) a 7.62 battle rifle is not practical to fire full-auto. These issues are tied up with the recoil, but recoil isn't the primary problem.
Would you agree with the above? I appreciate the correction, by the way. I should have known better than to simply say "recoil" was the problem.
Second, the 7.62x51mm round is STILL in general issue in weapons other than the M16.
I didn't think I implied that 7.62 is no longer used. I was specifically talking about the general-issue rifle for the armed forces being changed to a 7.62 rifle, which I do not believe will ever happen.
I didn't say it, but the reason for a debate over 5.56 or 7.62 is because there is already lots of 7.62 in the supply chain, as you noted. If they were to adopt some third new cartridge, they would complicate their logistics. A cartridge in-between 5.56 and 7.62 was never, I guess, deemed worth the complication, but this new 25mm grenade is.
IMO, the M14 is far superior to the M16 in all but the tightest confines and even that can be overcome with a folding stock and shorter barrel configuration just like they were with the development of the M4 and Commando versions of the M16.
Now that is an interesting idea. I wonder just how light you could make an M14 variant and still have it be practical? Make it semi-auto only, of course.
And, BTW, the M4 (16" barrel vs 20") is actually the standard issue weapon for the US military, at least the Army, now.
More info in the Wikipedia page.
Thanks for commenting.
steveha
The basic M16 is well under a thousand dollars. But a fully tricked-out M16, with a range-finding night vision scope mounted on it, costs a lot more than a basic M16! On the gripping hand, not many troops get the fully tricked-out version.
I read some articles about the OICW, and I was dubious about the cost. Some OICW apologists argued that it wasn't really going to be that much more expensive than the M16, and they used the most expensive M16 numbers they could find. IIRC it was on the order of $10,000 or more.
Also, I wonder how the price of $35,000 is being computed. If they are amortizing the R&D costs for two decades of research, that would tend to make the weapon look more expensive. I doubt that the manufacturing cost is that high. But I'm not an expert.
Hmmm, for what it's worth: Wikipedia projects the cost per weapon at $25,000.
steveha
I'm not an expert on military stuff, but I have been interested in this and I have read articles about it over the years.
This came out of research that started many years ago, the OICW program.
The original vision was that every soldier might get a fancy grenade launcher like this as his/her primary weapon. But you don't dare use a grenade if an enemy is at very close range (perhaps attacking with something as simple as a pointed stick), so the OICW was supposed to have a close-range, defensive capacity: a "kinetic energy" weapon, i.e., bullets. The result was a heavy, complex, expensive weapon that didn't make anyone happy.
But I guess the research to produce the fancy grenade launcher paid off, and here is the result.
I was always troubled by the 25mm projectile size. Can a 25mm projectile contain enough explosives to produce the desired effect when it air-bursts? I guess so, if they are deploying it.
For general issue, it will continue to be the M16 family for the foreseeable future. I have read the occasional article about the military starting to wish it had a rifle of intermediate calibre between the 5.56mm of the M16 and the 7.62mm used before the M16. In desert engagements, ranges might be farther than the M16 can comfortably handle; in jungle terrain, foliage can sometimes deflect the 5.56 bullet. But nobody wants to try to generally issue the 7.62 mm again, as it has much more recoil than the 5.56, and it would be a pain to introduce some sort of new ammo.
But now this new, fancy grenade launcher looks like it shall fill in the gap: it shoots a relatively massive projectile at up to 500 metres point effect, and up to 1000 meters area effect (source: Wikipedia). The ammo will be much more expensive than 5.56 ammo, and it will need batteries and special training besides; but if it really works as promised, it should be very cost-effective. (Even if you spent many dollars in ammo on attacking the enemy, if it decisively stops the attack from the enemy before he inflicts casualties, you have come out ahead.)
As I said, I am no kind of expert and I welcome corrections if I said anything wrong here.
steveha
I know someone who used to be a senior audio guy at Microsoft. While he was there, he tried to get improved standards for motherboard audio: for example, he wanted the signal-to-noise ratio to be similar to what you can get on a $20 portable music player. For a while, the "Designed for Windows" sticker required basic quality from the onboard audio. There was fierce pushback from some big names in industry (I won't name names unless he tells me it's okay to do so) and in the end, Microsoft relented. Margins are thin in the PC business, and they insisted on the right to use cheap (i.e., lousy) audio components.
I am not at all surprised that you can make a big improvement by spending $30 on a sound card. At work, we don't use motherboard audio at all; we usually use USB or FireWire audio devices. (I do sometimes use the built-in audio on a Mac laptop. Apple seems to have spent the extra five cents or whatever it is, and used decent audio parts.)
For $30 or less, you can get a USB audio device that will give you nice clean stereo. I have been buying the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage; they changed the design since I bought one but I'll bet the quality is still fine.
For multichannel playback, you can get a $100 device made by ESI called the GigaPort HD. The audio quality is fine, but the drivers sometimes have issues. For $400 to $500 you can get an Edirol UA-101 (or maybe it's branded as a "Cakewalk" UA-101); that has 10 channels in and 10 channels out (8 analog and an optical S/PDIF).
By the way, for headphones, I really like the Sennheiser HD555 headphones that were mentioned in TFA. Lightweight, comfortable, excellent quality, and very reasonably priced (under $90 on Amazon last I checked).
steveha
There are plenty of so-called businessmen out there with grandiose plans of converting biomass to energy without any pollution. Unfortunately, this sounds like one of them.
If you read the related links, you will see that GPI really can produce a quality product; according to this page you can take the output of their test plant and pour it into the tank of a diesel truck and it will just work. And if you read the claims, it seems it doesn't pollute the air while doing it (impurities from the input stream come out the far end as some sort of solid). Some combustible gas is produced as a by-product of the reaction (methane, I guess) and they plan to burn that to provide power to operate the plant, making it self-fueling. (The same thing is true of the Changing Worlds plant that converts turkey offal to oil.) In short, if these web pages are true, GPI is not making "grandiose claims" that aren't true.
Also, GPI seems to have some real problems paying bills on time. That has nothing to do with the technology. (And the Washington state DoE shutting them down didn't exactly help GPI to pay their bills on time.)
It seems the DoE shut them down because the DoE believes that GPI should have filed some paperwork related to burning trash. GPI went to the federal EPA and got a ruling that their process does not fall into the category of burning trash, and thus the DoE was wrong to require trash-burning paperwork.
I'm wondering if GPI could have avoided the problems by talking to the DoE more up front. One of the articles quoted a DoE representative as saying that the DoE had no idea what might come out of this plant, since nobody from GPI had filed any paperwork. But GPI filed paperwork with the EPA... are we to believe they withheld details of their process from the Washington state government but were willing to disclose the details to the EPA? If so, why?
I can't sleuth out the truth by reading all the newspaper articles on the web, so I don't know for sure what exactly is going on. I just hope that they get this thing going... efficiently turning waste into usable fuel is a win every way you look at it.
They claim they can produce diesel at a cost of less than $0.80 per gallon; at gas stations near me, diesel costs over four times that much, so they ought to be able to sell all the diesel they can make at a tidy profit. Then maybe they can pay back all the people to whom they owe money.
steveha
From TFA:
So the government of my state caused major problems for GPI, and the federal government had to overrule the state. That's just great.
According to TFA, GPI's plant operates using "a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP)" yet the state Department of Ecology (DoE) insisted on regulating the plant as if it were an incinerator plant, which it clearly isn't.
We have a liberal Democrat for a governor, the Democrats have a complete lock on the state legislature, and plenty of liberal voters. Our governor claims to be in favor of the environment, in favor of business that helps the state, in favor of jobs, etc. Where was she when the state DoE was causing these problems?
I really wonder at the politics behind this. If this is random bureaucrats just being pointlessly bureaucratic, why didn't any other part of government get involved and help resolve this? Where were the state senators and representatives from the Pasco area? Did the governor just never hear of this, and if so, how is that possible?
If I were governor and something like this happened, I would very publicly intervene. There's no political downside! The governor has more power than bureaucrats at the DoE, and the voters would love to hear that a green energy project was helped out. So why didn't that happen?
P.S. This of course reminds me of the other thermal depolymerization plant, the plant in Carthage, Missouri that processed turkey offal into energy and fuel. That plant was shut down several times, over allegations of a bad smell; the bad smell was reported at least once on a day that the plant wasn't operating. Eventually they installed upgraded scrubbers on their exhaust stacks and resumed operation. The company, Changing World Technologies went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I guess the TDP plant was shut down. That seems crazy to me; the price of crude oil is high, so they should be able to run their plant at a profit. I guess they are just in too much trouble financially to even run the plant right now?
I hope this "CDP" plant in Pasco works out better than the Changing Worlds one did.
steveha
Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power
Perhaps it does, perhaps it does! If, that is, you can build the device such that it can run off of built-in solar. That's the real trick, isn't it.
A simple four-function calculator trivially can run of a little photocell, and this has been true for decades. So why didn't OLPC simply put a little photocell on the XO-1? Because a little cheap photocell doesn't produce anywhere near the needed power needed by an XO-1.
And, the hand-cranked power is a particularly irritating straw man. A long, long, time ago, when OLPC was just an idea, they thought about a hand crank, and even made a mockup of what it might look like. But it was never made. Reasons: 0) some kids live in places with a decent electrical grid, so there is no need to add the cost of a generator to every single laptop; 1) an external generator can be trivially replaced if it breaks, without the laptop itself needing to be repaired; 2) a crank built-in to the laptop adds mechanical cranking strain on the laptop, necessitating the laptop being made sturdy in otherwise-needless ways; and 3) little kids are not known for their arm strength, so a generator that could be operated by leg muscles was deemed better. OLPC announced that a pull-cord generator would be the human powered generator, but as far as I can tell from a few quick Google searches just now, the pull-cord generator is still vapor.
I recently sent my XO-1 to India for use by the Bharti Integrated Rural Development Society
(B.I.R.D.S.) and I looked into a solar array for it. I found one for about $200 that should operate an XO-1 continuously and charge the battery in about an hour. I also found lots of other solar arrays that cost way more than that. So, the most affordable solar array I found cost more than the XO-1. As I understand it, the B.I.R.D.S. school has electrical power only when they run their generator, which is a few hours a day, so my hope is that the XO-1 will be useful just with the generator power. (Conveniently, the power supply on an XO-1 accepts any AC from 100 to 240 Volts, at 50 or 60 Hz, so they should be able to just plug it in with a plug adapter.)
Note that TFA says "...the I-slate is the first of a series of electronic notepads being built around a new class of low-energy-consumption microchips under development...". So, one of the reasons the OLPC XO-1 isn't powered with a little solar array is that it was developed half a decade ago, and the new ultra-low-power chips are, well, new.
Isn't it enough to say "This is a cool new technology and I'm excited about it" rather than talking about how much better it is compared to a half-decade-old technology?
P.S. I put an 8 GB flash card in the SD card slot on the XO-1. On the card I put a copy of Wikipedia for Schools, which takes up about 4 GB; then I put some health and medical books and a bunch of classic fiction books (for students to read when studying English). I updated the OS on the OLPC to the latest build, and installed a typing tutor program (Typing Turtle) from Sugar Labs. I found a public-domain copy of The Elements of Style and a few other free textbooks. Finally, I put a few books on Python Programming. I haven't had any email back from B.I.R.D.S. telling me anything, so I have no idea how it's working out.
I have to say, an XO-1 loading books straight off an SD card is a pretty nice book reading platform! And with the backlight off, to read books in monochrome, battery life should be pretty good. I'm hoping they will find the XO-1 to be useful.
steveha
Oh, and here is a version that doesn't slurp the whole file into memory. You could count some really large files with this one.
from collections import Counter
def file_chars(name):
for line in open(name):
for ch in line:
yield ch
# set "itr" (iterable) to generator instance for file
itr = file_chars("post")
lst = Counter(itr).most_common(10)
print(lst)
steveha
I like using Python for this sort of thing. Here's a Python 3 program to find the top 10 and print them:
from collections import Counter
s = open("post").read() # read in entire file as a single string
lst = Counter(s).most_common(10) # find top 10 chars
# lst is a list of tuples: (char, count)
print(lst) # prints list
It's likely more efficient than spinning up six processes, but more importantly I think it is pretty easy to understand (and it was easy to write).
You could do this whole thing in two lines (one for the import, one to do everything) but it's ugly:
from collections import Counter
print(Counter(open("post").read()).most_common(10))
steveha
All Oracle did was buy Sun. There isn't some sort of magical evil contagion that instantly infected OpenOffice.org; the software is no different than it was before the sale.
Now, Oracle could potentially direct OpenOffice.org development to go down the path of evil. They could change the license under which OO.o is distributed to an unacceptable one. They could do all sorts of things! But they haven't had time to do it yet, and by the time they get their evil ducks in a row, LibreOffice will be up and running.
Little-known fact: many (most?) Linux distros are already shipping a non-pure OO.o. There is a collection of patches that were never part of the official OO.o, called Go-oo, and distros have been shipping Go-oo instead of the pure Oo.o.
I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches, leaving us with two office suites: Oracle OO.o, and LibreOffice. And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice and leave Oracle OO.o completely irrelevant and unloved. (Consider the situation with Xfree86 and X.org. In that case, the switchover happened in a stunningly short period of time.)
The worst-case scenario is that Oracle adopts some license that keeps LibreOffice from merging Oracle patches, and then Oracle funds a development team to make giant improvements to Oracle OO.o; then the community might have to choose between the free LibreOffice and the Oracle offering. But even there, I am not actually worried. The current state of OpenOffice is usable. Even if Oracle poured huge resources into OO.o development, what could they really offer to tempt us away from LibreOffice? A toolbar with giant icons? A dancing paperclip? Meanwhile, if all that LibreOffice does is simply to fix bugs, improve speed, and rewrite to end Java dependencies, I for one would be completely happy.
If you use OO.o on Windows, just don't take any updates until LibreOffice is ready, and you will be fine. Or better yet, simply start getting your installers from the Go-oo web site. If you use Linux, you almost certainly can simply trust your distro to do a good job of keeping your office suite relatively evil-free.
Oracle may be evil, but they aren't magically evil. Don't worry about this.
P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.
steveha
What's your point?
My point is that patents are not achieving their goal of promoting Progress. Patents have been granted on things that are IMHO obvious, such as using two fingers to make a pinching motion. Only companies with lawyers, and a library of patents to cross-license, have a chance. This is stifling Progress, rather than promoting it.
I am not calling for an end to patents. I make my living writing software, and if there were no patents, the company for which I work wouldn't have the money to pay me. But the current situation is insane.
are you by any chance an expert in the particular field
No, I'm merely someone with common sense.
Seems that's one of the requirements, not "armchair expert" who slept at a Howard Johnson's.
This is a wonderfully strange ad hominem attack! I don't know if I can match this, but:
You don't know anything, you hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer.
steveha
I'm just glad to see another example of patents promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
Because we all know that without these patents, Apple would never have bothered to produce devices with multitouch, nor would Motorola, nor would anybody. And really, the whole idea of using compound gestures like pinching is completely non-obvious. And we wouldn't want little startup companies to make multitouch products; we only want big companies with lawyers to be able to do it.
Can't you just feel the Progress?
Go, Apple! Cry havoc and let slip the lawyers of litigation!
steveha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nxZwHG5bA
I just watched that video. The BGA reballing process appears to be:
0) Remove all the old solder. First he melted it with a soldering iron and got a ball of solder, which he rolled off. Then he applied a solder wick (with the soldering iron to heat it) and scrubbed gently all over the chip package surface. Finally he wiped the chip package with a cloth soaked in some liquid (a solvent I'd guess).
1) Paint the chip package with some sort of goop.
2) Put a shield on the chip package. This shield has holes that match where the new solder balls must go.
3) Apply some sort of metal powder from a jar. The powder appears to be solder balls, each one just the right size to fit through the holes in the shield. He gently wiped the powder this way and that until there was one solder ball per hole (more or less). Then he took a pair of needle tweezers and carefully moved one ball at a time until there was exactly one solder ball per hole, with no holes empty.
4) Apply heat from a heat gun. Clearly this was to melt the solder balls and make them attach to the chip package.
5) Pop the shield off, and hold up the reballed BGA to the camera so we can see its perfection.
I guess the rest of the process is to very carefully drop the chip package where you want it to go, and convince the solder to melt. How do you do that? You mentioned a "reflow oven"? I Googled that, and there are lots of different ovens out there. I even saw a page for using an ordinary toaster oven for the purpose.
Looks like pretty finicky work to do by hand, but not completely impossible.
steveha
As a Brit, I follow the US space programme with intereset, because it's the best hope the human race has for getting off this rock.
Sadly, I don't quite agree. I think the best hope comes from the private companies like SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, and the like.
The Space Shuttle was not safe enough and not reusable enough. It could carry large payloads to low orbit, infrequently, and it had only about a 99% chance of not killing everyone on board. And sadly, I have no reason to think that any new orbiter built by NASA would really be better. (And I mean actually built, as opposed to studying it for a while and then not building anything.)
What we really need is a "space pickup truck", a vehicle that can carry a small payload to orbit, then return and do it again with minimum turnaround time. The space shuttle took massive amounts of labor to service between flights, while a 747 lands, gets refueled, and takes off again; we need a vehicle more like a 747. Yes, this is harder for a spacecraft than an airplane, but it has to be possible to do better than the Space Shuttle.
Implied in this concept is that the vehicle can't have large pieces falling off and burning up. Ideal would be single stage to orbit, but two stage to orbit might be required in the early days. Again, a huge Space Shuttle sized payload is not required; four passengers and 1000 kg of cargo is plenty. (You would sometimes want a heavy lift launch, but there are non-reusable launchers already existing that would serve.)
Once we have several companies with reliable, reusable vehicles, the cost to get people and satellites and such into orbit will plummet, and the really exciting stuff could happen. Build a real space station, with large fuel tanks; build a "moon shuttle" that never needs to do anything other than go between the Earth and the moon, and moon travel could become routine. Once you are in Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
Here's how you get a meaningful presence in space: build something that works, fly it. Learn how to build a better one, build that, fly it. Repeat. Once that iterative cycle gets going, we will get launch vehicles far better than anything NASA will come up with. (The modern NASA, I mean. NASA used to know how to do this! They put men on the moon with an iterative cycle like I just described: they started with simple rockets, pretty much just V2s, then iterated until they knew how to build the Saturn V. Then, for some reason, NASA decided they didn't need to iterate at all for the Space Shuttle; they designed the whole thing on paper, built it, done. I'm amazed it worked as well as it did, given the complete lack of iteration.)
Ideally, I'd like to see some sort of space cannon to deliver things like oxygen, dried food, jet fuel, and the like. Something that can send a lot of stuff up really cheaply.
The exciting future of space travel will come when space travel becomes boringly routine. I look forward to the day when we start to need space traffic controllers, to make sure that none of the several spacecraft in orbit get in each others' way.
steveha
I used to know someone who had worked for an alarm monitoring company. She said the chairs and other furniture were used 24 hours a day, yet the accountants were depreciating them like ordinary office furniture. As a result, the furniture was not replaced often enough and was falling apart and uncomfortable. Make sure to plan on fast depreciation for your furniture.
steveha