They did, and apple is, as usual now, just being a patent troll.
Example already used to invalidate this patent elsewhere:
http://telecoms.cytalk.com/2011/10/slide-to-unlock-patented/
As soon as the tech for a gesture-worthy touchscreen came about, it appeared. Don't pretend this bullshit patent is some kind of apple magic fairy dust of innovation.
Sam
Ironically, the news coverage has pushed theoatmeal's page complaining up to the #2 google search result, try it:
Google search for funnyjunk
Just to add to the fun:
funnyjunk
Um, why wouldn't this work in a vacuum? They state that the beam hits particles and is scattered forward (as opposed to backward in regular scattering).
Thusly, individual particles are given momentum towards the source of the emitter. Seems like this would work best in a vacuum. imagine a probe uses a laser to vaporize part of an object, then this beam would shine on the vapor drawing it through the vacuum to a collector.
"A century of Reis would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement of construction. It was left for Bell to discover that the failure was due not to workmanship but to the principle which was adopted as the basis of what had to be done. Bell discovered a new art—that of transmitting speech by electricity, and his claim is not as broad as his invention. To follow Reis is to fail; but to follow Bell is to succeed."
A long loop of fiber has light of the same frequency traveling both directions in it. The phase shift as the loop and emitters is rotated about the axis causes interference patterns.
Yep, and you save 5$ a month by dropping the stupid crap unlimited texting.
They will swear up and down it can't be done, but if you continue to insist, they will drop it.
Google voice: free texting (I use it to talk to my couple friends that use an iphone or dumbphone). Everyone else already has an android phone with google talk (a couple on the pay-as-you-go plans on Virgin).
I refuse to pay a monthly fee for that BS they get for FREE. Sam
You're incorrect they're not working on features "professionals want." It says right in the summary the porting to GEGL is making huge advances... this will give the GIMP CMYK, 16/32 bit colorspace, non-destructive editing. This release has already given it single-window mode.
The greatest hits of the people that say it's not ready for the big time.
Now run that engine at 15% load, or how about 50% for 3 seconds, 20% for 3 seconds, then 10% for 40 seconds then idle for 30 seconds and 40% for 5 seconds ad nauseum.
Even cruising down the highway, you'll be looking at an engine turning under its peak efficiency rpm band, and and a lower load% than is efficient. Most gas engines seem to get their highest efficiency from running about 75-80% of all out, but this power isn't usually needed.
One of the reasons hybrids can get better gas-mileage than non-hybrids on the highway: the engine is more closely sized output needed for highway cruising, with the electric motor giving you acceleration/hill climb power.
All in all, I bet the actual gasoline->mechanical energy provided in most cars for common driving situations (mixed city/highway) nets less than 10% efficiency.
Oh man I used to make these all the time in high school.
Even better is putting about 20-30 staples through the leading edge part to make it fly faster... throw it kind of like a football and you could LAUNCH that sucker.
Um, I guess that's why honda put these dangerous batteries in the 2012 Civic Hybrid.
Oh, and the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt?
Toyota is seriously behind the curve here. It's not that they're dangerous or something (and spare me the Chevy Volt fires stuff... wreck a gas powered car, puncture its tank, then leave it sitting upside down a couple weeks with the gas dribbling from the tank and the 12v battery connected and see what happens).
Of course, the base model doesn't even have an automatic (not necessarily a bad thing) or even AIR CONDITIONING.
Once you appoint a gas only Civic similarly to the hybrid model, the price differential is far smaller than 50%.
The real question is, why don't they make a base-model hybrid? I've got the old manual transmission civic hybrid from the first generation, which I can never replace because I'd be stuck with an automatic.
If it's a Honda Civic Hybrid, that number may be correct.
Honda is being sued for this. My HCH1 has a failing battery right now (heavy recals since 95k miles, I keep resetting the SOC low to force more charge in to keep it from throwing the error light currently ~106k).
Undoing my moderation here, but DO NOT pay the stealership $4000 for a NOS NiMH battery. Hybrid Battery Repair sells cells (tee hee) that are actually new, and higher capacity than the original packs (8 ah vs 6.5 ah in the original/honda replacement pack). And they charge $1800 +$200 shipping for the assembled pack. And it's pretty easy to do the swap yourself.
Seriously, replacement packs from Honda for their gen1 hybrids are failing at less than half the mileage the original batteries did. Just search around the InsightCentral.net forum (nearly identical IMA to the HCH1)... some people are getting only 40k miles out of their replacement Honda packs. Ugh.
Gives you detailed info on the IMA (especially battery temp, shows background charging, the lean-burn light is amazingly useful), and I'm currently guinea-pigging using it to give you manual control of the IMA system:
Well, I have a Linux based server, tablet, phone, TV, router, GPS (Nuvi 7xx), and of course my laptop and desktop run Linux, but that's unusual.
None of these products are particularly "out there," so the year of the Linux desktop may never have arrived, but I'd say the year of Linux on the "everything else" came a couple years ago and is still happening.
Slashdot Mirror
They did, and apple is, as usual now, just being a patent troll. Example already used to invalidate this patent elsewhere: http://telecoms.cytalk.com/2011/10/slide-to-unlock-patented/ As soon as the tech for a gesture-worthy touchscreen came about, it appeared. Don't pretend this bullshit patent is some kind of apple magic fairy dust of innovation. Sam
Probably because they're using lithium polymer pouch cells for the battery and they don't want them to swell.
Ironically, the news coverage has pushed theoatmeal's page complaining up to the #2 google search result, try it:
Google search for funnyjunk
Just to add to the fun: funnyjunk
Reminds me of good ol' AOL.
Unprofitable core business, let's buy a web browser (Netscape).
As for slapping your brand all over a pre-existing smartphone OS... not sure what the point is there?
Sam
Clearly you haven't been to Canada recently.
Um, why wouldn't this work in a vacuum? They state that the beam hits particles and is scattered forward (as opposed to backward in regular scattering).
Thusly, individual particles are given momentum towards the source of the emitter. Seems like this would work best in a vacuum. imagine a probe uses a laser to vaporize part of an object, then this beam would shine on the vapor drawing it through the vacuum to a collector.
Sam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Reis#Shortcomings
"A century of Reis would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement of construction. It was left for Bell to discover that the failure was due not to workmanship but to the principle which was adopted as the basis of what had to be done. Bell discovered a new art—that of transmitting speech by electricity, and his claim is not as broad as his invention. To follow Reis is to fail; but to follow Bell is to succeed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_optic_gyroscope
A long loop of fiber has light of the same frequency traveling both directions in it. The phase shift as the loop and emitters is rotated about the axis causes interference patterns.
Sam
Yep, and you save 5$ a month by dropping the stupid crap unlimited texting.
They will swear up and down it can't be done, but if you continue to insist, they will drop it.
Google voice: free texting (I use it to talk to my couple friends that use an iphone or dumbphone). Everyone else already has an android phone with google talk (a couple on the pay-as-you-go plans on Virgin).
I refuse to pay a monthly fee for that BS they get for FREE.
Sam
What's worse is trying to open an HTML file in Writer.
Good luck having it display a formatted page... you usually just get the markup.
This import worked until around 3.2, then broke horribly.
Sam
And yet its falloff is still a function of the square of the distance.
The only truth is the lies found in the Books of Bokonon.
Sam
You're incorrect they're not working on features "professionals want." It says right in the summary the porting to GEGL is making huge advances... this will give the GIMP CMYK, 16/32 bit colorspace, non-destructive editing. This release has already given it single-window mode.
The greatest hits of the people that say it's not ready for the big time.
http://www.gegl.org/
It's a great free tool, I use it almost every day and have for years. You're right it's not photoshop, but I don't much care.
I don't know about those other shops, but any kit I've gotten from adafruit has been top-shelf with good examples/docs, etc.
Just look at all those nice terminal blocks for I/O.
Yes, 20-30% on a bench in their ideal power band.
Now run that engine at 15% load, or how about 50% for 3 seconds, 20% for 3 seconds, then 10% for 40 seconds then idle for 30 seconds and 40% for 5 seconds ad nauseum.
Even cruising down the highway, you'll be looking at an engine turning under its peak efficiency rpm band, and and a lower load% than is efficient. Most gas engines seem to get their highest efficiency from running about 75-80% of all out, but this power isn't usually needed.
One of the reasons hybrids can get better gas-mileage than non-hybrids on the highway: the engine is more closely sized output needed for highway cruising, with the electric motor giving you acceleration/hill climb power.
All in all, I bet the actual gasoline->mechanical energy provided in most cars for common driving situations (mixed city/highway) nets less than 10% efficiency.
Sam
Oh man I used to make these all the time in high school.
Even better is putting about 20-30 staples through the leading edge part to make it fly faster... throw it kind of like a football and you could LAUNCH that sucker.
Sam
Um, I guess that's why honda put these dangerous batteries in the 2012 Civic Hybrid.
Oh, and the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt?
Toyota is seriously behind the curve here. It's not that they're dangerous or something (and spare me the Chevy Volt fires stuff... wreck a gas powered car, puncture its tank, then leave it sitting upside down a couple weeks with the gas dribbling from the tank and the 12v battery connected and see what happens).
Sam
Of course, the base model doesn't even have an automatic (not necessarily a bad thing) or even AIR CONDITIONING.
Once you appoint a gas only Civic similarly to the hybrid model, the price differential is far smaller than 50%.
The real question is, why don't they make a base-model hybrid? I've got the old manual transmission civic hybrid from the first generation, which I can never replace because I'd be stuck with an automatic.
Yuck.
Hahaha! A 1 hour commute ?= 100 miles a day in the DC-Baltimore area. Coming up 66, that could be a 10 mile round trip! :).
My commute was was usually 50-55 minutes one way, but 27.5 miles... exactly the kind of driving electrics excel at.
Sam
If it's a Honda Civic Hybrid, that number may be correct.
Honda is being sued for this. My HCH1 has a failing battery right now (heavy recals since 95k miles, I keep resetting the SOC low to force more charge in to keep it from throwing the error light currently ~106k).
Sam
Undoing my moderation here, but DO NOT pay the stealership $4000 for a NOS NiMH battery. Hybrid Battery Repair sells cells (tee hee) that are actually new, and higher capacity than the original packs (8 ah vs 6.5 ah in the original/honda replacement pack). And they charge $1800 +$200 shipping for the assembled pack. And it's pretty easy to do the swap yourself.
Seriously, replacement packs from Honda for their gen1 hybrids are failing at less than half the mileage the original batteries did. Just search around the InsightCentral.net forum (nearly identical IMA to the HCH1)... some people are getting only 40k miles out of their replacement Honda packs. Ugh.
On that note, as a fellow HCHer and being geeky enough to read Slashdot, definitely check out the OBDIIC&C gauge:
http://www.insightcentral.net/forums/modifications-technical-issues/20488-obdiic-c-gauge.html
Gives you detailed info on the IMA (especially battery temp, shows background charging, the lean-burn light is amazingly useful), and I'm currently guinea-pigging using it to give you manual control of the IMA system:
http://www.insightcentral.net/forums/other-honda-hybrids-discussion/21887-imac-c-hch1-civic.html
Sam
It's definitely slowly improving though.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811493.pdf
For instance, my state was 94.7% compliance as of 2010.
The lowest state was 72.2%, the highest was 97.6% with the 2010 national average at 85%.
Sam
Whoops, just checked and Linux is on the Nuvi 8xx and 9xx, so my GPS does NOT run Linux :-P
Sam
Well, I have a Linux based server, tablet, phone, TV, router, GPS (Nuvi 7xx), and of course my laptop and desktop run Linux, but that's unusual.
None of these products are particularly "out there," so the year of the Linux desktop may never have arrived, but I'd say the year of Linux on the "everything else" came a couple years ago and is still happening.
So I agree, I hope it grow as well as Linux did.
Sam
http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs5/5049/
Methamphetamine is a schedule II drug. MJ is schedule I.
Meaning? Under federal law, it can be legally used for a medical purpose (a schedule I cannot be used for such).
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Schedule+II+Controlled+Substance
So yes, it is more illegal than meth.
Sam