This isn't applicable to the way the Segway is currently designed, but I think that it will eventually make a great mobility device for the handicapped and elderly. The alternatives now are a terrible eyesore and embarrassing to use.
That's a really good point that you made about the durability factor - It'd be great if they can put a quantitative value to it and actually make it a selling point.
Maybe someone can train me on this 'PHB' acronym.:).
Meanwhile, I definitely see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, I coach my father on his computer - I try to be about as patient as possible, going through commands repeatedly.
On the other hand, my boss was constantly downloading virii and crashing his computer. He looks me in the eye and tells me that he never opens any unknown attachment, yet he's always talking about the spam that he get's as if it came from a close personal friend. "Someone just sent me an email asking about joining a pyramid scheme. What do you think?" The things he says... I am in disbelief when it turns out he's not being sarcastic.
That part is pretty frustrating - I end up staying late at work scanning or reinstalling his system - and the other day we got into a heated argument about my bad attitude.
Don't forget about the recent link to Yahoo exploring blogs. Along with being a great source of information, blogs are methods to meet others of similar interests online. Quite a few people in this day and age have tried chatrooms, Match.com, Friendster,... This is perhaps another avenue and adds one further layer of emersion.
Not sure if this has anything to do with sharp business, but perhaps along the lines of invention and innovation, Jim Clark, founder of Netscape and SGI and other companies said something about how Silicon Valley isn't as fun anymore. I think that there might be a/. article which corresponds to this, but here's the interview nonetheless. http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030820/68/3dj1z.html
For the rest of us, Ayn Rand wrote in the 'Fountainhead' that (sorry about the butchering and the preaching) the only thing of importance to a creator, is to be able to create. There is no greater accomplishment; no awards, money, recognition is better than the act of creating and realizing your own designs. I liked Cringely's article, but I think that his focus was based from mixing invention with business... and thus getting innovation.
I have no arguments that MS was involved with anti-competitive practise with Be, but I don't think that Be would've won. MS has (essentially) unlimited resources to delay the legal proceedings until either the other side calls mercy, or they find a sympathetic judge. Hell, they even did it to the US government, they certainly would've done it here. Admitting wrong-doing would be detrimental to MS and would open floodgates to tons of lawsuits.
I don't know if this needs mentioning, and I'm sure that I'm missing the point, but from an outsider's viewpoint, wasn't Be's demise mostly because of Apple? For a while, it seemed that BeOS was the front runner to Mac's new OS. They ran a huge PR campaign that deflated when Apple chose another OS from which to base.
Hey guys, go easy! These guys are simply pushing the envelope of design constraints. It's like the cross-country solar car contest, no one is suggesting that cars will be 100% solar powered in the future, they're just demonstrating the power of solar power and creatively finding ways to do research.
Looks to me like they're using blogs as an extension of Online Personals. A lot of people actually create these blogs as an outlet and hope to meet similar minds through it. Even if you take Friendster as an example, it's more interactive than, say, match.com. The problem with friendster is that it's still pretty static. Users don't use it to give a personal glimpse into their world - the way that a blog does.
Ah, ok. This makes sense for Video, but for applications such as browser or IM? Is the server running these apps and compressing into Mpeg stream to send to the client? Before you laugh, there is a solution that does this (not MPEG though).
Sorry, your figures are off (at least in my experience). Lower resolutions may refer to certain encoding methods to reduce streaming bandwidth, or VHS resolution, but NTSC itself is 640x480. Some TV chips will cut some resolution (One chip that I worked with output 640x440), and some chips will give you the option to change resolution. Further, the edges of the TV screen will cut off some resolution, but you're really not looking at more than 4-8 pixels.
This is easily tested by designing a webpage that is 640x480, and viewing through a set-top.
Even so, surfing on 640x480 is pretty annoying. A lot of webpages are designed for at least 800x600 (if not more).
I read a statistic somewhere which stated that where the student goes to school or gets accepted doesn't really predict future success. A better gauge of success is how much ambition a student has. Ambitious students will shoot for the top tier schools.
These are Industrial Design Projects, and should be evaluated as such (not Apple's endorsement of a sellable, workable workstation). Thing is that when people bought an iMac, lots of them complained about how it made the rest of the room look ugly. So some students responded to this and created these proof of concepts. So everyone, go easy.
I still have drawings of a concept mp3 player from my classes from 1994 (back then, it was just a black box that "magically holds 100 songs").
You know, that was actually a very interesting list. You have to wonder how they arrived at it. Any one of us can probably have about 10 of these songs in our collection, but if you think about the type of person who would carry over 95% of the songs on that list, and you'll have someone who probably is creating a library of mp3's.
Can't the vendor just offer to refund the entire system? I mean, I see the need to want the $200 discount, but you sort of purchased the computer with the knowledge that it has Windows installed, right?
If I was a business, I'd probably just refund the complete system rather than have to deal with the individual cases.
Anyway, since this guy is such a stickler for license agreements, maybe now he'll have to talk with SCO. heh.
I don't have more to contribute here, except to add to the solidarity. My mail client is from Netscape 4.75 - I've tried Thunderbird, and while it has some great features, such as spam-blocking, I find it still a little slow. Outlook seems to run into a lot of problems with viruses, so I avoid it. Netscape 4.75 mail, works for me, and is very speedy - plus, I've got about 6 years of emails archived with it.
As for my browser, I use IE mostly, but lately, I have used Firebird 0.6 frequently - as it is just as fast as IE and has the tabbed browsing feature. The only thing that's keeping me from completely switching over is that I've got my plugins working about 90% of the time in IE already. Installing and updating plugins for the browsers is a total nuisance for me, so I just assume keep with my current solution for a while longer.
Well, dejanews or google groups... To me, usenet is the value of google.com. None of the other search engines has this function to search through usenet posts. As a system integrator/developer, usenet is a hell of a resource, and if anything, I'm only spending *more* time on it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, Quicktime uses two main codecs: Mpeg4 and Sorenson. They are both licensed and thus have certain restrictions placed on them. For details on Mpeg4, you'll have to check out http://www.mpegla.com . Even though you may not see it, there *is* a cost / license associated with Mpeg - paid by content producers/distributors as well as manufacturers of products that support Mpeg (DVD players, etc.). If you like, you can also search through/.'s archives for articles on how Apple planned to battle MpegLA on the license scheme.
I'm sure that you already know about the proprietary nature of sorenson, so I won't get into that. Obviously, other proprietary formats are Microsoft's and RealNetwork's. This is to say nothing about the quicktime container, of which I know very little (licensing, openness). What I do know, is that trying to support a container through a third party product is not legally free.
Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand, is not owned by any company. The codec is completely open and free to use, (encode, decode, distribute). The.ogg container can be embedded into players without restrictions. As mentioned before, the format has been around for a while and is played by quite a few free software players out there.
If the spiderman trailer wasn't released through the Quicktime format, would you blame the movie producers? I think that you're barking up the wrong tree on this case. Why not contact Apple instead?
As for NPR's reply... pretty common sense stuff. If it was technology related, it means that they don't have the technology/know-how to reformat... obviously not the case. It being a "business" decision means that they don't have the monetary means to do so.
It is about the money... and why not, it doesn't grow on trees. People who work at the stations need to live, the station needs funds to transmit, to buy programming, buy equipment, etc. It takes time and money to maintain their website with multiple streams and formats. So don't be so naive. Public broadcasting needs money and they make BUSINESS decisions to support their efforts. Most of the public stations are operating under a shoestring budget even with your pledges.
RealPlayer support will be maintained for as long as it is feasible to do so, and if you want Ogg support, then there has to be a business case for it. For the idiots who think that Bill Gates pressured NPR to remove quicktime support... get your head out of your ass. As to the letter writing campaign, if you're so interested in hearing NPR in Quicktime format, then maybe you should write to Apple Computer instead of NPR.
Having just looked at the photo, there were quite a few modifications made:
1. superimposed two images,
2. The soldier was made larger,
3. the saturation of the soldier was pulled up, some details of his face was added..
To be honest, when that picture first came up, it *looked* altered.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't applicable to the way the Segway is currently designed, but I think that it will eventually make a great mobility device for the handicapped and elderly. The alternatives now are a terrible eyesore and embarrassing to use.
That's a really good point that you made about the durability factor - It'd be great if they can put a quantitative value to it and actually make it a selling point.
The discs take 50-100 years to degrade into water and Carbon Dioxide, but how long can I use my discs for? 10 years?
Maybe someone can train me on this 'PHB' acronym.
Meanwhile, I definitely see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, I coach my father on his computer - I try to be about as patient as possible, going through commands repeatedly.
On the other hand, my boss was constantly downloading virii and crashing his computer. He looks me in the eye and tells me that he never opens any unknown attachment, yet he's always talking about the spam that he get's as if it came from a close personal friend. "Someone just sent me an email asking about joining a pyramid scheme. What do you think?" The things he says... I am in disbelief when it turns out he's not being sarcastic.
That part is pretty frustrating - I end up staying late at work scanning or reinstalling his system - and the other day we got into a heated argument about my bad attitude.
Don't forget about the recent link to Yahoo exploring blogs. Along with being a great source of information, blogs are methods to meet others of similar interests online. Quite a few people in this day and age have tried chatrooms, Match.com, Friendster, ... This is perhaps another avenue and adds one further layer of emersion.
Always funny when you see that this article was sponsored by a Microsoft Ad.
Not sure if this has anything to do with sharp business, but perhaps along the lines of invention and innovation, Jim Clark, founder of Netscape and SGI and other companies said something about how Silicon Valley isn't as fun anymore. I think that there might be a /. article which corresponds to this, but here's the interview nonetheless. http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030820/68/3dj1z.html
For the rest of us, Ayn Rand wrote in the 'Fountainhead' that (sorry about the butchering and the preaching) the only thing of importance to a creator, is to be able to create. There is no greater accomplishment; no awards, money, recognition is better than the act of creating and realizing your own designs. I liked Cringely's article, but I think that his focus was based from mixing invention with business... and thus getting innovation.
Interesting... but how do you pronounce it?
I have no arguments that MS was involved with anti-competitive practise with Be, but I don't think that Be would've won. MS has (essentially) unlimited resources to delay the legal proceedings until either the other side calls mercy, or they find a sympathetic judge. Hell, they even did it to the US government, they certainly would've done it here. Admitting wrong-doing would be detrimental to MS and would open floodgates to tons of lawsuits.
I don't know if this needs mentioning, and I'm sure that I'm missing the point, but from an outsider's viewpoint, wasn't Be's demise mostly because of Apple? For a while, it seemed that BeOS was the front runner to Mac's new OS. They ran a huge PR campaign that deflated when Apple chose another OS from which to base.
Hey guys, go easy! These guys are simply pushing the envelope of design constraints. It's like the cross-country solar car contest, no one is suggesting that cars will be 100% solar powered in the future, they're just demonstrating the power of solar power and creatively finding ways to do research.
Looks to me like they're using blogs as an extension of Online Personals. A lot of people actually create these blogs as an outlet and hope to meet similar minds through it. Even if you take Friendster as an example, it's more interactive than, say, match.com. The problem with friendster is that it's still pretty static. Users don't use it to give a personal glimpse into their world - the way that a blog does.
Ah, ok. This makes sense for Video, but for applications such as browser or IM? Is the server running these apps and compressing into Mpeg stream to send to the client? Before you laugh, there is a solution that does this (not MPEG though).
Sorry, your figures are off (at least in my experience). Lower resolutions may refer to certain encoding methods to reduce streaming bandwidth, or VHS resolution, but NTSC itself is 640x480. Some TV chips will cut some resolution (One chip that I worked with output 640x440), and some chips will give you the option to change resolution. Further, the edges of the TV screen will cut off some resolution, but you're really not looking at more than 4-8 pixels.
This is easily tested by designing a webpage that is 640x480, and viewing through a set-top.
Even so, surfing on 640x480 is pretty annoying. A lot of webpages are designed for at least 800x600 (if not more).
I read a statistic somewhere which stated that where the student goes to school or gets accepted doesn't really predict future success. A better gauge of success is how much ambition a student has. Ambitious students will shoot for the top tier schools.
These are Industrial Design Projects, and should be evaluated as such (not Apple's endorsement of a sellable, workable workstation). Thing is that when people bought an iMac, lots of them complained about how it made the rest of the room look ugly. So some students responded to this and created these proof of concepts. So everyone, go easy.
I still have drawings of a concept mp3 player from my classes from 1994 (back then, it was just a black box that "magically holds 100 songs").
You know, that was actually a very interesting list. You have to wonder how they arrived at it. Any one of us can probably have about 10 of these songs in our collection, but if you think about the type of person who would carry over 95% of the songs on that list, and you'll have someone who probably is creating a library of mp3's.
Can't the vendor just offer to refund the entire system? I mean, I see the need to want the $200 discount, but you sort of purchased the computer with the knowledge that it has Windows installed, right?
If I was a business, I'd probably just refund the complete system rather than have to deal with the individual cases.
Anyway, since this guy is such a stickler for license agreements, maybe now he'll have to talk with SCO. heh.
I don't have more to contribute here, except to add to the solidarity. My mail client is from Netscape 4.75 - I've tried Thunderbird, and while it has some great features, such as spam-blocking, I find it still a little slow. Outlook seems to run into a lot of problems with viruses, so I avoid it. Netscape 4.75 mail, works for me, and is very speedy - plus, I've got about 6 years of emails archived with it.
As for my browser, I use IE mostly, but lately, I have used Firebird 0.6 frequently - as it is just as fast as IE and has the tabbed browsing feature. The only thing that's keeping me from completely switching over is that I've got my plugins working about 90% of the time in IE already. Installing and updating plugins for the browsers is a total nuisance for me, so I just assume keep with my current solution for a while longer.
The real prize is bragging rights.
Someone should patent litigation, the laws, our rights so that no one is allowed to sue, or to abide by the law. (without paying a licensing fee)
Well, dejanews or google groups... To me, usenet is the value of google.com. None of the other search engines has this function to search through usenet posts. As a system integrator/developer, usenet is a hell of a resource, and if anything, I'm only spending *more* time on it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, Quicktime uses two main codecs: Mpeg4 and Sorenson. They are both licensed and thus have certain restrictions placed on them. For details on Mpeg4, you'll have to check out http://www.mpegla.com . Even though you may not see it, there *is* a cost / license associated with Mpeg - paid by content producers/distributors as well as manufacturers of products that support Mpeg (DVD players, etc.). If you like, you can also search through /.'s archives for articles on how Apple planned to battle MpegLA on the license scheme.
.ogg container can be embedded into players without restrictions. As mentioned before, the format has been around for a while and is played by quite a few free software players out there.
I'm sure that you already know about the proprietary nature of sorenson, so I won't get into that. Obviously, other proprietary formats are Microsoft's and RealNetwork's. This is to say nothing about the quicktime container, of which I know very little (licensing, openness). What I do know, is that trying to support a container through a third party product is not
legally free.
Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand, is not owned by any company. The codec is completely open and free to use, (encode, decode, distribute). The
If the spiderman trailer wasn't released through the Quicktime format, would you blame the movie producers? I think that you're barking up the wrong tree on this case. Why not contact Apple instead?
As for NPR's reply... pretty common sense stuff. If it was technology related, it means that they don't have the technology/know-how to reformat... obviously not the case. It being a "business" decision means that they don't have the monetary means to do so.
It is about the money... and why not, it doesn't grow on trees. People who work at the stations need to live, the station needs funds to transmit, to buy programming, buy equipment, etc. It takes time and money to maintain their website with multiple streams and formats. So don't be so naive. Public broadcasting needs money and they make BUSINESS decisions to support their efforts. Most of the public stations are operating under a shoestring budget even with your pledges.
RealPlayer support will be maintained for as long as it is feasible to do so, and if you want Ogg support, then there has to be a business case for it. For the idiots who think that Bill Gates pressured NPR to remove quicktime support... get your head out of your ass. As to the letter writing campaign, if you're so interested in hearing NPR in Quicktime format, then maybe you should write to Apple Computer instead of NPR.
Having just looked at the photo, there were quite a few modifications made:
1. superimposed two images,
2. The soldier was made larger,
3. the saturation of the soldier was pulled up, some details of his face was added..
To be honest, when that picture first came up, it *looked* altered.