Look at the SIZE of that thing! It's either made of cardboard and hollow, or requires two extra people in the front to raise the--uh--barrel?! Flipper?
I recently happened to read an article on the Swiss Paul Scherer Institute that mostly developed the Zinc/solar technology. They have also conducted lots of other research into solar energy applications. The Weizmann Institute seems to primarily be a convenient high-tech location with lots of sunshine to place a test facility at, since Switzerland is not exactly blessed with high incidence of solar energy.
I don't think it's that different at all, except that you're sitting in this particular boat. Besides, what was originally discussed sounded like shrink-wrapped software (purchased by CC), and I don't think too much of that is written by "small independents". Most small outfits I know (and as a contractor I find myself occasionally as a one-man outfit) work through pretty close relationships with a small number of clients for custom solutions, and I don't think would find themselves in charge-back situations all that frequently. Your situation may differ, of course, I'm just speaking from my own experience.
> This kind of fraud must be costing software companies millions a year!
Yeah, kind of like music piracy is costing the industry trillions each year. Let's get real, some types of fraud simply can't be eliminated realistically, at least until we discover a practical way to read minds. It's all a matter of relative scale--it seems software makers (and the music industry) are still making plenty of money for them to still be in this business.
Yes, TiVo does that, and I alluded to that in my OP. But you need to buy a full-fledged SA TiVo box for each TV, and pay monthly dues on each one. All I want is a lightweight extender box without local storage that streams shows off a central TiVo or whatever.
Maybe, I don't have the Dish PVR. But even so, that's a low-tech approach and not quite a media server. You should be able to have a number of extender boxes watch independent shows off the main PVR without this sort of analog "fallback", and without requiring RF remotes that control the back-end PVR through the walls (which I assume the Dish system does).
Because what I really want to do is download my shows off the PVR and watch them on a 7" screen in the broom closet, while my wife commandeers the big screen to watch her Supernanny reruns. Not! Why not develop devices that follow real people's watching habits? Such as cheap media extender boxes that let you watch your PVR content on other TVs in the house, so you don't have to have PVRs scattered all over the place with endlessly duplicated show subscriptions? Yes, there are such systems available (e.g. MCE) if you want to change your back-end and lose the convenience of the cable-provider's tuner(s), which always work more seamlessly than third-party kludges. But since they're developing hardware anyway, why not create something people will actually use, such as $50-$100 media extenders that don't require extra monthly fees (as would be the case with multiple TiVo boxes).
The SB2 may have higher quality components, I really haven't checked into that. The higher resolution display doesn't excite me much, I just need a what's-playing status, and the SoundBridge does just fine. Other than the resolution difference, it's the same type of VFD display, and they both look great. What seriously turns me off the SB2 is the looks--there's no way around the fact that it looks like a cheap clock radio. Of course, looks are in the eye of the beholder, so YMMV.
Regarding sound quality, I can't really argue. I'm playing MP3 tracks on Logitech X-230 speakers in the living room, so HiFi isn't the main consideration. To me and everyone who has heard it play it sounds just fine, so I'm not going to argue much beyond that. I was going for an easily concealable system that blends into the room without screaming "tech-freak" (which, alas, I am in most respects other than purist audio).
The wireless is indeed only B. However, it does use a CF card, so theoretically it could be upgraded to G, provided Roku added support for one of the cards. Since I have my entire house profusely wired with CAT5, with conduits running to most corners of most rooms, I have no need for wireless, so that aspect doesn't concern me. And considering that my M1000 only cost $150 (after rebate), it's still a better deal to me than the SB2. I think many BB stores still sell the M1000 packaged as an M500 for the M500 price.
I have always respected and liked the Slim guys for their garage workshop roots and open software. I just never cared for the implementation of the hardware and how much they sold it for (though I do understand why), neither in the old days when you just got a naked circuit board, nor in the SB2 "clock radio" incarnation.
One thing I like about the SoundBridge is that it implements an open standard, UPnPAV. While it is still emerging, my feeling is that it has a good chance of becoming big. There are UPnPAV servers that run on all sorts of hardware--the TwonkyVision server runs on many of the NAS boxes and even some routers. There are very flexible ways of controlling a UPnPAV setup, and a bunch of different clients, including software running on a PocketPC that allows streaming music to anywhere in your WiFi range cordlessly (i.e. no power wires).
Plus the SoundBridge also supports a variety of server types, including iTunes, Slim, MusicMatch and UPnPAV. While you could argue that it's better to support one system and do it well, the Roku hardware does work quite well in most setups.
Or, for about half that, you can get a Roku SoundBridge, and you also end up with a much more attractive device. It also works in Squeezebox mode if you must, though doesn't offer all its features in that mode.
> The original poster seemed to be assume a video sensor that didn't cover the whole sky/horizon.
Of course. The resolution required to cover 360 degrees, or even half that, and still be able to detect something the size of a bullet, plus the bandwidth required to capture this much image data hundreds of times a second would be too prohibitive. You can estimate the frame rate required to capture multiple images of a bullet by knowing its speed and the field of vision your camera has. You need theoretically at least two images to reconstruct a trajectory, practically you probably need a bunch more. The worst case scenario is when you view the trajectory perpendicularly, since the apparent speed of the bullet across your field of vision is its actual speed. The more parallel you are to the trajectory the slower its apparent speed, and you get many more data points and accuracy.
> Except, of course, for the issue that sound travels much slower than light.
That wouldn't matter for many usage scenarious. A frequently cited sniping example is the recent situation in the Balkans, where snipers took random shots at the population from high vantage points for extended periods of time. An intelligent rifle scope would generate a compass heading at each detected shot sound, allowing the carrier to point the rifle in that direction. The display would then optically track any subsequent bullets coming from that general direction, pin-pointing the precise location of the sniper. With this approach the acoustic triangulation can be less precise (e.g. microphones closer together in a compact scope), since it only has to be accurate enough to fall within the field of vision of the optical system.
I few years ago I think one of the Discovery channels had something on an optical bullet tracker, I'm not sure if it was from Trex or not. Basically, it took advantage of the fact that bullets move much faster than anything in their vicinity, so the only major differences between successive images from a high-speed digital camera would most likely be the bullets. They had a cool demo system where the camera was pointing at a shooting gun in the distance, and it was highlighting the trajectories of the bullets it detected on a computer screen, with all of the lines converging on the gun. Couple this optical system with acoustic triangulation, and you have the best of both systems: zero in the camera quickly on the general source of the shots using sound, then pin-point the exact source of the bullets optically. Eventually this system could be made compact enough to fit on top of a rifle like a digital scope.
Look, like has been mentioned by many in That Other Thread, most people buying the Nano have plenty of prior experience with plastic pocket gadgets, and the kind of wear and tear they can reasonably expect. I doubt most of these people would all of a sudden complain about the same sort of scratches on their Nano that they already have on their cell phone etc. I have a Sony Ericsson T610 phone, which has black shiny plastic around the screen almost identical to the Nano. I always keep it in my pocket without a case, rubbing against the keys and change. The silver painted parts are seriously scratched and and worn, with the white plastic underneath showing through in many places. The T-Mobile logo is completely worn off, not a trace of it is left. And yet the screen and black plastic parts have no scratches to speak of. Sure, there are some surface abrasions that make it a bit matte rather than shiny in a few areas (especially around edges and corners), but there are no prominent scratches or gouges. The screen itself has virtually no visible damage. A lot more annoying is pocket lint that makes its way through openings (around keys, through the battery compartment etc.) behind the screen. I've seen several of the posted pictures of considerably scratched Nanos. Assuming the scratches really happened through trivial use and not due to malicious actions to denigrate Apple, I must conclude that the Nano does indeed scratch a lot easier than other devices.
Without having looked at all at how you take advantage of this mail server integration to support the extra features, couldn't the same thing have been achieved by storing metadata for each mail item on a third party IMAP server in a separate database? Did you take your approach for performance reasons? Just curious, because other than that it seems your front-end is fully tricked out with just about every JavaScript trick in the book, and I dig it!
Another story about how a communist party does what communist parties do. How about a story when the Great Wall that separates China from--uh--China...never mind. How about a story when the Communist Party of China calls it quits and says it was just kidding for the last 80-odd years?
That is easy for you to say as a means of splitting hairs, and really quite meaningless. According to Wikipedia there is no agreed-upon definition of a "communist country". However, historically countries have been called such if they were run by a single party that adhered to the principles or Marxism-Leninism. This is quite certainly the case for China. The economic model a country follows can at best be considered a secondary symptom of being "communist."
Even the poster child and grand daddy of all communist states, the USSR, was quite willing to compromise its economic principles when dealing with the outside world. They had quite a few companies and enterprises that mixed it up in the international marketplace for the good of the homeland. Even China's markets are not as capitalistic as you'd like to think they are.
China's economy is much more comparable to that of Germany's National Socialist period, where the economy was run "mostly" along market principles in areas the government didn't particularly care about, but where the government exherted heavy control or took outright ownership of industries it was vitally interested in (let your imagination roam freely re what these were).
You're right, and that's why the next war will be to liberate a country from its oppressive IP-free laws. It's all about bringing freedom to the peoples of this earth.
> You have been able to [re|un]install IIS without a reboot since XP (XP and 2003).
That's right, you only ever have to reboot Windows when IIS gets borked beyond recovery. More often than not when trying to cycle IIS it will forever hang, only to be rescued by a sweet reboot. Now that would be a sweet feature, to have a version of IIS that can actually be killed and restarted reliably without a reboot.
To our US friends, think of it as a weird mix of National Inquirer and Fox News, plus some obligatory daily nudity. There's nothing like a nude lady on the front page to pull you into articles on politics. One of my favorite "populist" headlines still has to be the one when the latest pope was established: "We are pope!" (since he's from Germany)
They didn't fail on the technology, but on management--or rather, mismanagement. While they were still around, they had quite a following in the geek community. I actually went and saw the hangar in person before they went under, it was quite incredibly large. Alas, a hanger does not an airship make.
We're converting AutoCAD drawings to SVG, and comparing Adobe's viewer and FF as you did definitely shows some differences. Embedded rasters don't seem to be displaying right, and at least in the SVG file I'm viewing font colors are the same as the background (black), making text visible only when you select it. The killer for us is that you can't pan and zoom yet, which for large CAD drawings is a must.
> Although your numbers are probably a joke, the actual theory merits discussion.
Not at all. A lot of countries have something akin to the 3 second distance rule to the car in front of you. At 100 km/h that is around 100 m. If you increase traffic density by a factor of 10, that would give you a bumper-to-bumper distance of 10 m, which under tight computer control is still ample, even accounting for flat tires and such (of course, run-flats may very well be mandated by such systems anyway). Considering that many accidents on the freeway happen due to large speed differentials between colliding cars, I find the stated reduction in accidents by 17% rather conservative.
The way a system like this would be phased in has been proposed to be through special HOV-like lanes where only self-drive equipped cars are allowed to drive. They would probably need guard rails separating them from the manual drive lanes to avoid any of those cars veering into the automatic lane. It all comes down to economics. If a given state thinks it can save X million dollars in new freeway construction by increasing the density on the existing road system by a factor of 2 (equivalent to doubling the number of lanes) through one or more automatic lanes in high congestion areas, they really won't care too terribly much how much you like to shift your Porsche or Corvette. They will probably introduce some tax rebate system or savings on toll roads for early adopters, and before you know it, thousands of people will use it. Don't underestimate the power of perceived cost reductions over road planning.
I think very very much that much of this will happen during your lifetime. Don't forget, practically our entire automotive history from Model T to hybrids happened during the lifetimes of some people that are still alive today, or were so recently. Most of our modern transportation revolution happened within less than a lifetime.
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> HAARP is a United States defense project
Well, duh! That was obvious right away from the contrived acronym. After all, they're all a bunch of LOSARs (Lovers Of Silly AcRonyms).
> When do the Crusades start?
6:30pm Thursday at Sergey's place. Don't forget your helmet and coconut shells. Brownies and gruel will be provided.
Look at the SIZE of that thing! It's either made of cardboard and hollow, or requires two extra people in the front to raise the--uh--barrel?! Flipper?
I recently happened to read an article on the Swiss Paul Scherer Institute that mostly developed the Zinc/solar technology. They have also conducted lots of other research into solar energy applications. The Weizmann Institute seems to primarily be a convenient high-tech location with lots of sunshine to place a test facility at, since Switzerland is not exactly blessed with high incidence of solar energy.
I don't think it's that different at all, except that you're sitting in this particular boat. Besides, what was originally discussed sounded like shrink-wrapped software (purchased by CC), and I don't think too much of that is written by "small independents". Most small outfits I know (and as a contractor I find myself occasionally as a one-man outfit) work through pretty close relationships with a small number of clients for custom solutions, and I don't think would find themselves in charge-back situations all that frequently. Your situation may differ, of course, I'm just speaking from my own experience.
> This kind of fraud must be costing software companies millions a year!
Yeah, kind of like music piracy is costing the industry trillions each year. Let's get real, some types of fraud simply can't be eliminated realistically, at least until we discover a practical way to read minds. It's all a matter of relative scale--it seems software makers (and the music industry) are still making plenty of money for them to still be in this business.
Yes, TiVo does that, and I alluded to that in my OP. But you need to buy a full-fledged SA TiVo box for each TV, and pay monthly dues on each one. All I want is a lightweight extender box without local storage that streams shows off a central TiVo or whatever.
Maybe, I don't have the Dish PVR. But even so, that's a low-tech approach and not quite a media server. You should be able to have a number of extender boxes watch independent shows off the main PVR without this sort of analog "fallback", and without requiring RF remotes that control the back-end PVR through the walls (which I assume the Dish system does).
Because what I really want to do is download my shows off the PVR and watch them on a 7" screen in the broom closet, while my wife commandeers the big screen to watch her Supernanny reruns. Not! Why not develop devices that follow real people's watching habits? Such as cheap media extender boxes that let you watch your PVR content on other TVs in the house, so you don't have to have PVRs scattered all over the place with endlessly duplicated show subscriptions? Yes, there are such systems available (e.g. MCE) if you want to change your back-end and lose the convenience of the cable-provider's tuner(s), which always work more seamlessly than third-party kludges. But since they're developing hardware anyway, why not create something people will actually use, such as $50-$100 media extenders that don't require extra monthly fees (as would be the case with multiple TiVo boxes).
The SB2 may have higher quality components, I really haven't checked into that. The higher resolution display doesn't excite me much, I just need a what's-playing status, and the SoundBridge does just fine. Other than the resolution difference, it's the same type of VFD display, and they both look great. What seriously turns me off the SB2 is the looks--there's no way around the fact that it looks like a cheap clock radio. Of course, looks are in the eye of the beholder, so YMMV.
Regarding sound quality, I can't really argue. I'm playing MP3 tracks on Logitech X-230 speakers in the living room, so HiFi isn't the main consideration. To me and everyone who has heard it play it sounds just fine, so I'm not going to argue much beyond that. I was going for an easily concealable system that blends into the room without screaming "tech-freak" (which, alas, I am in most respects other than purist audio).
The wireless is indeed only B. However, it does use a CF card, so theoretically it could be upgraded to G, provided Roku added support for one of the cards. Since I have my entire house profusely wired with CAT5, with conduits running to most corners of most rooms, I have no need for wireless, so that aspect doesn't concern me. And considering that my M1000 only cost $150 (after rebate), it's still a better deal to me than the SB2. I think many BB stores still sell the M1000 packaged as an M500 for the M500 price.
I have always respected and liked the Slim guys for their garage workshop roots and open software. I just never cared for the implementation of the hardware and how much they sold it for (though I do understand why), neither in the old days when you just got a naked circuit board, nor in the SB2 "clock radio" incarnation.
One thing I like about the SoundBridge is that it implements an open standard, UPnPAV. While it is still emerging, my feeling is that it has a good chance of becoming big. There are UPnPAV servers that run on all sorts of hardware--the TwonkyVision server runs on many of the NAS boxes and even some routers. There are very flexible ways of controlling a UPnPAV setup, and a bunch of different clients, including software running on a PocketPC that allows streaming music to anywhere in your WiFi range cordlessly (i.e. no power wires).
Plus the SoundBridge also supports a variety of server types, including iTunes, Slim, MusicMatch and UPnPAV. While you could argue that it's better to support one system and do it well, the Roku hardware does work quite well in most setups.
Or, for about half that, you can get a Roku SoundBridge, and you also end up with a much more attractive device. It also works in Squeezebox mode if you must, though doesn't offer all its features in that mode.
> could take revenue away from paid download music services.
I thought the RIAA didn't like those either?!
> The original poster seemed to be assume a video sensor that didn't cover the whole sky/horizon.
Of course. The resolution required to cover 360 degrees, or even half that, and still be able to detect something the size of a bullet, plus the bandwidth required to capture this much image data hundreds of times a second would be too prohibitive. You can estimate the frame rate required to capture multiple images of a bullet by knowing its speed and the field of vision your camera has. You need theoretically at least two images to reconstruct a trajectory, practically you probably need a bunch more. The worst case scenario is when you view the trajectory perpendicularly, since the apparent speed of the bullet across your field of vision is its actual speed. The more parallel you are to the trajectory the slower its apparent speed, and you get many more data points and accuracy.
> Except, of course, for the issue that sound travels much slower than light.
That wouldn't matter for many usage scenarious. A frequently cited sniping example is the recent situation in the Balkans, where snipers took random shots at the population from high vantage points for extended periods of time. An intelligent rifle scope would generate a compass heading at each detected shot sound, allowing the carrier to point the rifle in that direction. The display would then optically track any subsequent bullets coming from that general direction, pin-pointing the precise location of the sniper. With this approach the acoustic triangulation can be less precise (e.g. microphones closer together in a compact scope), since it only has to be accurate enough to fall within the field of vision of the optical system.
I few years ago I think one of the Discovery channels had something on an optical bullet tracker, I'm not sure if it was from Trex or not. Basically, it took advantage of the fact that bullets move much faster than anything in their vicinity, so the only major differences between successive images from a high-speed digital camera would most likely be the bullets. They had a cool demo system where the camera was pointing at a shooting gun in the distance, and it was highlighting the trajectories of the bullets it detected on a computer screen, with all of the lines converging on the gun. Couple this optical system with acoustic triangulation, and you have the best of both systems: zero in the camera quickly on the general source of the shots using sound, then pin-point the exact source of the bullets optically. Eventually this system could be made compact enough to fit on top of a rifle like a digital scope.
Look, like has been mentioned by many in That Other Thread, most people buying the Nano have plenty of prior experience with plastic pocket gadgets, and the kind of wear and tear they can reasonably expect. I doubt most of these people would all of a sudden complain about the same sort of scratches on their Nano that they already have on their cell phone etc. I have a Sony Ericsson T610 phone, which has black shiny plastic around the screen almost identical to the Nano. I always keep it in my pocket without a case, rubbing against the keys and change. The silver painted parts are seriously scratched and and worn, with the white plastic underneath showing through in many places. The T-Mobile logo is completely worn off, not a trace of it is left. And yet the screen and black plastic parts have no scratches to speak of. Sure, there are some surface abrasions that make it a bit matte rather than shiny in a few areas (especially around edges and corners), but there are no prominent scratches or gouges. The screen itself has virtually no visible damage. A lot more annoying is pocket lint that makes its way through openings (around keys, through the battery compartment etc.) behind the screen. I've seen several of the posted pictures of considerably scratched Nanos. Assuming the scratches really happened through trivial use and not due to malicious actions to denigrate Apple, I must conclude that the Nano does indeed scratch a lot easier than other devices.
Without having looked at all at how you take advantage of this mail server integration to support the extra features, couldn't the same thing have been achieved by storing metadata for each mail item on a third party IMAP server in a separate database? Did you take your approach for performance reasons? Just curious, because other than that it seems your front-end is fully tricked out with just about every JavaScript trick in the book, and I dig it!
Another story about how a communist party does what communist parties do. How about a story when the Great Wall that separates China from--uh--China...never mind. How about a story when the Communist Party of China calls it quits and says it was just kidding for the last 80-odd years?
> China is NOT a "communist" country.
That is easy for you to say as a means of splitting hairs, and really quite meaningless. According to Wikipedia there is no agreed-upon definition of a "communist country". However, historically countries have been called such if they were run by a single party that adhered to the principles or Marxism-Leninism. This is quite certainly the case for China. The economic model a country follows can at best be considered a secondary symptom of being "communist."
Even the poster child and grand daddy of all communist states, the USSR, was quite willing to compromise its economic principles when dealing with the outside world. They had quite a few companies and enterprises that mixed it up in the international marketplace for the good of the homeland. Even China's markets are not as capitalistic as you'd like to think they are.
China's economy is much more comparable to that of Germany's National Socialist period, where the economy was run "mostly" along market principles in areas the government didn't particularly care about, but where the government exherted heavy control or took outright ownership of industries it was vitally interested in (let your imagination roam freely re what these were).
You're right, and that's why the next war will be to liberate a country from its oppressive IP-free laws. It's all about bringing freedom to the peoples of this earth.
> You have been able to [re|un]install IIS without a reboot since XP (XP and 2003).
That's right, you only ever have to reboot Windows when IIS gets borked beyond recovery. More often than not when trying to cycle IIS it will forever hang, only to be rescued by a sweet reboot. Now that would be a sweet feature, to have a version of IIS that can actually be killed and restarted reliably without a reboot.
To our US friends, think of it as a weird mix of National Inquirer and Fox News, plus some obligatory daily nudity. There's nothing like a nude lady on the front page to pull you into articles on politics. One of my favorite "populist" headlines still has to be the one when the latest pope was established: "We are pope!" (since he's from Germany)
They didn't fail on the technology, but on management--or rather, mismanagement. While they were still around, they had quite a following in the geek community. I actually went and saw the hangar in person before they went under, it was quite incredibly large. Alas, a hanger does not an airship make.
We're converting AutoCAD drawings to SVG, and comparing Adobe's viewer and FF as you did definitely shows some differences. Embedded rasters don't seem to be displaying right, and at least in the SVG file I'm viewing font colors are the same as the background (black), making text visible only when you select it. The killer for us is that you can't pan and zoom yet, which for large CAD drawings is a must.
> Although your numbers are probably a joke, the actual theory merits discussion.
Not at all. A lot of countries have something akin to the 3 second distance rule to the car in front of you. At 100 km/h that is around 100 m. If you increase traffic density by a factor of 10, that would give you a bumper-to-bumper distance of 10 m, which under tight computer control is still ample, even accounting for flat tires and such (of course, run-flats may very well be mandated by such systems anyway). Considering that many accidents on the freeway happen due to large speed differentials between colliding cars, I find the stated reduction in accidents by 17% rather conservative.
The way a system like this would be phased in has been proposed to be through special HOV-like lanes where only self-drive equipped cars are allowed to drive. They would probably need guard rails separating them from the manual drive lanes to avoid any of those cars veering into the automatic lane. It all comes down to economics. If a given state thinks it can save X million dollars in new freeway construction by increasing the density on the existing road system by a factor of 2 (equivalent to doubling the number of lanes) through one or more automatic lanes in high congestion areas, they really won't care too terribly much how much you like to shift your Porsche or Corvette. They will probably introduce some tax rebate system or savings on toll roads for early adopters, and before you know it, thousands of people will use it. Don't underestimate the power of perceived cost reductions over road planning.
I think very very much that much of this will happen during your lifetime. Don't forget, practically our entire automotive history from Model T to hybrids happened during the lifetimes of some people that are still alive today, or were so recently. Most of our modern transportation revolution happened within less than a lifetime.