...when you stop trying to hijack my autonomic nervous system by building ads that writhe, squirm and strobe insistently in my peripheral vision. That is, when they aren't flinging gobs of DHTML poop right on top of the content that I'm actually trying to read.
Well, that's interesting -- particularly for an older family member who's developing cataracts, and whose Type II diabetes makes conventional cataract surgery unacceptably risky. We should run this by her opthalmologist.
Yes, the lens stiffens with age. (There was a competing theory that it grows with age, and that focus problems arise because the focus mechanism doesn't have enough range of motion to adapt, but that apparently hasn't been borne out by further studies.
No, in general, lens replacement does NOT give you back focusing ability. There's one type of lens (Crystalens, referenced upthread) that restores accommodation for some recipients, but results vary widely, and regular replacement lenses don't accommodate at all.
It would be lovely to track focus based on ciliary tension, but it'll probably be easier to measure vergence and adjust focus correspondingly. We can already do gaze-tracking pretty well, and vergence in principle gives a much large signal with less noise than ciliary muscle tension.
The progressive lens I tried out at the optician's only gave clear focus over a five or ten degree horizontal field of view through most of its close-focus range. Anything left or right of center was astigmatically blurred. No way could I live with that, particularly in this day of "wider is better" displays.
I might consider a progressive lens that gave clear focus across the entire width of my FOV, but from what I've seen, that isn't happening.
(1) Put the thermochromic ink on one side of your (very thin) PCB.
(2) Draw heating elements with a #2 (or, if you can find it, #1) pencil. You can get the resistance of a heavy graphite line pretty low; if that's not low enough, run traces along the long edges of each segment, instead of connecting to the ends.
The SR-71 blackbird was arguably the finest airplane ever built. Nothing before or since has ever matched it.
It was designed with nothing but a slide rule and paper.
Don't think these expensive toys are an adequate substitute for the human mind. Or for well trained engineers and mathemeticians.
Aw, c'mon. There are good reasons that the "stolen alien technology" meme has such staying power, and the SR-71 is one of the biggest. It was ridiculously far ahead of anything else we'd produced. Sure, it was the product of "the human mind", or at least A human mind, but I don't think lumping Kelly Johnson or Nikola Tesla or Leonardo da Vinci in with "the rest of humanity" is especially useful.
Whatever your level of skill and insight, though, supercomputing can act as a force multiplier for your brain. If you're claiming that real engineers only need a slide rule and paper, or that supercomputing will somehow get in the way of their natural gifts, well, I'm going to have to disagree.
Oh, and I probably shouldn't be mentioning this, but I've heard rumors that the military actually didn't stop developing newer and faster aircraft technologies after the Blackbird. But don't tell anyone.
Blue is actually more visible than longer-wavelength reds, but it's not as well focused by the eye. That's one reason violet pointers are unlikely to catch on -- they have a cool, attention-grabbing color, but the eye focuses violet light so poorly that the spot appears vague and washed-out.
This is also why red-on-black text is easier to read than blue-on-black.
You have a 30Mbps DSL connection? What market is that in?
In the ten years since I first got DSL, I think Verizon may have improved their physical plant enough to offer me 1.5Mbps down (instead of the 768Kbps down I had at the time, with 16Kbps CIR). RoadRunner came in at 3Mbps, I believe, and they're up to 12Mbps burst and 7Mbps sustained now.
Oh, and verizon may be planning to roll out FIOS somewhere in my state sometime in the next few years, but if they are, they aren't telling anyone.
...if I downgrade my broadband speed by a factor of 5-10 from cable, and downgrade my OS to one of their supported honeypots, there'll be some areas where I can get free WiFi. Yay.
The "wide field" (low-magnification) camera on Hubble gives a much narrower field and higher magnification than a sizable (10") amateur scope at its highest power.
TFA (link copied from a post above) states explicitly that they did thermal imaging as well, and that there was no correlation between temperature and the photon emission they discuss. While they don't directly address black-body radiation, this would seem to rule it out as an explanation.
Um, "stealing code" doesn't mean removing it from a computer, stuffing it into a bag, and running away with it. The allegation is that someone stole a copy, not that they left GS without access to it.
High frequency trading, millisecond holding period mean that traders are able to bring more liquidity to the market. A floor on holding periods will increase bid ask spreads as limit orders will become riskier and increase volatility. In this story, Broadcom shareholders were able to sell their stocks for a higher price
You're absolutely right. Adding more layers of participants, each taking a cut of the profits, is better for everybody. That's why Craigslist will never amount to anything.
But I'm sure you would object against having your brain replaced by a (small) supercomputer, even if I guaranteed that the "observable you" would not change.
(1) Given the choice between this and certain, imminent death, or certain death after a long period of increasing pain and decreasing cognitive faculties, I wouldn't object at all.
(2) Given the option of this, even if the alternative were nothing worse than a few decades of typical cognitive and physical decline, I'd still give it serious consideration. Sure, we're talking about a discontinuity between the meat brain shutting down and the glass brain coming up. But "you", the self-aware, time-binding consciousness reading this, experience such a discontinuity every time you sleep.
Hi-Resolution MRI. Just scan someones real brain and then load it onto the computer. We don't even need to know how a 'real' brain works.
There's a hard limit on MRI resolution, based on the rate at which water diffuses through brain tissue. That limit is around 5 microns. There are some tricks that might let us do better, but they tend to involve techniques that aren't compatible with live subjects (think cryogenics and antifreeze).
5 microns is enough to resolve some neurons, but not the axons and dendrites that connect them. And even if you could resolve the physical structure, function depends on chemical and electrical characteristics that don't show up in MRI at all. fMRI gives a very coarse representation of activity, at the cost of vastly reduced spatial resolution.
8. Reverse engineering NTSC (SD or HD - just getting 29.97fps with rectangular pixels is fucked up enough) from a disc filled with microscopic pits strikes me as impossible and or pointless.
If Things Fall Apart, it'll be impossible and pointless, because people probably won't even be able to discern that there are pits. A DVD will just be another piece of godtrash, desirable because it makes pretty rainbows, but with only legends about its function.
If This Goes On, it'll be trivial, whether or not players still exist. I'm pretty sure that with a consumer digicam, ImageJ, a simple audio package and some ambition, I could recover an Edison cylinder recording without any sort of physical "player"; doing the same for a vinyl disc would be a stretch at present, but probably not ten years from now. A physical artifact with gross topographic features (as opposed to subtle patterns of charge or spin) just won't be able to retain that much mystery. The software it represents can be a bit more mysterious, but I don't think the ability to analyze a digital video stream is likely to be lost unless we lose most everything else.
Of course, if the RIAA and its minions come up with truly strong encryption and DRM, information could be lost irretrievably. But gods have always had demons to contend with.
For example, how does this laser "carve" into the substrate? Is a laser strong enough to "carve" into this subtstrate even legal to sell to consumers?
If it's enclosed and interlocked, yes.
Even a conventional high-speed DVD or Blu-Ray burner can run its laser at 100mW or more average power, enough to sting your skin, pop a balloon, or give you an instant (much faster than you can blink) blind spot. But since it's enclosed, and the user can't be exposed during normal operation, it's perfectly OK to sell to consumers.
It's still unclear how regulators will deal with users removing the laser diode and using it in unapproved ways.
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You would have us all thoroughly convinced of your superiority if only you hadn't forgotten to say "sheeple".
...when you stop trying to hijack my autonomic nervous system by building ads that writhe, squirm and strobe insistently in my peripheral vision. That is, when they aren't flinging gobs of DHTML poop right on top of the content that I'm actually trying to read.
Well, that's interesting -- particularly for an older family member who's developing cataracts, and whose Type II diabetes makes conventional cataract surgery unacceptably risky. We should run this by her opthalmologist.
Bravo!
Yes, the lens stiffens with age. (There was a competing theory that it grows with age, and that focus problems arise because the focus mechanism doesn't have enough range of motion to adapt, but that apparently hasn't been borne out by further studies.
No, in general, lens replacement does NOT give you back focusing ability. There's one type of lens (Crystalens, referenced upthread) that restores accommodation for some recipients, but results vary widely, and regular replacement lenses don't accommodate at all.
It would be lovely to track focus based on ciliary tension, but it'll probably be easier to measure vergence and adjust focus correspondingly. We can already do gaze-tracking pretty well, and vergence in principle gives a much large signal with less noise than ciliary muscle tension.
The progressive lens I tried out at the optician's only gave clear focus over a five or ten degree horizontal field of view through most of its close-focus range. Anything left or right of center was astigmatically blurred. No way could I live with that, particularly in this day of "wider is better" displays.
I might consider a progressive lens that gave clear focus across the entire width of my FOV, but from what I've seen, that isn't happening.
I really, really want adjustable-focus lenses. But I don't want heavy lenses, and I don't want large, round lenses.
I'm hoping these folks, linked in TFA, can deliver. Electronic focus sounds a lot more appealing and reliable.
(1) Put the thermochromic ink on one side of your (very thin) PCB.
(2) Draw heating elements with a #2 (or, if you can find it, #1) pencil. You can get the resistance of a heavy graphite line pretty low; if that's not low enough, run traces along the long edges of each segment, instead of connecting to the ends.
(3) Profit!
The SR-71 blackbird was arguably the finest airplane ever built. Nothing before or since has ever matched it.
It was designed with nothing but a slide rule and paper.
Don't think these expensive toys are an adequate substitute for the human mind. Or for well trained engineers and mathemeticians.
Aw, c'mon. There are good reasons that the "stolen alien technology" meme has such staying power, and the SR-71 is one of the biggest. It was ridiculously far ahead of anything else we'd produced. Sure, it was the product of "the human mind", or at least A human mind, but I don't think lumping Kelly Johnson or Nikola Tesla or Leonardo da Vinci in with "the rest of humanity" is especially useful.
Whatever your level of skill and insight, though, supercomputing can act as a force multiplier for your brain. If you're claiming that real engineers only need a slide rule and paper, or that supercomputing will somehow get in the way of their natural gifts, well, I'm going to have to disagree.
Oh, and I probably shouldn't be mentioning this, but I've heard rumors that the military actually didn't stop developing newer and faster aircraft technologies after the Blackbird. But don't tell anyone.
Blue is actually more visible than longer-wavelength reds, but it's not as well focused by the eye. That's one reason violet pointers are unlikely to catch on -- they have a cool, attention-grabbing color, but the eye focuses violet light so poorly that the spot appears vague and washed-out.
This is also why red-on-black text is easier to read than blue-on-black.
Don't know for sure. Several possibilities:
You have a 30Mbps DSL connection? What market is that in?
In the ten years since I first got DSL, I think Verizon may have improved their physical plant enough to offer me 1.5Mbps down (instead of the 768Kbps down I had at the time, with 16Kbps CIR). RoadRunner came in at 3Mbps, I believe, and they're up to 12Mbps burst and 7Mbps sustained now.
Oh, and verizon may be planning to roll out FIOS somewhere in my state sometime in the next few years, but if they are, they aren't telling anyone.
...if I downgrade my broadband speed by a factor of 5-10 from cable, and downgrade my OS to one of their supported honeypots, there'll be some areas where I can get free WiFi. Yay.
It is too late for the ugly bags of mostly water to vote.
The "wide field" (low-magnification) camera on Hubble gives a much narrower field and higher magnification than a sizable (10") amateur scope at its highest power.
Hubble really, really rocks.
TFA (link copied from a post above) states explicitly that they did thermal imaging as well, and that there was no correlation between temperature and the photon emission they discuss. While they don't directly address black-body radiation, this would seem to rule it out as an explanation.
Um, "stealing code" doesn't mean removing it from a computer, stuffing it into a bag, and running away with it. The allegation is that someone stole a copy, not that they left GS without access to it.
High frequency trading, millisecond holding period mean that traders are able to bring more liquidity to the market. A floor on holding periods will increase bid ask spreads as limit orders will become riskier and increase volatility. In this story, Broadcom shareholders were able to sell their stocks for a higher price
You're absolutely right. Adding more layers of participants, each taking a cut of the profits, is better for everybody. That's why Craigslist will never amount to anything.
How humbling, though, to realize that a four-watt nightlight harbors something like a billion times more chi than you do.
But I'm sure you would object against having your brain replaced by a (small) supercomputer, even if I guaranteed that the "observable you" would not change.
(1) Given the choice between this and certain, imminent death, or certain death after a long period of increasing pain and decreasing cognitive faculties, I wouldn't object at all.
(2) Given the option of this, even if the alternative were nothing worse than a few decades of typical cognitive and physical decline, I'd still give it serious consideration. Sure, we're talking about a discontinuity between the meat brain shutting down and the glass brain coming up. But "you", the self-aware, time-binding consciousness reading this, experience such a discontinuity every time you sleep.
Hi-Resolution MRI. Just scan someones real brain and then load it onto the computer. We don't even need to know how a 'real' brain works.
There's a hard limit on MRI resolution, based on the rate at which water diffuses through brain tissue. That limit is around 5 microns. There are some tricks that might let us do better, but they tend to involve techniques that aren't compatible with live subjects (think cryogenics and antifreeze).
5 microns is enough to resolve some neurons, but not the axons and dendrites that connect them. And even if you could resolve the physical structure, function depends on chemical and electrical characteristics that don't show up in MRI at all. fMRI gives a very coarse representation of activity, at the cost of vastly reduced spatial resolution.
Nah, just etch it DEEPLY into big stones. Something so big and heavy, not even an elephant's footfall could destroy it.
I'm still thinking that the Rosetta Project ought to have, somewhere in the larger text sections, instructions for building microscopes.
8. Reverse engineering NTSC (SD or HD - just getting 29.97fps with rectangular pixels is fucked up enough) from a disc filled with microscopic pits strikes me as impossible and or pointless.
If Things Fall Apart, it'll be impossible and pointless, because people probably won't even be able to discern that there are pits. A DVD will just be another piece of godtrash, desirable because it makes pretty rainbows, but with only legends about its function.
If This Goes On, it'll be trivial, whether or not players still exist. I'm pretty sure that with a consumer digicam, ImageJ, a simple audio package and some ambition, I could recover an Edison cylinder recording without any sort of physical "player"; doing the same for a vinyl disc would be a stretch at present, but probably not ten years from now. A physical artifact with gross topographic features (as opposed to subtle patterns of charge or spin) just won't be able to retain that much mystery. The software it represents can be a bit more mysterious, but I don't think the ability to analyze a digital video stream is likely to be lost unless we lose most everything else.
Of course, if the RIAA and its minions come up with truly strong encryption and DRM, information could be lost irretrievably. But gods have always had demons to contend with.
For example, how does this laser "carve" into the substrate? Is a laser strong enough to "carve" into this subtstrate even legal to sell to consumers?
If it's enclosed and interlocked, yes.
Even a conventional high-speed DVD or Blu-Ray burner can run its laser at 100mW or more average power, enough to sting your skin, pop a balloon, or give you an instant (much faster than you can blink) blind spot. But since it's enclosed, and the user can't be exposed during normal operation, it's perfectly OK to sell to consumers.
It's still unclear how regulators will deal with users removing the laser diode and using it in unapproved ways.