FTFA: "Equipment made by companies such as CellAntenna that can jam or block cellular signals is used by the U.S. military in Iraq to help protect convoys traveling through known trouble spots."
Great. The US is not Iraq, and frankly, it seems the police can't be trusted with tasers. I am sure we give the military in Iraq, and federal agents, access to all sorts of other stuff I really don't want my local deputy, Jimmy-joe-bob, getting his paws on.
Frankly, this is just more FUD bullshit security theater. Cellphone jammers won't help the police one bit, and will only add to the potential for abuse/misuse by the police. This lawsuit is nothing but a ploy from a company that wants to join the halliburton gravy train. GSM can be jammed somewhat as far as I know, but my understanding (correct me if you know and I am wrong) is that CMDA/WCDMA have much more immunity to jamming. CDMA phones aren't very prevalent in Iraq, but they are here. Furthermore, this only works if you know where (within a small radius) an explosive device [that was to be detonated by cellphone] is/willbe.. so really all it encourages is either wasteful spending on useless devices, or spending on devices that will be permanently setup in "high risk" place.. which will only serve to 1: encourage the 'terrorists' to figure a way around cellphone jamming, 2: erode our rights further.
it's called SUBSCRIBING. if you browse often, it might end up being $2/month, in my experience. if you browse occasionally, it will be less.
i don't like flashpopup ads either, nor have i seen any on/. (so maybe you have a trojan/spyware?) yet, but if they institute them, I won't fault OSDN-- bandwidth costs money.
" No real evidence has been produced to prove that this new technology is safe in the long term."
I'm sorry, but we're not talking about kryptonite or magical dark matter here.. these are devices operating with known technology in a known spectrum-- and let me add, not the only devices in this spectrum. WiFi isn't the only technology to operate at 2.4ghz (and I think some of the standards.. 802.11a? operate at 5.8ghz) -- are these parents seking to ban microwaves and cordless telephones? Even cellphones (and I'm sure many of them at least use cellular phones around their kids, iand some no doubt actually provide their kids with mobile phones) operate on similar 900mhz / 1800mhz / etc frequencies.
Someone with more of a science background, please reply (and correct me if necessary), but whether or not wireless internet has been studied over the "long term" have not several other devices that operate in the same (or very close) sprectrums? How is this anything but FUD?
I was actually going to post my thoughts, but since this article is slashdotted, and I still have the window open, i'll post my thoughts + the article text below them, for anyone who missed the article due to/.ing
WOW. Let me say, respect to Peter Jackson for telling it as he sees it....Obviously there are two sides to every story, but he really digs into some of the gritty details (naming names, etc), and the story he tells sounds like typical hollywood modus operandi to me. He is rather scant on details regarding the "accounting" irregularities, but nontheless he still vents pretty heavily in other regards.
I am a filmmaker myself, and have to deal with a variety of industry business annoyances on a daily basis, and I can sympathize with his frustration. This is an industry predicated upon many absurd practices. My assumption is that Peter Jackson must be pretty ticked off to be willing to vent in public like this.
Unfortunately for him, last we heard, he's hit a snag with HALO as well. Although general slashdot community concensus seemed to be "oh gawd, not another video game movie," so perhaps that snag is a bit less depressing than The Hobbit troubles.
11-19-06 Latest News
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh Talk THE HOBBIT
Xoanon @ 10:32 pm EST
Moments ago we received this email from Peter Jackson and his crew down in New Zealand, take a look...
Dear One Ringers,
As you know, there's been a lot of speculation about The Hobbit. We are often asked about when or if this film will ever be made. We have always responded that we would be very interested in making the film - if it were offered to us to make.
You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses.
However, we have always said that we do not want to discuss The Hobbit with New Line until the lawsuit over New Line's accounting practices is resolved. This is simple common sense - you cannot be in a relationship with a film studio, making a complex, expensive movie and dealing with all the pressures and responsibilities that come with the job, while an unresolved lawsuit exists.
We have also said that we do not want to tie settlement of the lawsuit to making a film of The Hobbit. In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart - it's not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you're taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It's that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.
A couple of months ago there was a flurry of Hobbit news in the media. MGM, who own a portion of the film rights in The Hobbit, publicly stated they wanted to make the film with us. It was a little weird at the time because nobody from New Line had ever spoken to us about making a film of The Hobbit and the media had some fun with that. Within a week or two of those stories, our Manager Ken Kamins got a call from the co-president of New Line Cinema, Michael Lynne, who in essence told Ken that the way to se
You have to figure HBO has a pretty sizable legal department, and wouldn't air a documentary that wasn't accurate (for fear of being sued). So if diebold's claims are untrue, all they are really doing are serving to help publicize the documentary before it airs. Brilliant move, haha. I know I had my DVR set to record it, but I can imagine many other/.ers did not... and now undoubtedly, some will.
Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election."... "The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." I would like to see an actual fact that states whether their claims are true or not. For instance, maybe they weren't in electronic voting business in 2000, but that doesn't mean they didn't still tally many paper votes (the aggregate of which amounts to 40% of the votes in the election)-- or that he hasn't screwed up interpreting what the film says (since he apparently hasn't seen it). Regardless of which, I think it's probably safe to assume if HBO isn't backing down, and does air the documentary, that this is largely smokescreen on the part of Diebold to try and convince the public that HBO is just an extension of the "liberal media" lying to them.
Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."..but rather that HBO's spokesman is actually suggesting they are responding to this film, VoterGate, and not Hacking Democracy, whose UK working title is listed as "VoterGate" and whose tagline says, "Computers count America's votes in secret. 'Votergate' hacks the votes." The co-mingling of the word "Votergate" does lead to some confusion, even though the directors of each film are totally different, one is produced by "Digital Bazooka" productions and the other by "Teale-Edwards" Productions (which produced another good, but sad HBO documentary that I would reccomend watching -- Dealing Dogs). My suspicions are probably best supported by the line,"The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said."..if they haven't seen the film, it's a bit difficult to suggest it is full of eggregious errors, and maybe they are commenting about 2004's VoterGate.
On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.
My interest isn't as much in having normal appliances that talk to each other, although that could be cool (for instance, a dishwasher and washing machine that know not to turn on when the shower is in use.. that would be pretty cool), but rather appliances that are just more accurate. I dream of the day that I won't have to posess bank-burglar safe-cracker finger dexterity to get my shower to the exact temperature I desire, but rather I can just dial in a digital thermostat to 102.5F or whatever suits me. Some fixtures are making headway in this direction.. theseHansa faucets with LEDs that tint the water red or blue (for cold or hot) have been available for a while, although they don't come cheap.. they're at least a step in the right direction, since I think most of us have occasionally stuck our hands under scalding water by accident [presuming it was instead on "cold" mode].
Google is not managed by idiots. If they are going to shell out $1.6B for a commodity (even it's only $1.6B in stock and not cold, hard, cash), you can bet there was some due diligence involved. If you look at similar previous businesses-- Napster is the best that comes to mind.. Napster raked in a bunch of VC cash for Sean Fanning, and then it went down the tubes, but this was mostly as a result of failing to forsee the legal problems they would encouter. Google, no doubt, has already forseen this, and probably has developed a very robust (and hopefully flexible.. since web 2.0 is in its infancy) business model. One major difference between YouTube and Napster is that Napster was virtually 100% copyrighted (pirated) content. YouTube is probably 50% pirated content, with the other 50% being unique content (vlogs, etc) from users more interested in social networking, and I suspect in some ways these are more "valuable" users to google (in that they surf more often, are more susceptible/amenable to ads, etc). Of the pirated content, I suspect around 25-50% of the rights-owners actually "care enough" to pursue the fact that it is being exhibited on the web without royalties to them. The remainer are cellphone camera bootlegs of concerts, people singing covers of their favorite songs, etc.
After about 30 seconds of brainstorming, I can imagine google will focus on the social networking users (I already see YouTube making huge headway against MySpace-- watching a video of someone on their profile gives LOADS more parsable clues about them than a few blurry "MySpace Angles" photos), and secondarily attempt to convince many copyright holders to PROMOTE their retail content on YouTube rather than just ask them to cease and desist. This promotion could come in the way of YouTube "premier access" videos or site area, driven by g-checkout (or whatever its name is), where users pay for individual access to videos (at $.05 a view for a 2 minute video? maybe..) or perhaps for a site-wide access on a monthly fee basis. Or this promotion could come in the way of simply trying to pursuade copyright holders to let heir heavily compressed 320x240 webvideo stay up, with blatant text links/banners to the official site or whatever. As someone who actually creates commercial video content (I make documentaries, but have directed other projects such as music videos, etc), this is a situation I am amenable to. I'd be fine with google showing excepts of my last couple of films (extreme sports stuff), with context links on the page to buy the DVD, or maybe to "jamster" type ringtone sites that sell my video ringtones (which I don't actually have, but funny story, a large distributor [rhymes with Barner Wrothers] approached us to distribute our latest film, and one of their executive's biggest sales pitches to us [this was around a yr ago] was doing video ringtones-- "they're going to be huge!"). Also, remember, even if YouTube can't turn a profit on its own, the data-mining possibilities are endess... let's say I use my YouTube account (i am logged in via cookie) to watch lots of Morrissey videos. Then I google search for "documentary." There is [hypothetically] a new documentary coming out about Morrissey's legal battles with former Smiths bandmates, and now google can serve me context ad content based on the context of not just what I searched for, but what google also know me to enjoy. The correlations that can be made by cross referencing this content are pretty friggin extensive. I am positive this hasn't escaped their attention.
So in short, yes, everyone (including the big G) saw this coming. Expect some cool adaptations soon, I do hope.
Sidenote: I think that there is probably an amazing documentary to be made about the goings-on inside google.. what it means to work on the campus, how google employees are treated differently than typical IT employees, how they foster innovation, how they continue to push the envelope of how to do business on the web, their expansion into china (and grappling wi
Video game movies do not always do well.. but they don't, "always do poorly," as you've stated. Sure, Doom barely broke even after dvd/vhs rental (yet they're making a second [last I heard].. so that says something). But Tomb Raider grossed $131M in the US alone, with another $60M in rental market (plus foreign box office, merchandising, etc). With a production budget of $80M, that's a nifty return. I do agree with you though, the $141M budget that the article quotes is quite excessive for the genre. When examining whether it will be profitable you have to look at many things, and just being a video game movie isn't enough to doom you (no pun intended) to failure.
If you look at the current trend, it seems that video game movies are getting pretty popular. Comic book movies have become insanely popular in the last 5-8 yrs and it seems to me virtually anything comic book related at all gets automatic greenlight nowadays (GHOST RIDER? I'd never even heard of this comic before I saw the trailer-- granted, i am not a comic fan, but certainly part of the draw of comic movies is a base association with a variety of users beyond just hardcore fans). Anyway, I digress, my point is simply, maybe executives are seeing some possibilities/trends in video game movies, --at least this is my conclusion based off the number that are slated for production currently..
the list below was shamelessly poached from a wikipedia list i found, and then edited to remove probably 10-15 video games i don't recognize [see last paragraph for my reasoning behind this]
* Castlevania (2007)
* Doom 2 (TBA)
* Driver (2006)
* Duke Nukem: The Movie (TBA)
* Far Cry (2008)
* Halo (2008)
* Max Payne (2007)
* MechWarrior (TBA)
* Metal Gear Solid (2008)
* Metroid (2006)
* Mortal Kombat: Devastation (2007)
* Pac-Man (2007)
* Perfect Dark (2008)
* Quake (TBA)
* Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
* Resident Evil 4 (2007)
* Return to Castle Wolfenstein (TBA)
* Splinter Cell (2006)
* Tekken (2007)
* Tomb Raider III (TBA)
* Untitled WarCraft Project (2008)
So, anyway, for the most part, I agree with you.. they have their work cut out for them, but I believe is the storyline does its own thing (And doesn't stick too much to the exact game), with Jackson behind it, it could do quite well.
Also, as an aside, I have you "friended" on/., and do thoroughly enjoy reading most of your comments. This is the first time i've had the chance to reply to a "friend," since I mostly lurk (and generally only post in articles relating to digital cinema, or film stuff.. since that is what I do). Keep up the good comments;)
I'm somewhat unclear on this, and I watched 80% of the flash demo linked above before getting insanely bored (mostly due to the pace) and letting my ADHD take over. From what I can tell, they are implying that this is not an algorithm doing the "checking" of your web site, but rather human editors/users. The flash demo mentions testing optimization of images as well, which I believe wouldn't be something easily automated through an algorithm (at least not easily automated to derive USEFUL results). However, i'm a bit confused because they aren't very specific as to who or what will be testing your site for clickthru/etc. At some point I started to think "oh, okay, google editors/volunteers will be testing it" (much like the google image labeler beta linked from/. a few weeks ago).. and then i started to suspect they are actually just using the code to run multiple "live" versions of your site and let NORMAL google users view them in a random distribution and then see which ones stay (and buy) and for how long etc. But maybe I just misunderstood and got distracted 5 seconds before they explained this haha. Anyone with the answer?
If it really is the latter method, I am sure it would work for some web sites, but I know for our company's site, we can only ever display one version of our content, as any minor changes at all tend to draw a lot of industry attention (i.e. "hey what are these guys up to.. their site updated.. OMG is the next big product about to drop, blah blah").. so I hope that out of the three methods, it's either an algorithm, or a small subset of google trustees/volunteers. But then again, our industry (digital cinema) is a typical and I'm sure no matter which method, this will work great for mom & pop selling Pokemon trading cards or whatever.
I emailed the on-duty editor (regarding this being a dupe), like any good little/. subscriber. Unfortunately my e-mail bounced pretty much immediately. Normally I would resist the temptation to join in the/. circle-jerk that is shouting "OMG DUPE DUPE DUPE!!" but I wanted someone (ScuttleMonkey, etc) to note that the 'daddypants' email link is bouncing. ( ERROR: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... Line 126 )..ScuttleMonkey, if you want the full error, feel free to let me know where to e-mail it.
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter. Insert Matrix deja-vu quote here.
Mods, try to be on the lookout for copy and paste karma whores (man, plagiarism annoys me). Unfortunately with 700+ comments on the last discussion, this may not be easy, haha.
cellphone vending machines just seem like a bad idea to me.. the general public is not very sharp, and need things spelled out for them by an "informed" consultant (aka guy in collared shirt who makes min wage + %).
ipod vending on the other hand.. not nearly so many options, and i could see myself using an ipod vending machine in an airport. generally when i am flying, i am in a rush and trying not to forget things, and inevitably i forget something stupid.. like bringing a book to read, etc. this is why periodical shops exist in airports. if the vending machine had an ipod that included the ability to perform itunes purchase + wireless download enabled, that is a combination i can see being very effective in airports; buy ipod, download $30 worth of itunes music, enjoy flight. of course, it's moot because ipod doesn't do wireless download [yet?].
I find The first FA to be poorly written. It jumps between focusing [pun not intended] on two completely different concepts: dynamic range, and motion detection. The second article is slightly better.
We'll address dynamic range, since I know more about this aspect. The first page of the (first) article says he used "off-the-shelf components such as resistors, capacitors, and light sensors to build an electronic model". And then a sentence or so later says, "This would allow the camera to capture more complete images--such as, for instance, both the face of a person standing in front of a sunlit window and the scene outside." If you don't know much about digital imaging, let me just say that this is roughly the equivalent of "I used wheels and spark plugs to build a car and I now hope to win the Indy 500." The article is SORELY lacking in any real information about how he intends to extend dynamic range by using technology gleaned from flies.
There are several very real and working principles by which dynamic range can be extended, both unique to chip architecture (such as dual slope sampling) and implementable on a variety of chips (such as dual electronic shuttering). These are the types of things that it would have been cool for the article to discuss (imo). The second article at least includes a quote from him stating that fly eyes can adjust exposure independently.. this is a beneficial thing, and several CMOS imagers already exist that do this as well (i.e. dual slope operation, etc). You can also individually shutter pixels, or expose multiple frames per $interval (each with a different electronic shutter length) and then composite them.. however this last technique creates smear, which can be less than ideal, depending on your needs. I also know of a couple of patents for bayer masks that adjust individual pixel exposure in realtime (similar to those sunglasses that get darker or lighter) in order to compress dynamic range before it hits the CMOS/CCD.
One of the issues the articles really didn't get into at all, is storage of data. Higher dynamic range images require more storage space (as their bitspaces increase), and right now the major limitation in digital cinema and other similar realms is not imaging so much as writing all of the data to disk.. storage media speed (or cost/speed ratio, if you like) needs to do some catching up.
except that in a quick experiment, i noted that MS Word (Office 2004 trial, on my Macbook Pro) *DOES* recognize Linux, as well as "Slashdot,"
I think that using MS Word is a pretty good way to check vocabulary that may be in the zeitgeist. Even abridged dictionaries are full of words that are virtually unused in our society... and from TFA, it appears their intention was to ensure whatever word they used didn't already have significant meaning in popular culture.
The question they seem to failed to examine, is whether or not a word is not significant enough in the collective consciousness of society [to be included in MS Word spell check] does that mean it is fair game for assignment of new meaning?
FTFA: "allows making online purchases with a slide of a dinger across the scanner" (emphasis mine)
really.. a dinger..? you don't say...
The whole fingerprint-for-payment-at-the-store thing has been debated here plenty before, so i'll steer clear of it.. but TFA (well, TFblogpost) is centered around Pay By Touch launching a service that lets you scan your fingerprint at home and autopay at various online websites with a simple swipe of your finger. I don't know who steered them down this path, but they should be fired.. promptly.
I can recall several dotbombs that had this same business model (an e-wallet that had all your info in it already so all you needed to do was purchase from participating vendors and a username/password/whatever was all you'd need to make each purchase), and they all failed miserably. Anyone remember flooz? Maybe i'm just a cynic and these guys will have a fresh new approach that will catch on like wildfire.. but it seems a nonstarter to me, since none of the failed dotcoms so much as required you to have a biometric scanner in your home.
your post has a lot of insight. i'm on a working vacation in Seattle right now, and i'm amazed that even though i have probably 10x as much free time to watch television, without a DVR here i'm watching basically none, because nothing I enjoy is available at the right time.
it will be interesting to see if this show does well on NBC (certainly the PR from the situation under which it was purchased by NBC will help its ratings), but I would imagine your assesment is at least partly correct. Certainly a chunk of its audience will be youtube viewers, who are probably very likely to have DVRs, so they may be able to watch it in much the same fashion as on youtube (i.e. on-demand).. but I wouldn't imagine this chunk would amount to more than a minority of the show's viewers.
what's really interesting are the business models that Mark Cuban and others are developing.. in the case of the linked press release above, basically Steven Soderbergh shooting a number of films for simultaneous theatrical / dvd / hdtv / download release, so that all marketing dollars are used effectively, and the audience ultimately decides which form of content delivery works best for them. I don't know that the model initially includes download release (i.e. itunes style), but I can imagine that's something Cuban is working on now (probably the DRM issues are a bit of a snag).
So even if NBC blows their opportunity at transferring to primetime tv the collective attention of viewers from the internet, there are other (potentially better) business models in the works that will better appeal to viewers who want to watch on their own terms.
FTFA: "We just don't want to see anybody hurt with their wireless system," says Welch. "If someone (unauthorized) were accessing it and an owner's information, there could be damage and a potential lawsuit."
absolutely ridiculous. maybe they should start digging through our trash to make sure we've properly shredded our monthly bank statements too.
Furthermore, this rule would be a total paper tiger, as far as enforcement goes, since wep [which i do believe is the most common security protocol in use for wifi today] is widely known NOT to be secure. It will be ironic when the first whitehat captures a few days worth of packets from outside that guy's home and then published the unencrypted contents of his web traffic.
ah, the moon, the stepping stone to Mars. for me, this is a subject of much ambivalence. it's nice to see some actual money being spent on science, but at the same time, I struggle to really identify what benefit there is going to the moon, or to Mars. Other than public relations benefit, of course. But really, what will we find? That a few simple organisms once existed on mars, and that Mars once had water? But don't we know this now?
The Europeans focus much more heavily on aero-sciences, and we seem to be a lot more captivated by reaching the moon (etc). The Europeans are busy doing piles and piles of research (which will ultimately find many useful things), and similar research in this country is largely the burden of private organizations. All the tangible benefits we've reaped from space travel (tang, velcro, etc) could have been discovered much more cheaply (or if you prefer, in greater abundance for the same price) if we were simply focusing on inventing and not reaching some milestone out in space.
I guess what i'm saying is that I'm not sure how to feel about this; It's science, and exploration, and both are good (imo), but if we want to prioritize, wouldn't billions of dollars be better spent focusing on fixing our own messed up planet? Assuming there is some inherent benefit to going to the moon/mars/wherever, is it really necessary to send *HUMANS*? Could we not fund 10x as many unmanned missions and learn probably close to 10x as much?
I promise this post isn't a troll, I am a filmmaker, and interested in science, but obviously I have some question as to the science-value of putting men on a rock in space.
look at Amazon-- from what I understand (ianastockbroker) their actual inventory itself may not even turn a profit at all, but third party sales and their e-commerce licensing (to Toys-R-Us, Target, etc) makes them more than profitable. this is possible because they have the infrastructure built.
when it comes down to it, people like to click on ads and buy stuff. not you, not me, but a percentage of people do. enough to make the ad game profitable, as seen by advertising in other fields (tv, billboards, hell even spam.. someone is clicking on all those links to buy v1agr4 or you and I wouldn't get so much spam).
google is in the process of widely diversifying, and even if microsoft DID roll out a universal adblocker that was installed by default, I can envision several scenarios that google adwords infrastructure would still be useful for. how about when google unveils their free natiowide wifi metropolitan internet access.. of course it's free in exchange for using Gbrowser with AdViewing enabled.
I use gmaps on my BlackBerry8700 all the time.. google's success is all about creating functional/useful utilities (email, mapping, search engine, blogger, gcheckout, whatever) and then stuffing ads in there. The fundamental question is not whether MS can block them, it's whether ads can be profitable, and I believe the answer is yes.
..as an aside, the interesting thing [for me] to ponder, is whether google will ever adapt their business model to gain profit directly from user subscriptions for various services, or whether it will always remain ad-revenue driven
FTFA: "The hard part is building the ecosystem. You have to get your readers and writers, and I don't know how long it will take me to convince the cell phone companies to do this. How long has RFID been around and it's still not completely built out?"
Understatement of the week, for sure. I'm struggling to think of more than half a dozen consumer-exposed implementations of RFID. There are a few gas-station speedpass[tm] gimmicks, some high end automobiles use them in their keys, and various department stores use them to keep inventory from walking out the front door. And a few casinos are now using RFID chips to prevent various gaming schemes and track user play. I think that "not completely" built out is more than an understatement. For instance, the uspto currently lists 2114 patents including the keyword "RFID" versus 519515 including the keyword "OPTICAL" (if you think optical technologies are not a fair comparison, do your own search with your own chosen technology.. my point is simply that RFID has barely been explored by many industries)
Not that I claim to be much of an expert on RFID, but at least it appears technologies such as this will be less vulernable to the encryption problems that RFID currently experience. (previous link is just some random example i googled for../. as well as Bruce Schneier have both covered the RFID encryption [and other inherent weakness] topics extensively in the past)
More recent versions of Medusa (PR3 and forward, I believe) include "medusa-idled", which is designed to make medusa back off when you actually are using your machine.
I've seen 2001 many times and love the film (need to go back and reread the book). About a year ago, I happened across it on TV and thought a bit about the special effects and the technological visions, and marveled at how realistic it all seemed (even if it's now a bit farther off). Of course, there were a few anachronisms -- the PanAm shuttle flight, or the Bell System videophone.
The only anachronism that _really_ rang false, though, was later in the film, when HAL begins to show signs of trouble. Both the ground crew and the astronauts are initially dumbfounded at the idea that their computer could possibly be having a software malfunction.
Imagine that. Being _surprised_ that a piece of software could have glitches. Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in?:)
This editorial, dated last Friday, on the Xi Graphics site seems to argue that their goal is to get as much software running on Linux as possible and that the best way to get MS and Adobe to port their software is to have a standard GUI.
It does note, quite correctly, that having proprietary software ported to Linux really goes against the goals of the Free Software community. On the other hand, it misses completely the fact that many of the big proprietary UNIX vendors are switching from CDE to GNOME anyway.
And more importantly, it also misses the fact that it might just be possible to create apps that can work almost seamlessly within at least two GUIs if the authors of those GUIs can come up with effective ways to combine them. Which, IIRC, the KDE and GNOME folks seem to be doing underneath the sniping.:)
I'm mostly just boggled that Xi is missing the strong momentum away from CDE, whatever it's going towards.
The difference is that the government is _not_ forcing AOL to open up the protocol by fiat -- they're considering making it a condition of the merger with Time-Warner.
Seen in that light, it's a little different -- it's not "You have to do this", but "If you're going to become an even larger company with your fingers in this many more pies, you're going to have to open up a little more on the monopolies you've got currently."
Sounds a lot more reasonable that way. If AOL doesn't want to open up IM, they can just not merge with Time-Warner.
I gotta say, I did bother to download it, and I'm _really_ impressed.
Once the bugs are fixed (I can reliably crash Nautilus by deleting multiple files, which I oughta report -- how come no bug-buddy?:), this is gonna be _really_ nice.
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA: "Equipment made by companies such as CellAntenna that can jam or block cellular signals is used by the U.S. military in Iraq to help protect convoys traveling through known trouble spots."
Great. The US is not Iraq, and frankly, it seems the police can't be trusted with tasers. I am sure we give the military in Iraq, and federal agents, access to all sorts of other stuff I really don't want my local deputy, Jimmy-joe-bob, getting his paws on.
Frankly, this is just more FUD bullshit security theater. Cellphone jammers won't help the police one bit, and will only add to the potential for abuse/misuse by the police. This lawsuit is nothing but a ploy from a company that wants to join the halliburton gravy train. GSM can be jammed somewhat as far as I know, but my understanding (correct me if you know and I am wrong) is that CMDA/WCDMA have much more immunity to jamming. CDMA phones aren't very prevalent in Iraq, but they are here. Furthermore, this only works if you know where (within a small radius) an explosive device [that was to be detonated by cellphone] is/willbe.. so really all it encourages is either wasteful spending on useless devices, or spending on devices that will be permanently setup in "high risk" place.. which will only serve to 1: encourage the 'terrorists' to figure a way around cellphone jamming, 2: erode our rights further.
there is a way to avoid the ads on /.
/. (so maybe you have a trojan/spyware?) yet, but if they institute them, I won't fault OSDN-- bandwidth costs money.
it's called SUBSCRIBING. if you browse often, it might end up being $2/month, in my experience. if you browse occasionally, it will be less.
i don't like flashpopup ads either, nor have i seen any on
" No real evidence has been produced to prove that this new technology is safe in the long term."
I'm sorry, but we're not talking about kryptonite or magical dark matter here.. these are devices operating with known technology in a known spectrum-- and let me add, not the only devices in this spectrum. WiFi isn't the only technology to operate at 2.4ghz (and I think some of the standards.. 802.11a? operate at 5.8ghz) -- are these parents seking to ban microwaves and cordless telephones? Even cellphones (and I'm sure many of them at least use cellular phones around their kids, iand some no doubt actually provide their kids with mobile phones) operate on similar 900mhz / 1800mhz / etc frequencies.
Someone with more of a science background, please reply (and correct me if necessary), but whether or not wireless internet has been studied over the "long term" have not several other devices that operate in the same (or very close) sprectrums? How is this anything but FUD?
I was actually going to post my thoughts, but since this article is slashdotted, and I still have the window open, i'll post my thoughts + the article text below them, for anyone who missed the article due to /.ing
...Obviously there are two sides to every story, but he really digs into some of the gritty details (naming names, etc), and the story he tells sounds like typical hollywood modus operandi to me. He is rather scant on details regarding the "accounting" irregularities, but nontheless he still vents pretty heavily in other regards.
WOW. Let me say, respect to Peter Jackson for telling it as he sees it.
I am a filmmaker myself, and have to deal with a variety of industry business annoyances on a daily basis, and I can sympathize with his frustration. This is an industry predicated upon many absurd practices. My assumption is that Peter Jackson must be pretty ticked off to be willing to vent in public like this.
Unfortunately for him, last we heard, he's hit a snag with HALO as well. Although general slashdot community concensus seemed to be "oh gawd, not another video game movie," so perhaps that snag is a bit less depressing than The Hobbit troubles.
11-19-06 Latest News
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh Talk THE HOBBIT
Xoanon @ 10:32 pm EST
Moments ago we received this email from Peter Jackson and his crew down in New Zealand, take a look...
Dear One Ringers,
As you know, there's been a lot of speculation about The Hobbit. We are often asked about when or if this film will ever be made. We have always responded that we would be very interested in making the film - if it were offered to us to make.
You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses.
However, we have always said that we do not want to discuss The Hobbit with New Line until the lawsuit over New Line's accounting practices is resolved. This is simple common sense - you cannot be in a relationship with a film studio, making a complex, expensive movie and dealing with all the pressures and responsibilities that come with the job, while an unresolved lawsuit exists.
We have also said that we do not want to tie settlement of the lawsuit to making a film of The Hobbit. In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart - it's not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you're taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It's that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.
A couple of months ago there was a flurry of Hobbit news in the media. MGM, who own a portion of the film rights in The Hobbit, publicly stated they wanted to make the film with us. It was a little weird at the time because nobody from New Line had ever spoken to us about making a film of The Hobbit and the media had some fun with that. Within a week or two of those stories, our Manager Ken Kamins got a call from the co-president of New Line Cinema, Michael Lynne, who in essence told Ken that the way to se
You have to figure HBO has a pretty sizable legal department, and wouldn't air a documentary that wasn't accurate (for fear of being sued). So if diebold's claims are untrue, all they are really doing are serving to help publicize the documentary before it airs. Brilliant move, haha. I know I had my DVR set to record it, but I can imagine many other /.ers did not... and now undoubtedly, some will.
... "The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." I would like to see an actual fact that states whether their claims are true or not. For instance, maybe they weren't in electronic voting business in 2000, but that doesn't mean they didn't still tally many paper votes (the aggregate of which amounts to 40% of the votes in the election)-- or that he hasn't screwed up interpreting what the film says (since he apparently hasn't seen it). Regardless of which, I think it's probably safe to assume if HBO isn't backing down, and does air the documentary, that this is largely smokescreen on the part of Diebold to try and convince the public that HBO is just an extension of the "liberal media" lying to them.
..but rather that HBO's spokesman is actually suggesting they are responding to this film, VoterGate, and not Hacking Democracy, whose UK working title is listed as "VoterGate" and whose tagline says, "Computers count America's votes in secret. 'Votergate' hacks the votes." The co-mingling of the word "Votergate" does lead to some confusion, even though the directors of each film are totally different, one is produced by "Digital Bazooka" productions and the other by "Teale-Edwards" Productions (which produced another good, but sad HBO documentary that I would reccomend watching -- Dealing Dogs). My suspicions are probably best supported by the line,"The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said." ..if they haven't seen the film, it's a bit difficult to suggest it is full of eggregious errors, and maybe they are commenting about 2004's VoterGate.
Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election."
Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."
On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.
My interest isn't as much in having normal appliances that talk to each other, although that could be cool (for instance, a dishwasher and washing machine that know not to turn on when the shower is in use.. that would be pretty cool), but rather appliances that are just more accurate. I dream of the day that I won't have to posess bank-burglar safe-cracker finger dexterity to get my shower to the exact temperature I desire, but rather I can just dial in a digital thermostat to 102.5F or whatever suits me. Some fixtures are making headway in this direction.. these Hansa faucets with LEDs that tint the water red or blue (for cold or hot) have been available for a while, although they don't come cheap.. they're at least a step in the right direction, since I think most of us have occasionally stuck our hands under scalding water by accident [presuming it was instead on "cold" mode].
Google is not managed by idiots. If they are going to shell out $1.6B for a commodity (even it's only $1.6B in stock and not cold, hard, cash), you can bet there was some due diligence involved. If you look at similar previous businesses-- Napster is the best that comes to mind.. Napster raked in a bunch of VC cash for Sean Fanning, and then it went down the tubes, but this was mostly as a result of failing to forsee the legal problems they would encouter. Google, no doubt, has already forseen this, and probably has developed a very robust (and hopefully flexible.. since web 2.0 is in its infancy) business model. One major difference between YouTube and Napster is that Napster was virtually 100% copyrighted (pirated) content. YouTube is probably 50% pirated content, with the other 50% being unique content (vlogs, etc) from users more interested in social networking, and I suspect in some ways these are more "valuable" users to google (in that they surf more often, are more susceptible/amenable to ads, etc). Of the pirated content, I suspect around 25-50% of the rights-owners actually "care enough" to pursue the fact that it is being exhibited on the web without royalties to them. The remainer are cellphone camera bootlegs of concerts, people singing covers of their favorite songs, etc.
After about 30 seconds of brainstorming, I can imagine google will focus on the social networking users (I already see YouTube making huge headway against MySpace-- watching a video of someone on their profile gives LOADS more parsable clues about them than a few blurry "MySpace Angles" photos), and secondarily attempt to convince many copyright holders to PROMOTE their retail content on YouTube rather than just ask them to cease and desist. This promotion could come in the way of YouTube "premier access" videos or site area, driven by g-checkout (or whatever its name is), where users pay for individual access to videos (at $.05 a view for a 2 minute video? maybe..) or perhaps for a site-wide access on a monthly fee basis. Or this promotion could come in the way of simply trying to pursuade copyright holders to let heir heavily compressed 320x240 webvideo stay up, with blatant text links/banners to the official site or whatever. As someone who actually creates commercial video content (I make documentaries, but have directed other projects such as music videos, etc), this is a situation I am amenable to. I'd be fine with google showing excepts of my last couple of films (extreme sports stuff), with context links on the page to buy the DVD, or maybe to "jamster" type ringtone sites that sell my video ringtones (which I don't actually have, but funny story, a large distributor [rhymes with Barner Wrothers] approached us to distribute our latest film, and one of their executive's biggest sales pitches to us [this was around a yr ago] was doing video ringtones-- "they're going to be huge!"). Also, remember, even if YouTube can't turn a profit on its own, the data-mining possibilities are endess... let's say I use my YouTube account (i am logged in via cookie) to watch lots of Morrissey videos. Then I google search for "documentary." There is [hypothetically] a new documentary coming out about Morrissey's legal battles with former Smiths bandmates, and now google can serve me context ad content based on the context of not just what I searched for, but what google also know me to enjoy. The correlations that can be made by cross referencing this content are pretty friggin extensive. I am positive this hasn't escaped their attention.
So in short, yes, everyone (including the big G) saw this coming. Expect some cool adaptations soon, I do hope.
Sidenote: I think that there is probably an amazing documentary to be made about the goings-on inside google.. what it means to work on the campus, how google employees are treated differently than typical IT employees, how they foster innovation, how they continue to push the envelope of how to do business on the web, their expansion into china (and grappling wi
Video game movies do not always do well.. but they don't, "always do poorly," as you've stated. Sure, Doom barely broke even after dvd/vhs rental (yet they're making a second [last I heard].. so that says something). But Tomb Raider grossed $131M in the US alone, with another $60M in rental market (plus foreign box office, merchandising, etc). With a production budget of $80M, that's a nifty return. I do agree with you though, the $141M budget that the article quotes is quite excessive for the genre. When examining whether it will be profitable you have to look at many things, and just being a video game movie isn't enough to doom you (no pun intended) to failure.
/., and do thoroughly enjoy reading most of your comments. This is the first time i've had the chance to reply to a "friend," since I mostly lurk (and generally only post in articles relating to digital cinema, or film stuff.. since that is what I do). Keep up the good comments ;)
If you look at the current trend, it seems that video game movies are getting pretty popular. Comic book movies have become insanely popular in the last 5-8 yrs and it seems to me virtually anything comic book related at all gets automatic greenlight nowadays (GHOST RIDER? I'd never even heard of this comic before I saw the trailer-- granted, i am not a comic fan, but certainly part of the draw of comic movies is a base association with a variety of users beyond just hardcore fans). Anyway, I digress, my point is simply, maybe executives are seeing some possibilities/trends in video game movies, --at least this is my conclusion based off the number that are slated for production currently..
the list below was shamelessly poached from a wikipedia list i found, and then edited to remove probably 10-15 video games i don't recognize [see last paragraph for my reasoning behind this]
* Castlevania (2007)
* Doom 2 (TBA)
* Driver (2006)
* Duke Nukem: The Movie (TBA)
* Far Cry (2008)
* Halo (2008)
* Max Payne (2007)
* MechWarrior (TBA)
* Metal Gear Solid (2008)
* Metroid (2006)
* Mortal Kombat: Devastation (2007)
* Pac-Man (2007)
* Perfect Dark (2008)
* Quake (TBA)
* Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
* Resident Evil 4 (2007)
* Return to Castle Wolfenstein (TBA)
* Splinter Cell (2006)
* Tekken (2007)
* Tomb Raider III (TBA)
* Untitled WarCraft Project (2008)
So, anyway, for the most part, I agree with you.. they have their work cut out for them, but I believe is the storyline does its own thing (And doesn't stick too much to the exact game), with Jackson behind it, it could do quite well.
Also, as an aside, I have you "friended" on
I'm somewhat unclear on this, and I watched 80% of the flash demo linked above before getting insanely bored (mostly due to the pace) and letting my ADHD take over. From what I can tell, they are implying that this is not an algorithm doing the "checking" of your web site, but rather human editors/users. The flash demo mentions testing optimization of images as well, which I believe wouldn't be something easily automated through an algorithm (at least not easily automated to derive USEFUL results). However, i'm a bit confused because they aren't very specific as to who or what will be testing your site for clickthru/etc. At some point I started to think "oh, okay, google editors/volunteers will be testing it" (much like the google image labeler beta linked from /. a few weeks ago).. and then i started to suspect they are actually just using the code to run multiple "live" versions of your site and let NORMAL google users view them in a random distribution and then see which ones stay (and buy) and for how long etc. But maybe I just misunderstood and got distracted 5 seconds before they explained this haha. Anyone with the answer?
If it really is the latter method, I am sure it would work for some web sites, but I know for our company's site, we can only ever display one version of our content, as any minor changes at all tend to draw a lot of industry attention (i.e. "hey what are these guys up to.. their site updated.. OMG is the next big product about to drop, blah blah").. so I hope that out of the three methods, it's either an algorithm, or a small subset of google trustees/volunteers. But then again, our industry (digital cinema) is a typical and I'm sure no matter which method, this will work great for mom & pop selling Pokemon trading cards or whatever.
I emailed the on-duty editor (regarding this being a dupe), like any good little /. subscriber. Unfortunately my e-mail bounced pretty much immediately. Normally I would resist the temptation to join in the /. circle-jerk that is shouting "OMG DUPE DUPE DUPE!!" but I wanted someone (ScuttleMonkey, etc) to note that the 'daddypants' email link is bouncing. ..ScuttleMonkey, if you want the full error, feel free to let me know where to e-mail it.
( ERROR: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... Line 126 )
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter. Insert Matrix deja-vu quote here.
Mods, try to be on the lookout for copy and paste karma whores (man, plagiarism annoys me). Unfortunately with 700+ comments on the last discussion, this may not be easy, haha.
cellphone vending machines just seem like a bad idea to me.. the general public is not very sharp, and need things spelled out for them by an "informed" consultant (aka guy in collared shirt who makes min wage + %).
ipod vending on the other hand.. not nearly so many options, and i could see myself using an ipod vending machine in an airport. generally when i am flying, i am in a rush and trying not to forget things, and inevitably i forget something stupid.. like bringing a book to read, etc. this is why periodical shops exist in airports. if the vending machine had an ipod that included the ability to perform itunes purchase + wireless download enabled, that is a combination i can see being very effective in airports; buy ipod, download $30 worth of itunes music, enjoy flight. of course, it's moot because ipod doesn't do wireless download [yet?].
I find The first FA to be poorly written. It jumps between focusing [pun not intended] on two completely different concepts: dynamic range, and motion detection. The second article is slightly better.
We'll address dynamic range, since I know more about this aspect. The first page of the (first) article says he used "off-the-shelf components such as resistors, capacitors, and light sensors to build an electronic model". And then a sentence or so later says, "This would allow the camera to capture more complete images--such as, for instance, both the face of a person standing in front of a sunlit window and the scene outside." If you don't know much about digital imaging, let me just say that this is roughly the equivalent of "I used wheels and spark plugs to build a car and I now hope to win the Indy 500." The article is SORELY lacking in any real information about how he intends to extend dynamic range by using technology gleaned from flies.
There are several very real and working principles by which dynamic range can be extended, both unique to chip architecture (such as dual slope sampling) and implementable on a variety of chips (such as dual electronic shuttering). These are the types of things that it would have been cool for the article to discuss (imo). The second article at least includes a quote from him stating that fly eyes can adjust exposure independently.. this is a beneficial thing, and several CMOS imagers already exist that do this as well (i.e. dual slope operation, etc). You can also individually shutter pixels, or expose multiple frames per $interval (each with a different electronic shutter length) and then composite them.. however this last technique creates smear, which can be less than ideal, depending on your needs. I also know of a couple of patents for bayer masks that adjust individual pixel exposure in realtime (similar to those sunglasses that get darker or lighter) in order to compress dynamic range before it hits the CMOS/CCD.
One of the issues the articles really didn't get into at all, is storage of data. Higher dynamic range images require more storage space (as their bitspaces increase), and right now the major limitation in digital cinema and other similar realms is not imaging so much as writing all of the data to disk.. storage media speed (or cost/speed ratio, if you like) needs to do some catching up.
except that in a quick experiment, i noted that MS Word (Office 2004 trial, on my Macbook Pro) *DOES* recognize Linux, as well as "Slashdot,"
I think that using MS Word is a pretty good way to check vocabulary that may be in the zeitgeist. Even abridged dictionaries are full of words that are virtually unused in our society... and from TFA, it appears their intention was to ensure whatever word they used didn't already have significant meaning in popular culture.
The question they seem to failed to examine, is whether or not a word is not significant enough in the collective consciousness of society [to be included in MS Word spell check] does that mean it is fair game for assignment of new meaning?
FTFA: "allows making online purchases with a slide of a dinger across the scanner" (emphasis mine)
really.. a dinger..? you don't say...
The whole fingerprint-for-payment-at-the-store thing has been debated here plenty before, so i'll steer clear of it.. but TFA (well, TFblogpost) is centered around Pay By Touch launching a service that lets you scan your fingerprint at home and autopay at various online websites with a simple swipe of your finger. I don't know who steered them down this path, but they should be fired.. promptly.
I can recall several dotbombs that had this same business model (an e-wallet that had all your info in it already so all you needed to do was purchase from participating vendors and a username/password/whatever was all you'd need to make each purchase), and they all failed miserably. Anyone remember flooz? Maybe i'm just a cynic and these guys will have a fresh new approach that will catch on like wildfire.. but it seems a nonstarter to me, since none of the failed dotcoms so much as required you to have a biometric scanner in your home.
your post has a lot of insight. i'm on a working vacation in Seattle right now, and i'm amazed that even though i have probably 10x as much free time to watch television, without a DVR here i'm watching basically none, because nothing I enjoy is available at the right time.
it will be interesting to see if this show does well on NBC (certainly the PR from the situation under which it was purchased by NBC will help its ratings), but I would imagine your assesment is at least partly correct. Certainly a chunk of its audience will be youtube viewers, who are probably very likely to have DVRs, so they may be able to watch it in much the same fashion as on youtube (i.e. on-demand).. but I wouldn't imagine this chunk would amount to more than a minority of the show's viewers.
what's really interesting are the business models that Mark Cuban and others are developing.. in the case of the linked press release above, basically Steven Soderbergh shooting a number of films for simultaneous theatrical / dvd / hdtv / download release, so that all marketing dollars are used effectively, and the audience ultimately decides which form of content delivery works best for them. I don't know that the model initially includes download release (i.e. itunes style), but I can imagine that's something Cuban is working on now (probably the DRM issues are a bit of a snag).
So even if NBC blows their opportunity at transferring to primetime tv the collective attention of viewers from the internet, there are other (potentially better) business models in the works that will better appeal to viewers who want to watch on their own terms.
FTFA: "We just don't want to see anybody hurt with their wireless system," says Welch. "If someone (unauthorized) were accessing it and an owner's information, there could be damage and a potential lawsuit."
absolutely ridiculous. maybe they should start digging through our trash to make sure we've properly shredded our monthly bank statements too.
Furthermore, this rule would be a total paper tiger, as far as enforcement goes, since wep [which i do believe is the most common security protocol in use for wifi today] is widely known NOT to be secure. It will be ironic when the first whitehat captures a few days worth of packets from outside that guy's home and then published the unencrypted contents of his web traffic.
ah, the moon, the stepping stone to Mars. for me, this is a subject of much ambivalence. it's nice to see some actual money being spent on science, but at the same time, I struggle to really identify what benefit there is going to the moon, or to Mars. Other than public relations benefit, of course. But really, what will we find? That a few simple organisms once existed on mars, and that Mars once had water? But don't we know this now?
The Europeans focus much more heavily on aero-sciences, and we seem to be a lot more captivated by reaching the moon (etc). The Europeans are busy doing piles and piles of research (which will ultimately find many useful things), and similar research in this country is largely the burden of private organizations. All the tangible benefits we've reaped from space travel (tang, velcro, etc) could have been discovered much more cheaply (or if you prefer, in greater abundance for the same price) if we were simply focusing on inventing and not reaching some milestone out in space.
I guess what i'm saying is that I'm not sure how to feel about this; It's science, and exploration, and both are good (imo), but if we want to prioritize, wouldn't billions of dollars be better spent focusing on fixing our own messed up planet? Assuming there is some inherent benefit to going to the moon/mars/wherever, is it really necessary to send *HUMANS*? Could we not fund 10x as many unmanned missions and learn probably close to 10x as much?
I promise this post isn't a troll, I am a filmmaker, and interested in science, but obviously I have some question as to the science-value of putting men on a rock in space.
look at Amazon-- from what I understand (ianastockbroker) their actual inventory itself may not even turn a profit at all, but third party sales and their e-commerce licensing (to Toys-R-Us, Target, etc) makes them more than profitable. this is possible because they have the infrastructure built. when it comes down to it, people like to click on ads and buy stuff. not you, not me, but a percentage of people do. enough to make the ad game profitable, as seen by advertising in other fields (tv, billboards, hell even spam.. someone is clicking on all those links to buy v1agr4 or you and I wouldn't get so much spam).
..as an aside, the interesting thing [for me] to ponder, is whether google will ever adapt their business model to gain profit directly from user subscriptions for various services, or whether it will always remain ad-revenue driven
google is in the process of widely diversifying, and even if microsoft DID roll out a universal adblocker that was installed by default, I can envision several scenarios that google adwords infrastructure would still be useful for. how about when google unveils their free natiowide wifi metropolitan internet access.. of course it's free in exchange for using Gbrowser with AdViewing enabled.
I use gmaps on my BlackBerry8700 all the time.. google's success is all about creating functional/useful utilities (email, mapping, search engine, blogger, gcheckout, whatever) and then stuffing ads in there. The fundamental question is not whether MS can block them, it's whether ads can be profitable, and I believe the answer is yes.
FTFA: "The hard part is building the ecosystem. You have to get your readers and writers, and I don't know how long it will take me to convince the cell phone companies to do this. How long has RFID been around and it's still not completely built out?"
/. as well as Bruce Schneier have both covered the RFID encryption [and other inherent weakness] topics extensively in the past)
Understatement of the week, for sure. I'm struggling to think of more than half a dozen consumer-exposed implementations of RFID. There are a few gas-station speedpass[tm] gimmicks, some high end automobiles use them in their keys, and various department stores use them to keep inventory from walking out the front door. And a few casinos are now using RFID chips to prevent various gaming schemes and track user play. I think that "not completely" built out is more than an understatement. For instance, the uspto currently lists 2114 patents including the keyword "RFID" versus 519515 including the keyword "OPTICAL" (if you think optical technologies are not a fair comparison, do your own search with your own chosen technology.. my point is simply that RFID has barely been explored by many industries)
Not that I claim to be much of an expert on RFID, but at least it appears technologies such as this will be less vulernable to the encryption problems that RFID currently experience. (previous link is just some random example i googled for..
More recent versions of Medusa (PR3 and forward, I believe) include "medusa-idled", which is designed to make medusa back off when you actually are using your machine.
The only anachronism that _really_ rang false, though, was later in the film, when HAL begins to show signs of trouble. Both the ground crew and the astronauts are initially dumbfounded at the idea that their computer could possibly be having a software malfunction.
Imagine that. Being _surprised_ that a piece of software could have glitches. Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in? :)
It does note, quite correctly, that having proprietary software ported to Linux really goes against the goals of the Free Software community. On the other hand, it misses completely the fact that many of the big proprietary UNIX vendors are switching from CDE to GNOME anyway.
And more importantly, it also misses the fact that it might just be possible to create apps that can work almost seamlessly within at least two GUIs if the authors of those GUIs can come up with effective ways to combine them. Which, IIRC, the KDE and GNOME folks seem to be doing underneath the sniping. :)
I'm mostly just boggled that Xi is missing the strong momentum away from CDE, whatever it's going towards.
Seen in that light, it's a little different -- it's not "You have to do this", but "If you're going to become an even larger company with your fingers in this many more pies, you're going to have to open up a little more on the monopolies you've got currently."
Sounds a lot more reasonable that way. If AOL doesn't want to open up IM, they can just not merge with Time-Warner.
Personally, I generally leave a few bucks in my PayPal account and consider the tiny amount of interest a payment for the convenience.
And it's not as if they aren't compl etely up-front about this. Adam
I gotta say, I did bother to download it, and I'm _really_ impressed.
:), this is gonna be _really_ nice.
Once the bugs are fixed (I can reliably crash Nautilus by deleting multiple files, which I oughta report -- how come no bug-buddy?