At the end of the day I could always justify the expense of the software when the equipment it is controlling is orders of magnitude more expensive and some of the automation I was able to roll out saved weeks if not months of time.
Depends very much on the application. I once had a LabVIEW system that was getting camera input. I needed to do some simple image processing (and I mean really simple), but the only way I could do that in LabVIEW was to buy a gigantic add-on package that was very expensive. So in the end I coded it myself, but what should have been a 5-minute coding exercise (just modify one of the LabVIEW VIs to export some data) ended up being quite a bit more complicated because LabVIEW is closed-source (so I couldn't just go into a VI and make the simple change I needed).
This is just one example where LabVIEW's closed-source nature slowed me down. On the other hand, the community is quite good and there are many useful VIs being freely offered on the forums.
At the end of the day I wouldn't get to hung up about open source when you are dealing with equipment and budgets where the software is 1% of the cost - just use the best tool to meet the requirement or risk project overrun and funding issues.
Open-source isn't just about money. The ability to modify the code can frequently be very helpful, especially when you're trying to do something non-traditional (which seems like all the time in experimental physics!). In science there is also the issue of "knowing what's going on" inside the software if you're ever going to trust the data that comes out of it. And we shouldn't ignore the educational benefit (and all-around fun) of being able to get into code and modify it. Science is about learning (in particular for students; but tinkering is also crucial for established scientists!).
Better yet, ask the manufacturers if they would be willing to bet money (let's say equal to the value of the company) on a simple test: 100 people will be evaluated with your machine; 50 of them will be lying, 50 will not; your machine must score 95% or better.
Chances are they wouldn't take the bet because they know damn well that their machine is actually no better than random.
I also find it funny, and sad, that a Swedish entity caved so easily to a legal threat from outside the country (and from outside the country's legal system).
To be clear: the researchers are Swedish, but the publisher which caved to the legal threat was in the UK (Equinox). From TFA:
In the autumn, Equinox, the British publisher of the magazine, were canvassed by the Israeli company Nemesysco Limited, a manufacturer of lie detectors. Following this the company demanded that the article be withdrawn, which the publishers duly did.
Your point remains: it's sad that a UK publisher caved so easily to what appears to be a rather baseless accusation. (The article isn't libelous; merely factual.) Luckily the Swedish researchers are doing a good job distributing the information anyways.
I agree with you: having this kind of 2.5D experience is neat but not particularly useful.
But I wonder if this software could be adapted to do something else... One of the things that most people dislike about webcam-conferencing is that the other person is never looking "at" you. They are looking on their screen at an image of you, so they are not looking directly at their camera, and so on your end they seem to be looking away from you. (And they see you looking away from them, too.)
While this may seem trivial, it is actually a significant roadblock to inter-person tele-communication. People rely on body language and eye contact to establish each other's moods, to really "connect". Webcam-conferencing forces us to violate social conventions (like looking into people's eyes), which can be anywhere from subconsciously bothersome, to somewhat distracting, or even perceived as insulting.
So what I would like is a multi-camera system that uses similar kinds of interpolation to rebuild the image of the person so that they are looking directly at the camera. So if I put one webcam on either side of my screen, they can combine their images to create a shifted image where I am looking directly at the viewer on the other end.
Though it is a rather small and subtle addition to tele-conferencing, I believe it would have a bigger impact than what TFA seems to be showing. I think it would make the interaction "more real."
In the 2007 holiday season... the [G1G1] program took in $37 million. This past season, the foundation partnered with Amazon to sell the laptops and increased its advertising and marketing efforts substantially--to two or three times what they were in 2007, or close to $20 million, virtually all of it pro bono. Yet, sales fell off a cliff, coming in at about $2.5 million. Negroponte attributes "almost all" of the falloff to the poor economy, though others have theorized that the computers themselves had lost their appeal.
The fact that the second G1G1 failed despite significant marketing to the public-at-large, whereas the first G1G1 succeeded using only word-of-mouth and grass-roots marketing is quite telling. I'm sure there are many reasons (including the economy), but I believe the shift in values of the OLPC organization was a significant effect. I was super-keen to participate in the first G1G1 program: both because I felt I was helping an organization aligned with my ideals (free distribution of knowledge; free software, etc.) and because I felt that I was buying-in to a vibrant community (because all kinds of hackers and kids would be programming fun stuff for the platform).
But then I felt let-down by the changes in OLPC. The switch in emphasis (including the shift to Windows) meant that many enthusiasts and volunteers lost interest. And this devalued the whole platform to many people, since it seemed like the community was disappearing (or least fracturing and changing). So I stopped 'spreading the word', advocating for them, and didn't participate in the second G1G1. I'm sure many others felt as I did.
Obviously 1st-world enthusiasts and hackers are not the target audience for the XO. And yet I believe they were quite important in building and supporting the platform ($37 million from the first G1G1 is quite impressive), and that by neglecting that community OLPC has lost some of its most useful supporters. (Then again, I could be totally wrong; wouldn't be the first time someone over-estimated the influence they had on a particular sequence of events.)
Wafers are usually circular (since they are sliced off a cylindrical ingot), so the calculation would actually be:
( pi*(15cm/2)^2 )/150000 = 0.0012 = 0.12 mm^2
Which is slightly smaller. But this means that each LED is roughly 0.3 mm in size, which is about the size of any LED I've ever encountered.
I presume a real lightbulb would require multiple LEDs bundled together somehow. Which is actually cool, because it would allow for more interesting bulb shapes, and should allow for dimming (by controlling how many LEDs are lit). Of course it also means that the real cost of a bulb is higher than a single LED. But even if a bulb needs 100 LEDs, if the price quoted in the summary is correct,* bulbs will be very cheap.
(* The price quoted in the summary is probably not correct. The cost of the wafer doesn't include the manufacturing costs or the costs of the materials you need to deposit onto it.)
Doesn't address the issue of false positives, due process, and abuses of the system (it becomes trivial to harm someone by implicating them if there isn't a robust due process).
1. If you're downloading music for free because it's not worth the money being asked for it, then you're either listening to the crappy music and/or not hunting down the best prices for your CDs.
The interesting thing is that people have to put so much effort into finding the music they want at a price they consider reasonable in a format that works for them. Because it takes so much effort ("hunting down" and so forth), people opt for the path of lesser resistance: torrents provide the most immediate access, the best catalog, high-quality, no DRM or other restrictions, etc. This is not an argument that legitimizes unsanctioned distribution... but it does help explain why people download free copies. It is not just the "free" part that entices them; it is the overall user experience that is better. People (or at least some people) would be willing to pay if only the for-pay user experience were better (e.g. unlimited high-quality downloads from an unrestricted broad catalog for a single monthly fee).
2. Paying £10 for a classic album that might well stay with you for 50+ years of your life seems pretty good value for me.
That's good for you. But it seems that many consumers do not agree. Again, this isn't a defense for their actions... but it does highlight an unsatisfied market segment.
3. Don't equate hoarding music to loving music - there's a big difference & the former is usually done by young males with small penises out to impress girls with 20,000 tracks on their iWanks^H^H^H^H^HPods.
Troll much?
7. As a regular CD buyer, how the *HELL* do you think I feel subsidising you people with your *FREE* music collections?
You really think CDs would be cheaper if no one downloaded the music for free? That doesn't make sense. A seller will always sell at the highest price that people will pay. In a competitive market the various sellers will compete with each other and a certain equilibrium price will be reached. In a market without competition the price will be as high as possible. Copyright law guarantees that each seller has a monopoly (at least on that particular song/album/band), so there is no competition per se. So having more buyers (or fewer illegitimate downloaders) won't affect the price in any way.
It's worth remembering that even with all the unsanctioned file-sharing happening, the music industry is still turning a profit (otherwise they would just stop selling CDs altogether). File-sharing may reduce their profits (although even that is debatable), but I don't see how it affects the price they charge you for CDs.
Again, I'm not trying to defend file-sharing per se (I personally only listen to Creative-Commons licensed music), but some of your arguments are flawed.
I find the debates about which OSS license is "most free" to be rather silly, because:
1. All the "major" OSS licenses (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.) are awesome, in my opinion. They all do great things and greatly help free software. So debating about which one is "the best" seems counter-productive because it obscures the fact that they are all good.
2. The debates usually have an implicit assumption that "freedom" is a one-dimensional axis, and we are trying to maximize the amount of "freedom." Occasionally someone will insightfully explain how freedom is more complex: one person's freedom may come at the expense of another; you need to distinguish between user freedom, developer freedom, distributor freedom; etc. Overall I prefer to think of "freedom" as being multi-dimensional.* A particular license may maximize along one freedom-axis, while not being maximal along another freedom-axis. And there may not be any license which simultaneously maximizes along every axis. Hence no such thing as the "most free" license. (But there may still be ways to rank things; e.g. most proprietary licenses are less free along every axis.) In other words (and you would think this would be obvious): the "best" license depends very much on the particular situation and one's particular priorities.
(* I believe this multi-dimensionality applies to many "wavy-gravy" human concepts/principles/emotions. Too frequently we argue about things as if they were binary or 1-dimensional, when even a cursory analysis shows them to be more complex than that.)
Take a look at Slashdot's FAQ. Most of the entries haven't been updated in 8 years. For some of them it doesn't matter. For others, the answers don't make much sense. (Most written before things like article tagging and the firehose existed.)
In short, Slashdot evolves at a positively glacial speed. (Which has its advantages: it would be worse to try and implement every whizz-bang fad.) This is somewhat ironic for a site where articles are posted dozens of times a day, and comments are posted at a fantastic speed. Slashdot's content changes every second. It's format changes every decade.
But it can't be astroturfing. Or if it is an attempt to astroturf, it is very misguided. Because whenever those silly comments are trotted out, what eventually happens is we get a bunch of highly-moderated responses reiterating that MS is a convicted monopolist, describing their various illegal actions, and noting that other OS distributors (Apple, Ubuntu, etc.) are not similar. This makes the debate a little more boring/redundant than it would otherwise be--but it doesn't really help Microsoft's cause!
So it must just be people who are ignorant, or trolling... or MS needs to hire better astroturfers.
This tired argument is brought up every time a Microsoft anti-trust article is posted. The difference is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. It is not bundling a browser with your OS that is illegal--it is abusing your monopoly in one domain to hamper competition in another domain that is illegal.
Microsoft had/has a near-monopoly in the OS market. They were accused of abusing that monopoly to hamper competition in other markets (e.g. web browsers, media players). They were found guilty of those actions in multiple jurisdictions (US, EU,...). That is why action is being taken against them.
If Apple were to do the same thing (abuse their monopoly in one market to hamper competition in another), they would be subject to the same laws. (And indeed the EU has launched antitrust probes into iTunes...)
Which is why the goal should be to force MS to allow re-bundling, not to force anyone to bundle multiple competing (and thereby redundant) products. Computer sellers should have the choice of shipping computers with Notepad and MediaPlayer, or jEdit and VLC, or Notepad and VLC, etc.
In principle they have this ability. But Microsoft has been accused of making this difficult, in both technical ways (IE deeply embedded in the OS; cannot be uninstalled) and in procedural ways (sellers don't get the advantageous pricing unless they agree to bundle MS software).
Again, in my opinion the focus should be on getting MS to remove the technical and procedural barriers for sellers and third-party products. Anything beyond that is just asking for inefficiency.
This guy's answers are hilarious. They only make sense in a universe where everything is inherently locked down, and your customers are idiots to be abused.
Why has Microsoft gone back to DRM...? It's a first step.... We'll be looking to enhance the service if we get some interest from consumers.... At the moment, to be honest with you, we don't have the functionality in-house to provide a mechanism for transferring between mobile phones and PC.
You don't really have to provide a "mechanism" if you just left the system open. If the files were non-DRM and the phone had an open interface (e.g. you plug in a USB cable and can browse/transfer files on it), then the transferring step is trivial.
With the likes of iTunes and Amazon offering DRM-free music that you can play on any device, why would anyone choose the MSN Mobile service? There may well be people who just want to listen to the track on their mobile alone
Which, again, would be trivially easy with an open system. If the phone were open, I could download a track from Amazon and put it on my phone. So the only reason to use the MSN service is "because of lock-in."
And in response to the question:
What is your message to consumers - why should I come to you instead of Amazon or iTunes? What do you offer that none of your competitors do?
...his answer actually doesn't contain an answer. He just mentions that some people are using the service. Without being explicit, he's basically saying "some users won't know any better."
Can you really expect people to buy music that's locked to a device they upgrade every 12 to 18 months? I didn't realise phones were churning that quickly in the marketplace these days....
Wow. Just... wow. That's impressive market research on their part. They are not sure how long people keep their cellphones. And they see no issue with requiring digital files to expire whenever the hardware does.
This overpriced and highly restricted product has a clear future ahead...
Wikipedia is ranked higher because it is more linked throughout the web. But this is just another example where PageRank really is working: it's returning results that are most useful to the searcher.
For instance for "neutron" on Google, the first link is to Wikipedia. Britannica is nowhere on the first page. If you go directly to Britannica, they do indeed have an article on "neutron". However, it is a "premium topic" and keeps asking me to become a member. So when someone is searching for information about neutrons, what source is more useful: the one that immediately provides some information, with references; or the one that asks you to pay some money (or try the free trial...) in order to get full access, so that you can then figure out whether the information they have is useful or not... ?
The fact is that Wikipedia is more heavily linked because it is a more accessible, therefore more useful, source of information. Even if Britannica's content were superior, this would still be the case. The fact that Wikipedia is more expansive, more timely, and frequently more detailed/referenced than Britannica just makes the choice even clearer.
PageRank works. Wikipedia is overall a more useful source to the average web surfer, and thus deserves a much higher rank.
The same people who determine whether a given paragraph legitimately deserves to remain in a Wikipedia article: the community of volunteer contributors.
For better or worse, the people deciding what videos should be kept and which should be deleted will be those who are involved and passionate about Wikipedia. If you think Wikipedia is doing overall a good job so far, then presumably you expect them to make good decisions about what videos are worthwhile. If you think Wikipedia is overall doing a poor job, then presumably you expect them to make poor and/or capricious choices with respect to video.
the only way they're going to actually get a converter is if they get kicked in the pants sufficiently hard by, let's say, having their TV stations go dark.
Honest question here: is the plan actually to have the stations go completely dark at the switchover date?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have those channels broadcast a continuously looped message that explains in detail how to switch over to digital TV? The message could be maintained for a month, say, after which time the channels would truly go dark to free up the bandwidth. Otherwise people who were not paying much attention will just think their TV is broken.
Even better would be a multi-stage approach; starting with occasional advisory ads and text-overlays (which I guess they are doing now?), then have every commercial replaced with an advisory, then have a perpetual "this channel will stop functioning soon!" overlay on the channel, then a continually looped message explaining the switchover, and finally the channels go dark.
I know that they "shouldn't have to" beat people over the head with this information--but the fact is that many people are probably still not aware that the switchover is going to happen, and could probably use some more insistent messages.
To be fair, there is a difference between a company and a government. A company inherently operates in a particular sector. They have a fairly well-defined scope so it's reasonably easy to pick out who their direct competitors are, who their partners are, and what companies they have no particular link to.
High-level government officials and teams, however, inherently have some level of influence over every imaginable sector/industry. Which means that the chance of a conflict-of-interest arising becomes much higher (if you pick a random economic sector, and you have a group of 10 people, there's a good chance that one of those people will gain or lose in some way depending on decisions made; whether it be because of owning stock, having a family member employed by that industry, etc.).
That having been said, government officials should absolutely be held to a very high standard on conflict-of-interest cases. The appropriate action here would be for that particular Obama team member to recuse himself from any decision-making related to that particular issue. He can remain active in other aspects of planning, but should absolutely not touch anything related to this conflict-of-interest (and the planning/execution should be done in a transparent way so that the public can be confident that he wasn't involved).
How is it that light has momentum when it has no mass?
For the same reason that speeds don't strictly add up linearly: relativity. In Newtonian mechanics, momentum is p = m*v where m is the mass and v is the velocity. But when you take relativity into account, the proper definition is actually p = gamma*m*v. For a photon, you might think m = 0 would mean p = 0, but when v=c (the speed of light), gamma = 1/0. So you have an equation p = c*0/0. Obviously something is wrong, and in a careful analysis it turns out that for massless objects (which travel at c) p = E/c (where E is total energy, and c is speed of light).
So, basically the momentum of massless particles arises from taking into account relativity. The fact that we can actually measure photon pressure is an interesting proof that the math "works."
1 - dressed like a wierdo. Sorry Emo/Goth is not cool.. It's as bad as dressing in a star trek shirt.
Dressing is all about projecting an image and fitting into a community. Emo/Goth clothing is most definitely cool... to other Emo/Goth people, that is. So if you're trying to interact with Emo/Goth people, then it may be an appropriate choice of clothing (assuming you genuinely like it yourself and are not a "poseur"). If you're tying to impress businesspeople, then business attire is the appropriate choice. Not caring at all about your clothes (e.g. sloppy T-shirt and jogging pants) probably won't impress anyone.
The key is to know what image you're trying to project, and to dress appropriately (given the crowd, context, and your intentions).
5 - Nerdy = dorky and repellant. the second you mention you're a top notch national MTG player they will ask to go to the bathroom and never come back. Magic the Gathering is NOT COOL, nor any of your really nerdy activities.
I don't really agree. Magic the Gathering is not inherently more cool or less cool than college football. I don't think it's necessary to hide your interests, or invent "cooler" ones. What matters is point #2: social tact. A stereotypical nerd is not annoying because he talks about D&D. He's annoying because he talks about D&D endlessly, when no one else cares. The same is true of a stereotypical jock who talks about sports even when everyone around him is bored. Someone with proper social tact will tell interesting (but brief!) stories, ask people about their interests, find common ground, etc.
There is no need to lie to people about your interests. I know plenty of geeks who are honest about their interests (which include linux, science, role-playing, etc.) but have no trouble interacting socially or getting dates. The key is to not talk about your pet fixation when no one else cares (regardless of what your personal fixation happens to be).
Indeed. When you get down to minimalist, iconic designs, at favicon resolution, there is only so much parameter space. One of those links claims:
AVG favicon + 90 degree turn + Old favicon + Some smudging -> New favicon
Give me a break! Newsflash: any icon can be conceptually transformed into any other icon in a finite number of image-manipulation steps. Like: "Slashdot favicon + Convert to B&W + Duplicate the slash 3 times + flip two of the slashes -> Wikipedia's favicon"... OMG! Wikipedia is stealing ideas from Slashdot!
The summary is so patently ridiculous that I really have to wonder if it was submitted as a joke or is an attempt to troll Slashdot. Google's new favicon has a "g" and 4 primary colors. It bears some resemblance to other 4-primary-color emblems (of which there are thousands). Get over it.
companies are getting weary of partnering with Google and dealing with Google's bottomless desire for control.
Whereas Microsoft is renowned for their open and transparent processes, their huge efforts towards interoperability and against lock-in, and their thorough willingness to cede control over to others when asked nicely... ??
Both Google and Microsoft (and every other company, really) have a bottomless desire for control. And really Verizon doesn't care about how much control Google or Microsoft may have over search; except to the extent that this affects their bottom line. So, yes, Microsoft must have offered them a better deal.
Weight is at a premium in an airplane and batteries are quite heavy compared to the energy they have stored.
It's even worse than that. Even if a battery had the same energy density (by weight) as fuel, it would still be worse because the batteries do not get lighter over the course of the flight, so the aircraft must constantly expend energy to carry that mass. By burning fuel you lighten your load over the course of the flight which makes flying progressively cheaper.
Also, many aircraft can't (safely) land with a full tank of fuel. They are designed such that the landing weight will be lower (due to burning fuel) than the takeoff weight. This is why planes making emergency landings sometimes need to dump fuel.
The system will be optional (not sure if that means opt-in or opt-out, though). But who would actually want this kind of thing? At best, the messages will be fairly relevant to the particular buyer (like TFA says, a "wine review" being delivered to a wine connoisseur)--but people already have plenty of ways to get that kind of information (web sites, magazines, etc.), and many of them work in cars (radio, podcasts, etc.).
At worst, it will be a barrage of spam, and everyone will opt-out. Most probably, the messages will be ads thinly veiled as relevant information (e.g. positive reviews of products from partnering companies), which people will ultimately become annoyed by.
I can't see this doing anything other than bothering customers.
The summary sorta implies that "The Long Tail" means that the unpopular stuff will be more popular. But that isn't the theory, and TFA does a decent job explaining it. "The Long Tail" instead means that if production and distribution costs are low enough, a whole variety of niche products suddenly become viable. Traditionally people could only buy one of the top-10 books (or DVDs or whatever), because stores couldn't afford to stock anything but the best-sellers. But things like Amazon allow them to "stock" just about everything: so a previously untapped market appears, with stores catering to all of these niche buyers. The idea is that the potential in the long tail is massive: nothing in it is particularly popular or sells that many copies, but in aggregate it can be huge (maybe even bigger than the "best sellers"). This model has clearly worked for places like Amazon. Another stereotypical example is customized shoes or clothing; whereas traditionally you could only buy the shirts you saw at the local store, with the Internet you can buy all kinds of more niche styles. In fact, you can buy shirts that have user-chosen slogans or logos. The plethora of online stores that offer these services, or which capitalize on short-lived Internet memes by selling associated clothing, shows that this idea has merit.
The article notes that despite the long tail, we still have blockbusters. This isn't really in conflict with the theory of the long tail. Indeed the theory mostly talks about the (previously untapped) potential of the long tail... but blockbusters will always exist. TFA says that despite niche markets, most of the sales, and most of the money, still comes from the best-sellers or the blockbusters.
I think (part of) the explanation for this is from free content. I think that anyone trying to capitalize on the long tail will have a hard time competing with amateurs, enthusiasts, and free information. For mainstream content (e.g. a generic action movie), amateurs won't be able to compete with the budget and brand recognition of established studios. But for niche interests, amateurs will often be producing the "best content" and giving it away for free, making it impossible for commercial interests to capitalize on it. Think about the variety of niche blogs, forums, wikibooks, YouTube channels, creative commons music or books, and so forth.
So I would say that the long tail exists, and is healthy... but is harder to monetize than some people may have thought. The fact is that niche interests exist, but those niche communities are often finding that they can satisfy their needs themselves, leaving no room for commercial entities to capitalize.
Slashdot Mirror
At the end of the day I could always justify the expense of the software when the equipment it is controlling is orders of magnitude more expensive and some of the automation I was able to roll out saved weeks if not months of time.
Depends very much on the application. I once had a LabVIEW system that was getting camera input. I needed to do some simple image processing (and I mean really simple), but the only way I could do that in LabVIEW was to buy a gigantic add-on package that was very expensive. So in the end I coded it myself, but what should have been a 5-minute coding exercise (just modify one of the LabVIEW VIs to export some data) ended up being quite a bit more complicated because LabVIEW is closed-source (so I couldn't just go into a VI and make the simple change I needed).
This is just one example where LabVIEW's closed-source nature slowed me down. On the other hand, the community is quite good and there are many useful VIs being freely offered on the forums.
At the end of the day I wouldn't get to hung up about open source when you are dealing with equipment and budgets where the software is 1% of the cost - just use the best tool to meet the requirement or risk project overrun and funding issues.
Open-source isn't just about money. The ability to modify the code can frequently be very helpful, especially when you're trying to do something non-traditional (which seems like all the time in experimental physics!). In science there is also the issue of "knowing what's going on" inside the software if you're ever going to trust the data that comes out of it. And we shouldn't ignore the educational benefit (and all-around fun) of being able to get into code and modify it. Science is about learning (in particular for students; but tinkering is also crucial for established scientists!).
Better yet, ask the manufacturers if they would be willing to bet money (let's say equal to the value of the company) on a simple test: 100 people will be evaluated with your machine; 50 of them will be lying, 50 will not; your machine must score 95% or better.
Chances are they wouldn't take the bet because they know damn well that their machine is actually no better than random.
I also find it funny, and sad, that a Swedish entity caved so easily to a legal threat from outside the country (and from outside the country's legal system).
To be clear: the researchers are Swedish, but the publisher which caved to the legal threat was in the UK (Equinox). From TFA:
Your point remains: it's sad that a UK publisher caved so easily to what appears to be a rather baseless accusation. (The article isn't libelous; merely factual.) Luckily the Swedish researchers are doing a good job distributing the information anyways.
I agree with you: having this kind of 2.5D experience is neat but not particularly useful.
But I wonder if this software could be adapted to do something else... One of the things that most people dislike about webcam-conferencing is that the other person is never looking "at" you. They are looking on their screen at an image of you, so they are not looking directly at their camera, and so on your end they seem to be looking away from you. (And they see you looking away from them, too.)
While this may seem trivial, it is actually a significant roadblock to inter-person tele-communication. People rely on body language and eye contact to establish each other's moods, to really "connect". Webcam-conferencing forces us to violate social conventions (like looking into people's eyes), which can be anywhere from subconsciously bothersome, to somewhat distracting, or even perceived as insulting.
So what I would like is a multi-camera system that uses similar kinds of interpolation to rebuild the image of the person so that they are looking directly at the camera. So if I put one webcam on either side of my screen, they can combine their images to create a shifted image where I am looking directly at the viewer on the other end.
Though it is a rather small and subtle addition to tele-conferencing, I believe it would have a bigger impact than what TFA seems to be showing. I think it would make the interaction "more real."
In the 2007 holiday season ... the [G1G1] program took in $37 million. This past season, the foundation partnered with Amazon to sell the laptops and increased its advertising and marketing efforts substantially--to two or three times what they were in 2007, or close to $20 million, virtually all of it pro bono. Yet, sales fell off a cliff, coming in at about $2.5 million. Negroponte attributes "almost all" of the falloff to the poor economy, though others have theorized that the computers themselves had lost their appeal.
The fact that the second G1G1 failed despite significant marketing to the public-at-large, whereas the first G1G1 succeeded using only word-of-mouth and grass-roots marketing is quite telling. I'm sure there are many reasons (including the economy), but I believe the shift in values of the OLPC organization was a significant effect. I was super-keen to participate in the first G1G1 program: both because I felt I was helping an organization aligned with my ideals (free distribution of knowledge; free software, etc.) and because I felt that I was buying-in to a vibrant community (because all kinds of hackers and kids would be programming fun stuff for the platform).
But then I felt let-down by the changes in OLPC. The switch in emphasis (including the shift to Windows) meant that many enthusiasts and volunteers lost interest. And this devalued the whole platform to many people, since it seemed like the community was disappearing (or least fracturing and changing). So I stopped 'spreading the word', advocating for them, and didn't participate in the second G1G1. I'm sure many others felt as I did.
Obviously 1st-world enthusiasts and hackers are not the target audience for the XO. And yet I believe they were quite important in building and supporting the platform ($37 million from the first G1G1 is quite impressive), and that by neglecting that community OLPC has lost some of its most useful supporters. (Then again, I could be totally wrong; wouldn't be the first time someone over-estimated the influence they had on a particular sequence of events.)
Wafers are usually circular (since they are sliced off a cylindrical ingot), so the calculation would actually be:
( pi*(15cm/2)^2 )/150000 = 0.0012 = 0.12 mm^2
Which is slightly smaller. But this means that each LED is roughly 0.3 mm in size, which is about the size of any LED I've ever encountered.
I presume a real lightbulb would require multiple LEDs bundled together somehow. Which is actually cool, because it would allow for more interesting bulb shapes, and should allow for dimming (by controlling how many LEDs are lit). Of course it also means that the real cost of a bulb is higher than a single LED. But even if a bulb needs 100 LEDs, if the price quoted in the summary is correct,* bulbs will be very cheap.
(* The price quoted in the summary is probably not correct. The cost of the wafer doesn't include the manufacturing costs or the costs of the materials you need to deposit onto it.)
Simple solution...go buy the CD.
Doesn't address the issue of false positives, due process, and abuses of the system (it becomes trivial to harm someone by implicating them if there isn't a robust due process).
1. If you're downloading music for free because it's not worth the money being asked for it, then you're either listening to the crappy music and/or not hunting down the best prices for your CDs.
The interesting thing is that people have to put so much effort into finding the music they want at a price they consider reasonable in a format that works for them. Because it takes so much effort ("hunting down" and so forth), people opt for the path of lesser resistance: torrents provide the most immediate access, the best catalog, high-quality, no DRM or other restrictions, etc. This is not an argument that legitimizes unsanctioned distribution... but it does help explain why people download free copies. It is not just the "free" part that entices them; it is the overall user experience that is better. People (or at least some people) would be willing to pay if only the for-pay user experience were better (e.g. unlimited high-quality downloads from an unrestricted broad catalog for a single monthly fee).
2. Paying £10 for a classic album that might well stay with you for 50+ years of your life seems pretty good value for me.
That's good for you. But it seems that many consumers do not agree. Again, this isn't a defense for their actions... but it does highlight an unsatisfied market segment.
3. Don't equate hoarding music to loving music - there's a big difference & the former is usually done by young males with small penises out to impress girls with 20,000 tracks on their iWanks^H^H^H^H^HPods.
Troll much?
7. As a regular CD buyer, how the *HELL* do you think I feel subsidising you people with your *FREE* music collections?
You really think CDs would be cheaper if no one downloaded the music for free? That doesn't make sense. A seller will always sell at the highest price that people will pay. In a competitive market the various sellers will compete with each other and a certain equilibrium price will be reached. In a market without competition the price will be as high as possible. Copyright law guarantees that each seller has a monopoly (at least on that particular song/album/band), so there is no competition per se. So having more buyers (or fewer illegitimate downloaders) won't affect the price in any way.
It's worth remembering that even with all the unsanctioned file-sharing happening, the music industry is still turning a profit (otherwise they would just stop selling CDs altogether). File-sharing may reduce their profits (although even that is debatable), but I don't see how it affects the price they charge you for CDs.
Again, I'm not trying to defend file-sharing per se (I personally only listen to Creative-Commons licensed music), but some of your arguments are flawed.
the Apache license is MUCH more free than the GPL
I find the debates about which OSS license is "most free" to be rather silly, because:
1. All the "major" OSS licenses (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.) are awesome, in my opinion. They all do great things and greatly help free software. So debating about which one is "the best" seems counter-productive because it obscures the fact that they are all good.
2. The debates usually have an implicit assumption that "freedom" is a one-dimensional axis, and we are trying to maximize the amount of "freedom." Occasionally someone will insightfully explain how freedom is more complex: one person's freedom may come at the expense of another; you need to distinguish between user freedom, developer freedom, distributor freedom; etc. Overall I prefer to think of "freedom" as being multi-dimensional.* A particular license may maximize along one freedom-axis, while not being maximal along another freedom-axis. And there may not be any license which simultaneously maximizes along every axis. Hence no such thing as the "most free" license. (But there may still be ways to rank things; e.g. most proprietary licenses are less free along every axis.) In other words (and you would think this would be obvious): the "best" license depends very much on the particular situation and one's particular priorities.
(* I believe this multi-dimensionality applies to many "wavy-gravy" human concepts/principles/emotions. Too frequently we argue about things as if they were binary or 1-dimensional, when even a cursory analysis shows them to be more complex than that.)
Don't hold your breath.
Take a look at Slashdot's FAQ. Most of the entries haven't been updated in 8 years. For some of them it doesn't matter. For others, the answers don't make much sense. (Most written before things like article tagging and the firehose existed.)
In short, Slashdot evolves at a positively glacial speed. (Which has its advantages: it would be worse to try and implement every whizz-bang fad.) This is somewhat ironic for a site where articles are posted dozens of times a day, and comments are posted at a fantastic speed. Slashdot's content changes every second. It's format changes every decade.
It annoys me too.
But it can't be astroturfing. Or if it is an attempt to astroturf, it is very misguided. Because whenever those silly comments are trotted out, what eventually happens is we get a bunch of highly-moderated responses reiterating that MS is a convicted monopolist, describing their various illegal actions, and noting that other OS distributors (Apple, Ubuntu, etc.) are not similar. This makes the debate a little more boring/redundant than it would otherwise be--but it doesn't really help Microsoft's cause!
So it must just be people who are ignorant, or trolling... or MS needs to hire better astroturfers.
*sigh*
This tired argument is brought up every time a Microsoft anti-trust article is posted. The difference is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. It is not bundling a browser with your OS that is illegal--it is abusing your monopoly in one domain to hamper competition in another domain that is illegal.
Microsoft had/has a near-monopoly in the OS market. They were accused of abusing that monopoly to hamper competition in other markets (e.g. web browsers, media players). They were found guilty of those actions in multiple jurisdictions (US, EU, ...). That is why action is being taken against them.
If Apple were to do the same thing (abuse their monopoly in one market to hamper competition in another), they would be subject to the same laws. (And indeed the EU has launched antitrust probes into iTunes...)
Which is why the goal should be to force MS to allow re-bundling, not to force anyone to bundle multiple competing (and thereby redundant) products. Computer sellers should have the choice of shipping computers with Notepad and MediaPlayer, or jEdit and VLC, or Notepad and VLC, etc.
In principle they have this ability. But Microsoft has been accused of making this difficult, in both technical ways (IE deeply embedded in the OS; cannot be uninstalled) and in procedural ways (sellers don't get the advantageous pricing unless they agree to bundle MS software).
Again, in my opinion the focus should be on getting MS to remove the technical and procedural barriers for sellers and third-party products. Anything beyond that is just asking for inefficiency.
KDE bundles Konqueror. Gnome has Epiphany. There are on binaries for Windows for either of them.
FYI, Konqueror has been ported to Windows as part of the "KDE on Windows Project".
(Not that I'm arguing Konqueror should be bundled with Windows; I'm merely pointing out that it could be done.)
This guy's answers are hilarious. They only make sense in a universe where everything is inherently locked down, and your customers are idiots to be abused.
You don't really have to provide a "mechanism" if you just left the system open. If the files were non-DRM and the phone had an open interface (e.g. you plug in a USB cable and can browse/transfer files on it), then the transferring step is trivial.
Which, again, would be trivially easy with an open system. If the phone were open, I could download a track from Amazon and put it on my phone. So the only reason to use the MSN service is "because of lock-in."
And in response to the question:
Wow. Just... wow. That's impressive market research on their part. They are not sure how long people keep their cellphones. And they see no issue with requiring digital files to expire whenever the hardware does.
This overpriced and highly restricted product has a clear future ahead...
You're absolutely right.
Wikipedia is ranked higher because it is more linked throughout the web. But this is just another example where PageRank really is working: it's returning results that are most useful to the searcher.
For instance for "neutron" on Google, the first link is to Wikipedia. Britannica is nowhere on the first page. If you go directly to Britannica, they do indeed have an article on "neutron". However, it is a "premium topic" and keeps asking me to become a member. So when someone is searching for information about neutrons, what source is more useful: the one that immediately provides some information, with references; or the one that asks you to pay some money (or try the free trial...) in order to get full access, so that you can then figure out whether the information they have is useful or not... ?
The fact is that Wikipedia is more heavily linked because it is a more accessible, therefore more useful, source of information. Even if Britannica's content were superior, this would still be the case. The fact that Wikipedia is more expansive, more timely, and frequently more detailed/referenced than Britannica just makes the choice even clearer.
PageRank works. Wikipedia is overall a more useful source to the average web surfer, and thus deserves a much higher rank.
The same people who determine whether a given paragraph legitimately deserves to remain in a Wikipedia article: the community of volunteer contributors.
For better or worse, the people deciding what videos should be kept and which should be deleted will be those who are involved and passionate about Wikipedia. If you think Wikipedia is doing overall a good job so far, then presumably you expect them to make good decisions about what videos are worthwhile. If you think Wikipedia is overall doing a poor job, then presumably you expect them to make poor and/or capricious choices with respect to video.
the only way they're going to actually get a converter is if they get kicked in the pants sufficiently hard by, let's say, having their TV stations go dark.
Honest question here: is the plan actually to have the stations go completely dark at the switchover date?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have those channels broadcast a continuously looped message that explains in detail how to switch over to digital TV? The message could be maintained for a month, say, after which time the channels would truly go dark to free up the bandwidth. Otherwise people who were not paying much attention will just think their TV is broken.
Even better would be a multi-stage approach; starting with occasional advisory ads and text-overlays (which I guess they are doing now?), then have every commercial replaced with an advisory, then have a perpetual "this channel will stop functioning soon!" overlay on the channel, then a continually looped message explaining the switchover, and finally the channels go dark.
I know that they "shouldn't have to" beat people over the head with this information--but the fact is that many people are probably still not aware that the switchover is going to happen, and could probably use some more insistent messages.
To be fair, there is a difference between a company and a government. A company inherently operates in a particular sector. They have a fairly well-defined scope so it's reasonably easy to pick out who their direct competitors are, who their partners are, and what companies they have no particular link to.
High-level government officials and teams, however, inherently have some level of influence over every imaginable sector/industry. Which means that the chance of a conflict-of-interest arising becomes much higher (if you pick a random economic sector, and you have a group of 10 people, there's a good chance that one of those people will gain or lose in some way depending on decisions made; whether it be because of owning stock, having a family member employed by that industry, etc.).
That having been said, government officials should absolutely be held to a very high standard on conflict-of-interest cases. The appropriate action here would be for that particular Obama team member to recuse himself from any decision-making related to that particular issue. He can remain active in other aspects of planning, but should absolutely not touch anything related to this conflict-of-interest (and the planning/execution should be done in a transparent way so that the public can be confident that he wasn't involved).
How is it that light has momentum when it has no mass?
For the same reason that speeds don't strictly add up linearly: relativity. In Newtonian mechanics, momentum is p = m*v where m is the mass and v is the velocity. But when you take relativity into account, the proper definition is actually p = gamma*m*v. For a photon, you might think m = 0 would mean p = 0, but when v=c (the speed of light), gamma = 1/0. So you have an equation p = c*0/0. Obviously something is wrong, and in a careful analysis it turns out that for massless objects (which travel at c) p = E/c (where E is total energy, and c is speed of light).
So, basically the momentum of massless particles arises from taking into account relativity. The fact that we can actually measure photon pressure is an interesting proof that the math "works."
1 - dressed like a wierdo. Sorry Emo/Goth is not cool.. It's as bad as dressing in a star trek shirt.
Dressing is all about projecting an image and fitting into a community. Emo/Goth clothing is most definitely cool... to other Emo/Goth people, that is. So if you're trying to interact with Emo/Goth people, then it may be an appropriate choice of clothing (assuming you genuinely like it yourself and are not a "poseur"). If you're tying to impress businesspeople, then business attire is the appropriate choice. Not caring at all about your clothes (e.g. sloppy T-shirt and jogging pants) probably won't impress anyone.
The key is to know what image you're trying to project, and to dress appropriately (given the crowd, context, and your intentions).
5 - Nerdy = dorky and repellant. the second you mention you're a top notch national MTG player they will ask to go to the bathroom and never come back. Magic the Gathering is NOT COOL, nor any of your really nerdy activities.
I don't really agree. Magic the Gathering is not inherently more cool or less cool than college football. I don't think it's necessary to hide your interests, or invent "cooler" ones. What matters is point #2: social tact. A stereotypical nerd is not annoying because he talks about D&D. He's annoying because he talks about D&D endlessly, when no one else cares. The same is true of a stereotypical jock who talks about sports even when everyone around him is bored. Someone with proper social tact will tell interesting (but brief!) stories, ask people about their interests, find common ground, etc.
There is no need to lie to people about your interests. I know plenty of geeks who are honest about their interests (which include linux, science, role-playing, etc.) but have no trouble interacting socially or getting dates. The key is to not talk about your pet fixation when no one else cares (regardless of what your personal fixation happens to be).
Indeed. When you get down to minimalist, iconic designs, at favicon resolution, there is only so much parameter space. One of those links claims:
Give me a break! Newsflash: any icon can be conceptually transformed into any other icon in a finite number of image-manipulation steps. Like: "Slashdot favicon + Convert to B&W + Duplicate the slash 3 times + flip two of the slashes -> Wikipedia's favicon" ... OMG! Wikipedia is stealing ideas from Slashdot!
The summary is so patently ridiculous that I really have to wonder if it was submitted as a joke or is an attempt to troll Slashdot. Google's new favicon has a "g" and 4 primary colors. It bears some resemblance to other 4-primary-color emblems (of which there are thousands). Get over it.
companies are getting weary of partnering with Google and dealing with Google's bottomless desire for control.
Whereas Microsoft is renowned for their open and transparent processes, their huge efforts towards interoperability and against lock-in, and their thorough willingness to cede control over to others when asked nicely ... ??
Both Google and Microsoft (and every other company, really) have a bottomless desire for control. And really Verizon doesn't care about how much control Google or Microsoft may have over search; except to the extent that this affects their bottom line. So, yes, Microsoft must have offered them a better deal.
Weight is at a premium in an airplane and batteries are quite heavy compared to the energy they have stored.
It's even worse than that. Even if a battery had the same energy density (by weight) as fuel, it would still be worse because the batteries do not get lighter over the course of the flight, so the aircraft must constantly expend energy to carry that mass. By burning fuel you lighten your load over the course of the flight which makes flying progressively cheaper.
Also, many aircraft can't (safely) land with a full tank of fuel. They are designed such that the landing weight will be lower (due to burning fuel) than the takeoff weight. This is why planes making emergency landings sometimes need to dump fuel.
Indeed.
The system will be optional (not sure if that means opt-in or opt-out, though). But who would actually want this kind of thing? At best, the messages will be fairly relevant to the particular buyer (like TFA says, a "wine review" being delivered to a wine connoisseur)--but people already have plenty of ways to get that kind of information (web sites, magazines, etc.), and many of them work in cars (radio, podcasts, etc.).
At worst, it will be a barrage of spam, and everyone will opt-out. Most probably, the messages will be ads thinly veiled as relevant information (e.g. positive reviews of products from partnering companies), which people will ultimately become annoyed by.
I can't see this doing anything other than bothering customers.
The summary sorta implies that "The Long Tail" means that the unpopular stuff will be more popular. But that isn't the theory, and TFA does a decent job explaining it. "The Long Tail" instead means that if production and distribution costs are low enough, a whole variety of niche products suddenly become viable. Traditionally people could only buy one of the top-10 books (or DVDs or whatever), because stores couldn't afford to stock anything but the best-sellers. But things like Amazon allow them to "stock" just about everything: so a previously untapped market appears, with stores catering to all of these niche buyers. The idea is that the potential in the long tail is massive: nothing in it is particularly popular or sells that many copies, but in aggregate it can be huge (maybe even bigger than the "best sellers"). This model has clearly worked for places like Amazon. Another stereotypical example is customized shoes or clothing; whereas traditionally you could only buy the shirts you saw at the local store, with the Internet you can buy all kinds of more niche styles. In fact, you can buy shirts that have user-chosen slogans or logos. The plethora of online stores that offer these services, or which capitalize on short-lived Internet memes by selling associated clothing, shows that this idea has merit.
The article notes that despite the long tail, we still have blockbusters. This isn't really in conflict with the theory of the long tail. Indeed the theory mostly talks about the (previously untapped) potential of the long tail... but blockbusters will always exist. TFA says that despite niche markets, most of the sales, and most of the money, still comes from the best-sellers or the blockbusters.
I think (part of) the explanation for this is from free content. I think that anyone trying to capitalize on the long tail will have a hard time competing with amateurs, enthusiasts, and free information. For mainstream content (e.g. a generic action movie), amateurs won't be able to compete with the budget and brand recognition of established studios. But for niche interests, amateurs will often be producing the "best content" and giving it away for free, making it impossible for commercial interests to capitalize on it. Think about the variety of niche blogs, forums, wikibooks, YouTube channels, creative commons music or books, and so forth.
So I would say that the long tail exists, and is healthy... but is harder to monetize than some people may have thought. The fact is that niche interests exist, but those niche communities are often finding that they can satisfy their needs themselves, leaving no room for commercial entities to capitalize.