I'm as excited as the next./er about new display technology.
However, having just gotten RGB-AA text with Linux/Mozilla working on my laptop, I'd be reluctant to move to any technology with lower resolution. Since my 1024x768 display is now effectively 3072x768 for text aliasing, I'll either stick with LCD or wait until other technologies reach a high native resolution.
Current CRT screens do not have individually addressed (digital) pixels and OLED displays are slated to have full color pixels, something which has it's own distinct advantages (no more moire or other artifacts). A 200+ dpi OLED or thin CRT would be fantastic!
What does it matter whether evolution in humans is 'over' or not?
Our technology is moving us about a million times faster than evolution, or even 'genetically engineering augmented' evolution ever will.
Whether it's pure machine intelligence, machine animal hybrid intelligence, or machine augmented human intelligence, the ramifications of inevitable super-intelligence will make biological evolution moot.
IANAL, but there must be more to consumer 'benefit' that simply tomorrow's retail prices.
What good does it do for consumers to pay lower prices tomorrow, but inflated monopoly or collusion prices 5 years from now become some anti-trust decision deemed that lower prices tomorrow was in the 'consumer interest'.
What good does it do for consumers to pay lower prices tomorrow because of some anti-trust decision when future innovations that could could create evolutionarily or revolutionarily better products are stifled by that decision?
The trick is, consumer retail prices are easy to measure, and and therefore make for more straightforward cases.
Lawyers like easy cases.
Read this before you say "Hype" or "Scooter".
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
It's been posted here once already, but it's not being modded up fast enough.
For you slashdot moderators, here's what you've wanted to hear:
"In every Segway there are 10 microprocessors cranking out three PCs' worth of juice. Also a cluster of aviation-grade gyros, an accelerometer, a bevy of sensors, two batteries and software so sophisticated it puts Microsoft to shame."
Yes, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before someone hacks the Segway to run LINUX. Hopefully it won't cause any traffic fatalities.
What I really want to see is a pool of hireable Segaways (like a Taxi) connected to a network, that autopilot themselves to your GPS-mobile-phone determined location. *THAT* will revolutionize city transportation.
I fly regularly between Australia and the US. I would gladly extend the duration of the already long trip (14 hours) for the trade offs:
o Environmentally Friendly (by a large degree)
o Quieter
With longer fight times and lower fuel carrying requirements, hopefully these new planes would become more passenger friendly as well (no more deep vein thrombosis). If there's a bar and a free Internet connection, I have no problem spending 24 hours on a plane!
I went looking yesterday for PCMCIA RAM. I could find none!
My laptop is limited to 192 MB RAM, but otherwise very satisfactory. A PCMCIA RAM disk (say 512 MB or 1 GB) would greatly improve performance under loaded RAM conditions if used for the swap file, print spooler, etc.
Are any manufacturers listening?? There's a market out there for cheap solid state storage!
Mozilla nighly builds are better!
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
Recent fixes landed to speed loading time and new window drawing. For example, on my PII/366 192MB, a new message compose window takes NS6.1 4.5 seconds to draw and place the cursor in the "To:" field after striking ^M, 2001-08-07 nightly takes only 2.1 seconds.
Alas, the bloated footprint is no better, but fortunately memory leak bugs are coming in fast and furious now.
Incidentily, the stored energy in fossil fuels come from the sun between millions and billions of years ago.
The fuel cell that runs off of mineral natural gas represents:
fossil fuel storage --> efficient fuel cell conversion --> usage + less waste carbon in atmosphere
An infrastructure of micropower like this can easily be converted to:
solar --> chemical storage (H2, methane) --> efficient fuel cell conversion --> usage + no waste carbon in atmosphere
Chemical storage will always be necessary when and where solar collection is not feasible (e.g. when the sun isn't shining 1/2 the time, in transport, etc.)
Any way you look at it, fuel cells are part of the future of energy because they convert stored chemical energy to electricity very efficiently.
Disclaimer: I work for OpenTV, so this is a bit of a plug, but in this message I'm not speaking for my employer.
The Dish Network should be offering interactive content using OpenTV by the end of the year. AFAIK, OpenTV will be automatically downloaded into the flash memory of all 4700 and better Boxes. The services will be free (unlike WebTV). I don't have any details on which services will be available, but stay tuned for more info.
I got DirecTV over two years ago and am mostly happy with it. I'll probably switch to Dish when OpenTV is available for it. It's about time I upgrade to a box with Dolby Digital sound. I'm hoping for HDTV reception (via off-air and satellite) on a Dish box by the time I'm looking to upgrade. The Dish Network seems to be in the lead where technology, amount of content and local content is concerned.
Mabye Cook's comments are indicitive of why Bay went down the tubes. I didn't replace an old Bay switch with $70k worth of 3com stuff for no reason. Bay just didn't have what I was looking for.
I'm really worried that the big network companies have incompatible implementations of too many things (like routing protocols, VPNs, VOIP, etc.). I've got [mostly] unmanaged Cisco, 3com and Nortel gear because I bought the best gear for the job, rather than sticking with one brand. What happens when I want to do IP telephony in a managed network?
I think the networking companies are even more afraid of standards than Microsoft. I hope they get with the program. I really don't want to be forced to buy compatible network equipment exclusively from startup companies making equipment with Linux. I want to be able to use Linux where it makes the most sense and some other vendor's equipment where it makes the most sense.
DVD/HDTV aspect ratio agreement has been worked out, sort of. Many films are released in anamorphic format which squeezes the picture horizontally on the recording (the technique has been used since the early days of film) then uncompresses it on screen. DVD resolution is roughly comparable to a stretched wide version of SDTV 480i (the very low end of the 18 DTV/HDTV formats). It will probably be a few years before HD-DVD (720p or 1080i, 16x9 native) comes around.
Expect to wait, and to pay for HD-DVD. Today, not all studios release DVDs in anamorphic format. Most studios play all sorts of games with the video, audio and "special edition" extras to get you to buy their movies several times. If, say, you collect movies from 1995 - 2005, you might end up with all of these copies of the same film in your collection: 1 LD, special edition LD, 1 DVD, 1 special edition DVD, 1 HD-DVD, 1 special edition HD-DVD, ad infinitum.
The whole problem of paying over and over and waiting for format improvements because the industry wants to saturate the market with old formats before releasing new ones will not be addressed until the industry addresses licensing. For any entertainment information, you should be able to purchase a license where the price is based on time of license and quality as compared to the original. Upgrades for either of the two or new media (for as long as media is around) should be incremental (f.e. I might buy a lifetime license for Star Wars in the full 70 mm film quality and pay only incrementally for the HD-DVD media and later to download the 2.5 TB lossless compression dump of the 70 mm film).
I've decided to bite the bullet on DVD. The quality is so much better than today's DTV (digital cable, satellite), VHS or LD. If you shop right, DVDs can be relatively cheap. The web sites that sell DVDs have gotten much better in the past few months about specifying format specifics like anamorphic and 5.1 audio. When DVD players with component output are available (for progressive scan output-- you can get this today with a PC DVD and the correct video card) and connected to an HDTV monitor with upconverting (convert 480p to 720p or 1080i) the picture will be fantastic. There are other workarounds today (like line doublers), but they're kludgy and expensive.
"I have been trying to make sure that the DVD is the ultimate repository of the Star Wars saga."
Come on. The DVD format is great compared to consumer predecessors, but it could hardly be used as the "ultimate repository" for modern 70 mm film and Lucas knows it. There must be other motives. What could they be other than the obvious greed & politics?
If you've got an idiot non-technical boss telling you what technology to use, get another job!
There are plenty if IT jobs where you don't have to put up with this BS. There's no excuse for whining about something so easily fixed. Someday, the corporate world will recognize that they need to trust good it professionals, rather than hiring the same old point-click-and-reboot joe losers.
As others have pointed out, it's a bit pricey at $200US, but my wrists wouldn't survive without it.
The ability to touch type is a requirement for this keyboard. It took me about two weeks to get adjusted to using it. But now my typing is about 20% faster and with much less strain. If I spend more than 15 minutes on regular keyboard I can feel the strain in my wrists.
I use samba at work on a Sun U4000 on 1000SX backbone to serve 150 PCs, both general users and software developers. It has no problems handling the load, file locking, file based databases, MS Development tool projects, etc. It works great for sharing the same files via NFS.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, in Aussie slang, "to root" == "to fuck".
Nationalize MSFT. Problem solved.
I'm as excited as the next ./er about new display technology.
However, having just gotten RGB-AA text with Linux/Mozilla working on my laptop, I'd be reluctant to move to any technology with lower resolution. Since my 1024x768 display is now effectively 3072x768 for text aliasing, I'll either stick with LCD or wait until other technologies reach a high native resolution.
Current CRT screens do not have individually addressed (digital) pixels and OLED displays are slated to have full color pixels, something which has it's own distinct advantages (no more moire or other artifacts). A 200+ dpi OLED or thin CRT would be fantastic!
What does it matter whether evolution in humans is 'over' or not?
Our technology is moving us about a million times faster than evolution, or even 'genetically engineering augmented' evolution ever will.
Whether it's pure machine intelligence, machine animal hybrid intelligence, or machine augmented human intelligence, the ramifications of inevitable super-intelligence will make biological evolution moot.
IANAL, but there must be more to consumer 'benefit' that simply tomorrow's retail prices.
What good does it do for consumers to pay lower prices tomorrow, but inflated monopoly or collusion prices 5 years from now become some anti-trust decision deemed that lower prices tomorrow was in the 'consumer interest'.
What good does it do for consumers to pay lower prices tomorrow because of some anti-trust decision when future innovations that could could create evolutionarily or revolutionarily better products are stifled by that decision?
The trick is, consumer retail prices are easy to measure, and and therefore make for more straightforward cases.
Lawyers like easy cases.
There's an excellent article here.
It's been posted here once already, but it's not being modded up fast enough.
For you slashdot moderators, here's what you've wanted to hear:
Yes, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before someone hacks the Segway to run LINUX. Hopefully it won't cause any traffic fatalities.
What I really want to see is a pool of hireable Segaways (like a Taxi) connected to a network, that autopilot themselves to your GPS-mobile-phone determined location. *THAT* will revolutionize city transportation.
This is Fantastic!
I fly regularly between Australia and the US. I would gladly extend the duration of the already long trip (14 hours) for the trade offs:
o Environmentally Friendly (by a large degree)
o Quieter
With longer fight times and lower fuel carrying requirements, hopefully these new planes would become more passenger friendly as well (no more deep vein thrombosis). If there's a bar and a free Internet connection, I have no problem spending 24 hours on a plane!
I went looking yesterday for PCMCIA RAM. I could find none!
My laptop is limited to 192 MB RAM, but otherwise very satisfactory. A PCMCIA RAM disk (say 512 MB or 1 GB) would greatly improve performance under loaded RAM conditions if used for the swap file, print spooler, etc.
Are any manufacturers listening?? There's a market out there for cheap solid state storage!
Recent fixes landed to speed loading time and new window drawing. For example, on my PII/366 192MB, a new message compose window takes NS6.1 4.5 seconds to draw and place the cursor in the "To:" field after striking ^M, 2001-08-07 nightly takes only 2.1 seconds.
Alas, the bloated footprint is no better, but fortunately memory leak bugs are coming in fast and furious now.
The ideal is:
solar --> [ electricity --> ] and/or [ storage --> efficient conversion to electricty --> ] efficient usage
Someday 99+% of all human generated energy will happen this way.
Today we have:
fossil fuel storage --> inefficient combustion conversion --> inefficient usage + waste carbon in atmosphere
Incidentily, the stored energy in fossil fuels come from the sun between millions and billions of years ago.
The fuel cell that runs off of mineral natural gas represents:
fossil fuel storage --> efficient fuel cell conversion --> usage + less waste carbon in atmosphere
An infrastructure of micropower like this can easily be converted to:
solar --> chemical storage (H2, methane) --> efficient fuel cell conversion --> usage + no waste carbon in atmosphere
Chemical storage will always be necessary when and where solar collection is not feasible (e.g. when the sun isn't shining 1/2 the time, in transport, etc.)
Any way you look at it, fuel cells are part of the future of energy because they convert stored chemical energy to electricity very efficiently.
Nice Script. However, I doubt that using a batch file is a Microsoft approved method.
Microsoft spokesperson Dan Small once said "Yeah, but the scripting is almost a failing of Unix, not a virtue".
DEC Multias also make great little firewalls. There are usually a few for sale at any give time on ebay.
Disclaimer: I work for OpenTV, so this is a bit of a plug, but in this message I'm not speaking for my employer.
The Dish Network should be offering interactive content using OpenTV by the end of the year. AFAIK, OpenTV will be automatically downloaded into the flash memory of all 4700 and better Boxes. The services will be free (unlike WebTV). I don't have any details on which services will be available, but stay tuned for more info.
I got DirecTV over two years ago and am mostly happy with it. I'll probably switch to Dish when OpenTV is available for it. It's about time I upgrade to a box with Dolby Digital sound. I'm hoping for HDTV reception (via off-air and satellite) on a Dish box by the time I'm looking to upgrade. The Dish Network seems to be in the lead where technology, amount of content and local content is concerned.
Mabye Cook's comments are indicitive of why Bay went down the tubes. I didn't replace an old Bay switch with $70k worth of 3com stuff for no reason. Bay just didn't have what I was looking for.
I'm really worried that the big network companies have incompatible implementations of too many things (like routing protocols, VPNs, VOIP, etc.). I've got [mostly] unmanaged Cisco, 3com and Nortel gear because I bought the best gear for the job, rather than sticking with one brand. What happens when I want to do IP telephony in a managed network?
I think the networking companies are even more afraid of standards than Microsoft. I hope they get with the program. I really don't want to be forced to buy compatible network equipment exclusively from startup companies making equipment with Linux. I want to be able to use Linux where it makes the most sense and some other vendor's equipment where it makes the most sense.
-dave
P.S. What's Cooks email address?
DVD/HDTV aspect ratio agreement has been worked out, sort of. Many films are released in anamorphic format which squeezes the picture horizontally on the recording (the technique has been used since the early days of film) then uncompresses it on screen. DVD resolution is roughly comparable to a stretched wide version of SDTV 480i (the very low end of the 18 DTV/HDTV formats). It will probably be a few years before HD-DVD (720p or 1080i, 16x9 native) comes around.
Expect to wait, and to pay for HD-DVD. Today, not all studios release DVDs in anamorphic format. Most studios play all sorts of games with the video, audio and "special edition" extras to get you to buy their movies several times. If, say, you collect movies from 1995 - 2005, you might end up with all of these copies of the same film in your collection: 1 LD, special edition LD, 1 DVD, 1 special edition DVD, 1 HD-DVD, 1 special edition HD-DVD, ad infinitum.
The whole problem of paying over and over and waiting for format improvements because the industry wants to saturate the market with old formats before releasing new ones will not be addressed until the industry addresses licensing. For any entertainment information, you should be able to purchase a license where the price is based on time of license and quality as compared to the original. Upgrades for either of the two or new media (for as long as media is around) should be incremental (f.e. I might buy a lifetime license for Star Wars in the full 70 mm film quality and pay only incrementally for the HD-DVD media and later to download the 2.5 TB lossless compression dump of the 70 mm film).
I've decided to bite the bullet on DVD. The quality is so much better than today's DTV (digital cable, satellite), VHS or LD. If you shop right, DVDs can be relatively cheap. The web sites that sell DVDs have gotten much better in the past few months about specifying format specifics like anamorphic and 5.1 audio. When DVD players with component output are available (for progressive scan output-- you can get this today with a PC DVD and the correct video card) and connected to an HDTV monitor with upconverting (convert 480p to 720p or 1080i) the picture will be fantastic. There are other workarounds today (like line doublers), but they're kludgy and expensive.
"I have been trying to make sure that the DVD is the ultimate repository of the Star Wars saga."
Come on. The DVD format is great compared to consumer predecessors, but it could hardly be used as the "ultimate repository" for modern 70 mm film and Lucas knows it. There must be other motives. What could they be other than the obvious greed & politics?
I sent messages to three journalists, asking them to investigate.
Stephen Shankland of c|net (stephens@cnet.com)
Andy Patrizio of CMPnet TechWeb (apatrizi@cmp.com)
David Berlind of ZDNet (david_berlind@zd.com)
ahem... sorry for the shouting.
If you've got an idiot non-technical boss telling you what technology to use, get another job!
There are plenty if IT jobs where you don't have to put up with this BS. There's no excuse for whining about something so easily fixed. Someday, the corporate world will recognize that they need to trust good it professionals, rather than hiring the same old point-click-and-reboot joe losers.
As others have pointed out, it's a bit pricey at $200US, but my wrists wouldn't survive without it.
The ability to touch type is a requirement for this keyboard. It took me about two weeks to get adjusted to using it. But now my typing is about 20% faster and with much less strain. If I spend more than 15 minutes on regular keyboard I can feel the strain in my wrists.
I use samba at work on a Sun U4000 on 1000SX backbone to serve 150 PCs, both general users and software developers. It has no problems handling the load, file locking, file based databases, MS Development tool projects, etc. It works great for sharing the same files via NFS.
We have no NT servers.