I think point and shoots are going away, or they'd be replaced by MILCs.
For those who need the high resolution (for printing or zooming in a lot) they'd be using DSLRs or the "MILC"s (whatever they are calling it nowadays) cams which are smaller because they don't have the mirror/SLR stuff, but use large sensors and have interchangeable lenses.
For those who don't (e.g. pics for PC screens) the newer smartphones are getting pretty good.
The "in-between" will thin out a lot. Why carry around a digital compact that's not much better than a phone camera for most purposes?
That said I've used Google Streetview as a "virtual tourist" before - to see various bridges around the world, Rio and the "Cristo Redentor" statue, compare Johannesburg with Cape Town, Kyoto, Tokyo, New York, etc...
It's definitely a far cry from being there, but it can be a good way of seeing the world beyond what photographers and film editors show you.
They offload most of the rasterization onto the host PC, have no job control features and are generally awful.
Nowadays most host PCs have enough hardware grunt to manage most rasterization needs. Even USB2.0 is good enough for home users[1].
It's a software problem, it doesn't have to be that crappy and so it's HP's fault:).
[1] 1200 dpi * 1200 dpi * 8.27 * 11.69 * 256 levels of grey = 140MB (if your printer can only do pure black or white 1200dpi dots then it's 17.5MB). Without compression and assuming 30MB/sec USB transfer rate that's about 4.6 seconds to transfer a page to the printer. Which is about 12 to 13 pages per minute.
But: 1) most people don't live forever. 2) I suggest (without a shred of evidence;) ) that many of those poor people buying those tickets have a higher chance of becoming super rich multi-millionaires if they bought lottery ticket than if they didn't and tried to work their way into becoming super rich instead.
How many super rich millionaires are there who started out as poor as them but _average_ in other respects - e.g. discipline, intelligence, business acumen, initiative, etc?
I know a number of hardworking poor people who I can bet are never going to be super rich multimillionaires in their lifetime. They didn't win the genetic lottery, nor the "born rich" lottery. So if they bought a lottery ticket, their odds just go up. Not by much of course, but they might even have a higher chance of becoming a rich multimillionaire than I do...
There's no need to buy the crap. Instead, buy the competent products that AMD still releases.
Have you seen how much AMD is bleeding and the strategy screw-ups they did?
Those fanboys better put their money where their mouth is. Coz it's going to take more than the ATI 4xxx series graphics card I have in my PC to save AMD;).
I personally think the concept of near "compulsory" tipping as practiced by restaurants in some countries is messed up.
At work I don't get tipped for just doing my job, and if my company's customers gave me money directly for just doing my job, or for doing my job differently/better than normal, that's called corruption or just plain wrong. Heck at some places you're not allowed to accept gifts/$$$ above a certain value (usually low, sometimes even _zero_) from customers.
In theory if your employer isn't paying you enough to do your job, you should find another employer or another job. But in practice the "tipping" system is not likely to change in those countries...
Regarding the lotteries, think about it from this POV:
The odds of the typically poor people who buy lottery tickets becoming super rich multimillionaires if they didn't buy lottery tickets but instead tried other ways, is probably lower than if they did buy lottery tickets:).
I generally don't buy lottery tickets[1], and I think the odds of me becoming one of those super multimillionaires are practically zero.
Yes there are some poor people who become multimillionaires through hard work and some luck. But there many millions who wouldn't. Believe me, there are lots of hardworking poor people. Some even try to start businesses and unfortunately don't succeed. They don't go around selling books titled "How I kept trying, failing and somehow still never succeeded"[2].
That said, yes you can probably be a millionaire if you didn't start off too low and didn't screw up too badly. But you still won't be "I won the lottery" rich.
[1] Once in long while I buy them when the jackpot has accumulated (due to nobody winning) enough that if you actually could buy all of the possible numbers, you'd still make money (assuming not too many bought the winning numbers;) ). When this happens it's called investment not gambling;).
[2] By the way, I'm sure you've seen those books where one rich guy says he succeeded by not giving up. Then you have another book where a rich guy says he succeeded by knowing when to quit. Then you have another rich guy saying he succeeded by starting many different businesses at the same time and closing down the ones that don't succeed. Then you have yet another rich guy saying he succeeded by focusing on one thing... Another rich guy says "buy property", but if you bought the wrong property < 2008, you'd now be stuck paying off a loan that's a lot more than your property. So go figure.
The reason why Intel can do this "unlock code" for extra _performance_ is because they're so far ahead of AMD that they can actually sell CPUs clocked slower than they can run. If AMD releases a similar priced CPU that's 10% faster, Intel can then price the "unlock code" to whatever they need to compete with AMD. Could even be free - they've already made money from the first sale.
If AMD's CPUs were more competitive, Intel would have to sell most of their CPUs at the fastest speeds they can run. They wouldn't have enough room to play such games.
Too many? I don't think so. And please stop trying to convince the AMD fanboys that AMD is producing crap.
Why? 1) We need AMD alive and kicking to at least give Intel some competition (look at what has happened now that AMD is weak - Intel started having "unlock codes" to unlock more performance/features for their processors ). 2) So someone needs to buy the current batch of AMD crap[1] to keep AMD alive till they come up with something better. 3) I'd rather not buy AMD's current crap. It is inferior for most popular desktop and server tasks. 4) Therefore we need as many AMD fanboys as possible to continue thinking that AMD is great and buying lots of AMD crap.
[1] Yes I know AMD produced better stuff than Intel some years ago. However the latest CPUs ironically appear to be AMD's Prescott Edition CPUs.
Well - to take the "synthetic happiness is just as good" thing to an extreme, heroin users are some of the happiest people I can imagine, when they are fixing.
Yeah, that's another reason why you can't assume that more people would willingly choose a situation where they would be happiest. They might not consider that situation desirable even if they would objectively by brain scans etc be very happy. In some scenarios their brains/minds might be "faulty" but ridiculously happy;).
So "the pursuit of happiness" while a good objective to keep in mind, probably should not be the highest priority for the individual nor the species as a whole.
I see the TED videos differently. To me it's unfair to say they are glossing over the fine print when they are supposed to be giving short presentations. They claim that despite what people and popular convention expects, more choice doesn't always bring happiness; and that people often aren't very good at knowing what would make them happier. There appears to be plenty of everyday evidence that they are right. So any glossing over of fine print does not affect their claims.
To me the TED videos just support the conclusion that happiness should not be our ultimate goal.
But if we accept that and set our goals accordingly, then we also have to accept that we may not be as happy...
We might still be content and at peace with our choice. We may even experience a deeper joy during the "downs" than abundant but shallow happiness.
Knowing that you are doing the right thing despite being or even it resulting in a unhappy crappy situation can often make a huge difference. Arguably better than being happy while knowing deep down you're wasting your life by most reasonable measures.
As for human survival, given our limited knowledge, and assuming a purely secular point of view (no heaven, afterlife, reincarnation etc), then logically long-term human survival would depend on space exploration. Because after a while despite our best efforts, the Sun will make the earth uninhabitable. To survive we would have to be elsewhere. Based on our current knowledge, the only way we can be elsewhere is if we had better space tech. We may not have good enough tech to go to other solar systems. but hopefully we would have developed the ability to establish space colonies and move them to more habitable regions in our solar system. Then we will have time to live and working on the next long term problem - how to grow/survive beyond the solar system (in both space and time).
The ultimate long term problem of course might be what to do about the death of the universe, but first things first;).
What was the last big name movie you saw that came out of China (that wasn't a US/EU movie that was copied there, lol)?
So I gave you examples. Those movies and their stars are big names in their markets.
They are certainly not big names in the English language markets, any more than the French, Japanese, Indian movies and stars are big names in the English language markets.
These movies are about the equivalent of a high school production.
Show me a high school production equivalent to Red Cliff. I haven't seen many high school productions with big name actors and actresses, 1500 extras, and various.
Just because your high school production costs a few million to make, doesn't make it equivalent to Red Cliff.
Just because people would actually be happier in a certain situation as compared to another situation, does not mean they would willingly choose to be in the happier situation.
So? They made money right? They were big name movies with big name stars. Are you saying Hollywood is inefficient or greedy?
Red Cliff sure didn't look like a small movie to me. I don't see it as significantly inferior to a typical Hollywood blockbuster.
If Hollywood made fewer stupid flops they would survive even if the successes were smaller. So if you're implying that if things change the way I want them, Hollywood wouldn't be able to survive, I don't really see that as such a great loss.
Maybe he meant getting the politicians into orbit?
That might help;).
To quote myself from some years ago:
Start a TV reality show (or mock one) called "Vote Them Off The Planet".
Multiple categories - live contestants, politicians, celebrities, etc. One way and return. So you could have a mock vote to vote Obama or Bush off the planet- one way or return.
You could even have it for real where they could choose not to go (or choose to pay for the return trip if they "won" the one-way;) ).
And:
The voters pay for the tickets by voting (SMS etc).
And depending on the categories, either the candidates or someone else presents the case for why the candidates should win.
For example:
Proposer #1: "I propose George Bush, 'one way', since he's so keen on going to the Moon, we should send him and it would be a net benefit to the world".
If coriolis forces are the problem it doesn't have to be big. It just has to be long - e.g. two masses connected by tethers.
It might have to be big for the radiation shielding. Which might be mostly water - you're going to need lots of water anyway[1], so might as well use it for shielding.
[1] People are about 70% water, so just by that the amount of water puts a limit to the max number of humans you can have (assuming the average body mass does not change).
In Taiwan it's also common to buy and snack on cherry tomatoes on skewers. Not sure if they're all sweetened or something. Anyway Google is getting more useless nowadays so I can't give better links/references:).
Gyro on pizza sounds good with potential for further "interesting customizations":) Sliced sausages on pizza sounds normal to me, unless you mean they're not slicing the wieners and putting them whole on the pizza. Pineapple and cooked ham can be nice as long as the pineapple is drained properly of excess liquid before it is put on the pizza (before baking/cooking the pizza)- otherwise the pizza ends up too soggy.
Slashdot Mirror
I think point and shoots are going away, or they'd be replaced by MILCs.
For those who need the high resolution (for printing or zooming in a lot) they'd be using DSLRs or the "MILC"s (whatever they are calling it nowadays) cams which are smaller because they don't have the mirror/SLR stuff, but use large sensors and have interchangeable lenses.
For those who don't (e.g. pics for PC screens) the newer smartphones are getting pretty good.
The "in-between" will thin out a lot. Why carry around a digital compact that's not much better than a phone camera for most purposes?
10TB is not much if you're a HD video creator, you'd need about 20 to 100GB per hour of video depending on what tech/format you use.
You won't use very high compression because you need to edit the stuff, has to be quick enough and not lose too much quality.
And you'd want higher bandwidth and availability, so you'd probably use RAID.
Yeah. Too smooth.
That said I've used Google Streetview as a "virtual tourist" before - to see various bridges around the world, Rio and the "Cristo Redentor" statue, compare Johannesburg with Cape Town, Kyoto, Tokyo, New York, etc...
It's definitely a far cry from being there, but it can be a good way of seeing the world beyond what photographers and film editors show you.
Does that mean you would have to take off the contact lens in order to see other stuff clearly (e.g. stuff not on the display)?
Otherwise you'd then have to wait for tech that can either focus for both or switch between display and "real world" (maybe even rapidly).
You aren't going to get 30 MB/sec from the protocol.
Why not? I get 30MB/sec when copying stuff to/from a USB HDD.
It's never going to hit the theoretical 60MB/sec (480Mbps), but I'm certainly not the only one who has managed to get 30MB/sec from a USB interface.
See the USB drives near the bottom:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/external-hard-drive-charts/Maximum-Read-Transfer-Rate,696.html
They offload most of the rasterization onto the host PC, have no job control features and are generally awful.
Nowadays most host PCs have enough hardware grunt to manage most rasterization needs. Even USB2.0 is good enough for home users[1].
It's a software problem, it doesn't have to be that crappy and so it's HP's fault :).
[1] 1200 dpi * 1200 dpi * 8.27 * 11.69 * 256 levels of grey = 140MB (if your printer can only do pure black or white 1200dpi dots then it's 17.5MB). Without compression and assuming 30MB/sec USB transfer rate that's about 4.6 seconds to transfer a page to the printer. Which is about 12 to 13 pages per minute.
Perhaps most humans have broken math sense.
But: ;) ) that many of those poor people buying those tickets have a higher chance of becoming super rich multi-millionaires if they bought lottery ticket than if they didn't and tried to work their way into becoming super rich instead.
1) most people don't live forever.
2) I suggest (without a shred of evidence
How many super rich millionaires are there who started out as poor as them but _average_ in other respects - e.g. discipline, intelligence, business acumen, initiative, etc?
I know a number of hardworking poor people who I can bet are never going to be super rich multimillionaires in their lifetime. They didn't win the genetic lottery, nor the "born rich" lottery. So if they bought a lottery ticket, their odds just go up. Not by much of course, but they might even have a higher chance of becoming a rich multimillionaire than I do...
See also: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2539154&cid=38138470
They don't want to sell you a beer, don't buy one from them. There are plenty of places that sell beer in Germany.
The Germans can't be having such a big problem getting their beers. It's common for many to have a beer with lunch even on workdays.
There's no need to buy the crap. Instead, buy the competent products that AMD still releases.
Have you seen how much AMD is bleeding and the strategy screw-ups they did?
Those fanboys better put their money where their mouth is. Coz it's going to take more than the ATI 4xxx series graphics card I have in my PC to save AMD ;).
What you can do instead of trying to sell 102k cupcakes is to spread out multiple 1000 cupcake offers over a period of months.
The first way gives you worldwide publicity but probably a lot more heartburn and unhappy customers.
The second way gives you publicity in a better controlled manner. Your cashflow would also be under control.
I'm not sure which way would give you more new long-term customers. But I'd prefer the second less stressful approach.
I personally think the concept of near "compulsory" tipping as practiced by restaurants in some countries is messed up.
At work I don't get tipped for just doing my job, and if my company's customers gave me money directly for just doing my job, or for doing my job differently/better than normal, that's called corruption or just plain wrong. Heck at some places you're not allowed to accept gifts/$$$ above a certain value (usually low, sometimes even _zero_) from customers.
In theory if your employer isn't paying you enough to do your job, you should find another employer or another job. But in practice the "tipping" system is not likely to change in those countries...
Regarding the lotteries, think about it from this POV:
:).
;) ). When this happens it's called investment not gambling ;).
The odds of the typically poor people who buy lottery tickets becoming super rich multimillionaires if they didn't buy lottery tickets but instead tried other ways, is probably lower than if they did buy lottery tickets
I generally don't buy lottery tickets[1], and I think the odds of me becoming one of those super multimillionaires are practically zero.
Yes there are some poor people who become multimillionaires through hard work and some luck. But there many millions who wouldn't. Believe me, there are lots of hardworking poor people. Some even try to start businesses and unfortunately don't succeed. They don't go around selling books titled "How I kept trying, failing and somehow still never succeeded"[2].
That said, yes you can probably be a millionaire if you didn't start off too low and didn't screw up too badly. But you still won't be "I won the lottery" rich.
[1] Once in long while I buy them when the jackpot has accumulated (due to nobody winning) enough that if you actually could buy all of the possible numbers, you'd still make money (assuming not too many bought the winning numbers
[2] By the way, I'm sure you've seen those books where one rich guy says he succeeded by not giving up. Then you have another book where a rich guy says he succeeded by knowing when to quit. Then you have another rich guy saying he succeeded by starting many different businesses at the same time and closing down the ones that don't succeed. Then you have yet another rich guy saying he succeeded by focusing on one thing... Another rich guy says "buy property", but if you bought the wrong property < 2008, you'd now be stuck paying off a loan that's a lot more than your property. So go figure.
The reason why Intel can do this "unlock code" for extra _performance_ is because they're so far ahead of AMD that they can actually sell CPUs clocked slower than they can run. If AMD releases a similar priced CPU that's 10% faster, Intel can then price the "unlock code" to whatever they need to compete with AMD. Could even be free - they've already made money from the first sale.
If AMD's CPUs were more competitive, Intel would have to sell most of their CPUs at the fastest speeds they can run. They wouldn't have enough room to play such games.
Too many? I don't think so. And please stop trying to convince the AMD fanboys that AMD is producing crap.
Why?
1) We need AMD alive and kicking to at least give Intel some competition (look at what has happened now that AMD is weak - Intel started having "unlock codes" to unlock more performance/features for their processors ).
2) So someone needs to buy the current batch of AMD crap[1] to keep AMD alive till they come up with something better.
3) I'd rather not buy AMD's current crap. It is inferior for most popular desktop and server tasks.
4) Therefore we need as many AMD fanboys as possible to continue thinking that AMD is great and buying lots of AMD crap.
[1] Yes I know AMD produced better stuff than Intel some years ago. However the latest CPUs ironically appear to be AMD's Prescott Edition CPUs.
Well - to take the "synthetic happiness is just as good" thing to an extreme, heroin users are some of the happiest people I can imagine, when they are fixing.
Yeah, that's another reason why you can't assume that more people would willingly choose a situation where they would be happiest. They might not consider that situation desirable even if they would objectively by brain scans etc be very happy. In some scenarios their brains/minds might be "faulty" but ridiculously happy ;).
So "the pursuit of happiness" while a good objective to keep in mind, probably should not be the highest priority for the individual nor the species as a whole.
I see the TED videos differently. To me it's unfair to say they are glossing over the fine print when they are supposed to be giving short presentations. They claim that despite what people and popular convention expects, more choice doesn't always bring happiness; and that people often aren't very good at knowing what would make them happier. There appears to be plenty of everyday evidence that they are right. So any glossing over of fine print does not affect their claims.
To me the TED videos just support the conclusion that happiness should not be our ultimate goal.
But if we accept that and set our goals accordingly, then we also have to accept that we may not be as happy...
We might still be content and at peace with our choice. We may even experience a deeper joy during the "downs" than abundant but shallow happiness.
Knowing that you are doing the right thing despite being or even it resulting in a unhappy crappy situation can often make a huge difference. Arguably better than being happy while knowing deep down you're wasting your life by most reasonable measures.
As for human survival, given our limited knowledge, and assuming a purely secular point of view (no heaven, afterlife, reincarnation etc), then logically long-term human survival would depend on space exploration. Because after a while despite our best efforts, the Sun will make the earth uninhabitable. To survive we would have to be elsewhere. Based on our current knowledge, the only way we can be elsewhere is if we had better space tech. We may not have good enough tech to go to other solar systems. but hopefully we would have developed the ability to establish space colonies and move them to more habitable regions in our solar system. Then we will have time to live and working on the next long term problem - how to grow/survive beyond the solar system (in both space and time).
The ultimate long term problem of course might be what to do about the death of the universe, but first things first ;).
You're the one being silly. You said:
What was the last big name movie you saw that came out of China (that wasn't a US/EU movie that was copied there, lol)?
So I gave you examples. Those movies and their stars are big names in their markets.
They are certainly not big names in the English language markets, any more than the French, Japanese, Indian movies and stars are big names in the English language markets.
These movies are about the equivalent of a high school production.
Show me a high school production equivalent to Red Cliff. I haven't seen many high school productions with big name actors and actresses, 1500 extras, and various.
Just because your high school production costs a few million to make, doesn't make it equivalent to Red Cliff.
Based on what he said, why would they?
Just because people would actually be happier in a certain situation as compared to another situation, does not mean they would willingly choose to be in the happier situation.
See the other video as well.
So? They made money right? They were big name movies with big name stars. Are you saying Hollywood is inefficient or greedy?
Red Cliff sure didn't look like a small movie to me. I don't see it as significantly inferior to a typical Hollywood blockbuster.
If Hollywood made fewer stupid flops they would survive even if the successes were smaller. So if you're implying that if things change the way I want them, Hollywood wouldn't be able to survive, I don't really see that as such a great loss.
See also: http://www.google.com/search?q=federal+reserve+trillions
Maybe he meant getting the politicians into orbit?
That might help ;).
To quote myself from some years ago:
Start a TV reality show (or mock one) called "Vote Them Off The Planet".
Multiple categories - live contestants, politicians, celebrities, etc. One way and return. So you could have a mock vote to vote Obama or Bush off the planet- one way or return.
You could even have it for real where they could choose not to go (or choose to pay for the return trip if they "won" the one-way ;) ).
And:
The voters pay for the tickets by voting (SMS etc).
And depending on the categories, either the candidates or someone else presents the case for why the candidates should win.
For example:
Proposer #1: "I propose George Bush, 'one way', since he's so keen on going to the Moon, we should send him and it would be a net benefit to the world".
Still, having the power to choose is what happiness is all about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA
If coriolis forces are the problem it doesn't have to be big. It just has to be long - e.g. two masses connected by tethers.
It might have to be big for the radiation shielding. Which might be mostly water - you're going to need lots of water anyway[1], so might as well use it for shielding.
[1] People are about 70% water, so just by that the amount of water puts a limit to the max number of humans you can have (assuming the average body mass does not change).
And he even managed to get married and have children which is more than what many Slashdotters would manage ;).
There's also this: http://www.veezzle.com/photo/204092/Taiwanese-Tomato-Snack
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34001272@N02/3176533346/
In Taiwan it's also common to buy and snack on cherry tomatoes on skewers. Not sure if they're all sweetened or something. Anyway Google is getting more useless nowadays so I can't give better links/references :).
Gyro on pizza sounds good with potential for further "interesting customizations" :)
Sliced sausages on pizza sounds normal to me, unless you mean they're not slicing the wieners and putting them whole on the pizza.
Pineapple and cooked ham can be nice as long as the pineapple is drained properly of excess liquid before it is put on the pizza (before baking/cooking the pizza)- otherwise the pizza ends up too soggy.