I agree that modders are not XBoxes best customers, but I do not agree that microsoft is trying to keep their box a secret.
I am a developer in the Xbox live creators club and in order to write a decent game you have to really dig in and understand the hardware in the box. My game has code in the shaders and physics engine to specifically work with the xbox hardware. Whenever I get a slow framerate, it's usually because I've missed a difference between my xbox and my pc.
I'm able to do this because microsoft publishes an API (XNA) and information about how the xbox works.
Apologies, I made some math errors in my calcs. The upward force exerted by a one mile diameter hemisphere inflated to 1 psi would actually be 6300000000lb.(2*pi*r^2) Still astronomical.
A tire inflated to 1psi (0.007N/mm^2) isn't much stiffer than it would be non-pressurized. It's the tires superstructure that helps it keep its shape. Try inflating a partyballoon to 1psi above atm.
Thank you for making my point. If you had enough pressure difference to support the structure than the loads would be too high to hold the thing to the ground. If you keep the pressure difference low you will need to build a support structure for the panels which would very heavy.
The force exerted by a 1 mile diameter disk as another reply to my first post suggested would be half that, or 3150000000lb. Even though this design would have half the upward force due to any pressure difference, it is probably less feasible. Flat rooftops are poor structures. The moment exerted by the center of such a rooftop on the outer walls would make any structural engineer break into a fit of simultaneous laughter, crying and anger.
I don't have time to do the calcs right now, but you could model the wind loading on either type of building as drag around a hemisphere or a cylinder respectively and I'm sure you'd find the loads to be ridiculously high.
The problem isn't the paneling, the problem is the structure to hold the paneling one mile up in the air. That is far, far larger than any structure we have ever built. They propose to hold it up by pressurizing the inside of the dome. Well, if you pressurized it at 1 psi more than atmospheric pressure, you would have a 16,815,854,700lb upward force. And I don't think 1 psi would come anywhere close to doing the job. Just think of how stiff a tire is if you inflate it to 1 psi.
The company claims the panel can withstand a 180 mile per hour wind, but that must be a panel with a specific surface area that is supported in a specific way. The forces on a dome of that size under wind loading would be astronomical.
And if you're inside a dome and there's a fire, and the dome starts to shrink, it would shrink towards the fire, in other words, towards you. This would be very, very bad. Men women and children running and screaming around with molten goo on them bad. Ever dripped candle wax on your hand on accident? What about burning plastic? Not good.
provided you're not stupid enough to run an executable from an untrusted source.
That's exactly the problem with this article, these people intentionally tried to install 10 viruses on the computer. I've been running windows 7 since the Beta first came out without even running antivirus and I haven't had any problems.
Why? because I stay away from suspicious sites and I don't open suspicious emails
Patents in the US are based on the date of invention, not the date the patent was issued, if B&N has been working on this, they will have internal documentation of the date of invention and the patent will rightfully be theirs.
If the B&N reader doesn't infringe on the patent because it is significantly different than the spring reader than B&N hasn't done anything wrong. This is why patents help innovation. It is perfectly legal and ethical for B&N to read the spring patent, look at exactly how their invention works, improve on the ideas and develop a product.
If spring hired a poor patent attorney who filed weak claims, then B&N will have no trouble winning the case. I would feel sad for spring in that situation but that's the breaks
What usually happens in this case is B&N settles for a sum of money that is cheaper than their licensing fees would have been but still a ludicrous sum of money for the guys at spring and is all spring can hope to get anyway because they hired a cheap patent attorney who filed a weak patent. B&N would do this because it would cost two or three ludicrous sums of money to hire their gigantic team of lawyers for the amount of time even a cheap patent attorney make the proceedings last.
If you have a patent pending you would not need to have them sign a non-disclosure agreement. In fact, if you've filed a patent you have already disclosed your idea to the public or will soon.
Usually I skip commercials with my TV tuner, but just the other day I was truing my mtn. bike wheel while watching TV and I appreciated the commercial breaks so I could go swap tools and the like.
In anticipation of the coming rebuttal: I know that I could just pause it at any time but I didn't. It just doesn't feel right to pause when there's a perfectly good commercial break coming up. It does not make rational sense, but since when are human beings rational?
According to the article they optimized the behavior by optimizing a computer simulation with a genetic algorithm. Says they ran 500 generation which is a very small number of iterations for a genetic algorithm. Then, after they had optimized the behavior, they put the control code into the robots and watched them go.
I guarantee there are forces in an aircraft that are not perpendicular to the plane of motion of the joystick. Your absolute statement about the forces in a car are also incorrect.
The simple solution to the problem you mentioned would be to put the joystick in the car in a different plane. My point here is not so much to solve that one problem as it is to point out that most problems have a solution. People on here have talked about force feedback and lack of standardization and juggling and whatnot. A creative engineer can solve all of these problems.
Personally I don't think cars will change from steering wheels to joysticks, but I am in favor of the innovation. The company that's willing to try all kinds of crazy ideas is the company that's the most likely to find that one crazy idea in a million that's truly revolutionary.
When you file a patent you have to disclose your invention. This means that others can legally invent similar things as long as it doesn't quite overlap your claims. Also, the patent expires after about 20 years after which your invention is disclosed to the public and is no longer protected.
A trade secret is another way to protect intellectual property. If you take proper measures to keep your idea secret, like making people sign non-disclosure agreements if you share your idea with them, your invention is legally protected for as long as you keep it secret. No fees, no disclosure, no expiration date.
This is why patents are good and promote innovation. They create an avenue for inventors to share their ideas AND protect them. If patents were taken away everything would be trade secret. As a result there would be far less sharing of ideas out there.
There are goods and bads about provisional patents.
On the one hand they're cheap, you're protected, and you don't have to disclose your claims yet so you don't have to worry about your invention being made public on the international market. You just get the privilege of claiming patent pending for a year. For inventions like software and electronics that will be superseded within the year anyway a provisional patent may be all that you ever even need.
The bad thing about them is that you, a layman when it comes to patents, have to file your claims. The claims are by far the most important part of a patent. They define what your product can do, the rest of the patent is just there to describe the invention in barely enough detail to prove that you can actually do what you claim. If you mess up with your claims the patent is worthless. Maybe even worse than worthless because if you disclose claims that don't actually protect your invention the patent will basically be a tutorial on how to do whatever it is you did.
Another problem with this system is that he's tied the input device to the Software, those global and local bars are lame. The menu controls should be in the OS and should be independent from the input device.
Also, his con10uum idea is lame, that kind of system is already being used in coverflow and it's fine for looking through a few albums, but not for managing my windows.
Wait, wait, I'm having a brain storm, you know that thumbnail view he showed if you zoom out, we could take a thumbnail view like that and show it all the time. We could put it at the bottom of the screen. If you hover over the thumbnail it gives you a preview of the window, and if you click on the thumbnail that window pops up. Amazing idea huh
Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that there are products similar to this that already exist and are compatible with existing systems.
that's easy to solve, you just add an apparently blank page that says "Intentionally left blank" on the top. Then, in very very small white font, you write: "Key words that may or may not be related to my actual skills: " and then you fill the whole rest of the page with every key word imaginable.
Curiously, GM's Volt doesn't violate this patent, as it is a so-called "series hybrid", in that the gas motor only drives the generator, and the wheels are only driven by the electric motor.
what do you mean by the quotes and the so-calleds? it just plain is a series hybrid. They are fundamentally different systems.
accelerated stress testing is common and covered in basic statistical reliability coursework. In Applied reliability Second edition by Tobias and Trindade they explain how to account for increased temperatures by using the Arrhenius Model.
physical acceleration models pretty interesting....well at least for me and a few google engineers.
People averted risks back then too, there was just very high motivation to leave. Whether it was the draw of untold wealth, not being killed by the current king, or not being killed because of your religion, the motivations were high enough that people were willing to take the risk..
If we were in the middle of the world war III draft, flying to mars and back in a plasma ship wouldn't sound too bad. It'd probably be much safer than sticking around. Given enough time the safety of space travel and the motivation to leave the planet will meet and people will go.
I'll bet if you look through the entire population of the earth you could find one person who would hop on a ship right now. I'll bet if you narrowed your search down to Trekkies you'd find one pretty fast.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that modders are not XBoxes best customers, but I do not agree that microsoft is trying to keep their box a secret.
I am a developer in the Xbox live creators club and in order to write a decent game you have to really dig in and understand the hardware in the box. My game has code in the shaders and physics engine to specifically work with the xbox hardware. Whenever I get a slow framerate, it's usually because I've missed a difference between my xbox and my pc.
I'm able to do this because microsoft publishes an API (XNA) and information about how the xbox works.
Apologies, I made some math errors in my calcs. The upward force exerted by a one mile diameter hemisphere inflated to 1 psi would actually be 6300000000lb.(2*pi*r^2) Still astronomical.
A tire inflated to 1psi (0.007N/mm^2) isn't much stiffer than it would be non-pressurized. It's the tires superstructure that helps it keep its shape. Try inflating a partyballoon to 1psi above atm.
Thank you for making my point. If you had enough pressure difference to support the structure than the loads would be too high to hold the thing to the ground. If you keep the pressure difference low you will need to build a support structure for the panels which would very heavy.
The force exerted by a 1 mile diameter disk as another reply to my first post suggested would be half that, or 3150000000lb. Even though this design would have half the upward force due to any pressure difference, it is probably less feasible. Flat rooftops are poor structures. The moment exerted by the center of such a rooftop on the outer walls would make any structural engineer break into a fit of simultaneous laughter, crying and anger.
I don't have time to do the calcs right now, but you could model the wind loading on either type of building as drag around a hemisphere or a cylinder respectively and I'm sure you'd find the loads to be ridiculously high.
The problem isn't the paneling, the problem is the structure to hold the paneling one mile up in the air. That is far, far larger than any structure we have ever built. They propose to hold it up by pressurizing the inside of the dome. Well, if you pressurized it at 1 psi more than atmospheric pressure, you would have a 16,815,854,700lb upward force. And I don't think 1 psi would come anywhere close to doing the job. Just think of how stiff a tire is if you inflate it to 1 psi.
The company claims the panel can withstand a 180 mile per hour wind, but that must be a panel with a specific surface area that is supported in a specific way. The forces on a dome of that size under wind loading would be astronomical.
And if you're inside a dome and there's a fire, and the dome starts to shrink, it would shrink towards the fire, in other words, towards you. This would be very, very bad. Men women and children running and screaming around with molten goo on them bad. Ever dripped candle wax on your hand on accident? What about burning plastic? Not good.
That is growth in data usage, not growth in customer base or profits.
provided you're not stupid enough to run an executable from an untrusted source.
That's exactly the problem with this article, these people intentionally tried to install 10 viruses on the computer. I've been running windows 7 since the Beta first came out without even running antivirus and I haven't had any problems.
Why? because I stay away from suspicious sites and I don't open suspicious emails
If you have patent pending you don't need an NDA.
Patents in the US are based on the date of invention, not the date the patent was issued, if B&N has been working on this, they will have internal documentation of the date of invention and the patent will rightfully be theirs.
If the B&N reader doesn't infringe on the patent because it is significantly different than the spring reader than B&N hasn't done anything wrong. This is why patents help innovation. It is perfectly legal and ethical for B&N to read the spring patent, look at exactly how their invention works, improve on the ideas and develop a product.
If spring hired a poor patent attorney who filed weak claims, then B&N will have no trouble winning the case. I would feel sad for spring in that situation but that's the breaks
What usually happens in this case is B&N settles for a sum of money that is cheaper than their licensing fees would have been but still a ludicrous sum of money for the guys at spring and is all spring can hope to get anyway because they hired a cheap patent attorney who filed a weak patent. B&N would do this because it would cost two or three ludicrous sums of money to hire their gigantic team of lawyers for the amount of time even a cheap patent attorney make the proceedings last.
If you have a patent pending you would not need to have them sign a non-disclosure agreement. In fact, if you've filed a patent you have already disclosed your idea to the public or will soon.
That's true for some shows but not all, there are a lot of shows that put the commercial break right at a cliffhanger to try to keep you from leaving.
That' Not real s, AI great translation work!
I can confirm this first hand.
Usually I skip commercials with my TV tuner, but just the other day I was truing my mtn. bike wheel while watching TV and I appreciated the commercial breaks so I could go swap tools and the like.
In anticipation of the coming rebuttal: I know that I could just pause it at any time but I didn't. It just doesn't feel right to pause when there's a perfectly good commercial break coming up. It does not make rational sense, but since when are human beings rational?
Yes, really. Not only that but soon there will be virtual actors or vactors.
According to the article they optimized the behavior by optimizing a computer simulation with a genetic algorithm. Says they ran 500 generation which is a very small number of iterations for a genetic algorithm. Then, after they had optimized the behavior, they put the control code into the robots and watched them go.
I guarantee there are forces in an aircraft that are not perpendicular to the plane of motion of the joystick. Your absolute statement about the forces in a car are also incorrect.
The simple solution to the problem you mentioned would be to put the joystick in the car in a different plane. My point here is not so much to solve that one problem as it is to point out that most problems have a solution. People on here have talked about force feedback and lack of standardization and juggling and whatnot. A creative engineer can solve all of these problems.
Personally I don't think cars will change from steering wheels to joysticks, but I am in favor of the innovation. The company that's willing to try all kinds of crazy ideas is the company that's the most likely to find that one crazy idea in a million that's truly revolutionary.
I share your concern, but aren't some airplanes controlled by a joystick of sorts?
You just need a prime number they can split evenly between five people
When you file a patent you have to disclose your invention. This means that others can legally invent similar things as long as it doesn't quite overlap your claims. Also, the patent expires after about 20 years after which your invention is disclosed to the public and is no longer protected.
A trade secret is another way to protect intellectual property. If you take proper measures to keep your idea secret, like making people sign non-disclosure agreements if you share your idea with them, your invention is legally protected for as long as you keep it secret. No fees, no disclosure, no expiration date.
This is why patents are good and promote innovation. They create an avenue for inventors to share their ideas AND protect them. If patents were taken away everything would be trade secret. As a result there would be far less sharing of ideas out there.
There are goods and bads about provisional patents.
On the one hand they're cheap, you're protected, and you don't have to disclose your claims yet so you don't have to worry about your invention being made public on the international market. You just get the privilege of claiming patent pending for a year. For inventions like software and electronics that will be superseded within the year anyway a provisional patent may be all that you ever even need.
The bad thing about them is that you, a layman when it comes to patents, have to file your claims. The claims are by far the most important part of a patent. They define what your product can do, the rest of the patent is just there to describe the invention in barely enough detail to prove that you can actually do what you claim. If you mess up with your claims the patent is worthless. Maybe even worse than worthless because if you disclose claims that don't actually protect your invention the patent will basically be a tutorial on how to do whatever it is you did.
Another problem with this system is that he's tied the input device to the Software, those global and local bars are lame. The menu controls should be in the OS and should be independent from the input device.
Also, his con10uum idea is lame, that kind of system is already being used in coverflow and it's fine for looking through a few albums, but not for managing my windows.
Wait, wait, I'm having a brain storm, you know that thumbnail view he showed if you zoom out, we could take a thumbnail view like that and show it all the time. We could put it at the bottom of the screen. If you hover over the thumbnail it gives you a preview of the window, and if you click on the thumbnail that window pops up. Amazing idea huh
Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that there are products similar to this that already exist and are compatible with existing systems.
that's easy to solve, you just add an apparently blank page that says "Intentionally left blank" on the top. Then, in very very small white font, you write: "Key words that may or may not be related to my actual skills: " and then you fill the whole rest of the page with every key word imaginable.
iPhone is a hardware + OS platform.
Android is an OS
Nothing will beat the iPhone until there is a single handset that outsells the iPhone.
Heck, the iPhone could even run android in the future
I'm sure the conversation would be more like this:
Tech: "heylo plase tern off your computer and wait for ten seyconds"
User: "What are you talking about, I'm calling because you say I have a virus"
Tech: "Dayd you tern off your computer yet?"
User: "Did you hear anything I just said?"
Tech: "Comcast tern off not responsible kittens"
User: "Every word you say makes me angrier and angrier."
Tech: "Good, resolve glad issue. Bye"
Curiously, GM's Volt doesn't violate this patent, as it is a so-called "series hybrid", in that the gas motor only drives the generator, and the wheels are only driven by the electric motor.
what do you mean by the quotes and the so-calleds? it just plain is a series hybrid. They are fundamentally different systems.
accelerated stress testing is common and covered in basic statistical reliability coursework. In Applied reliability Second edition by Tobias and Trindade they explain how to account for increased temperatures by using the Arrhenius Model.
physical acceleration models pretty interesting....well at least for me and a few google engineers.
People averted risks back then too, there was just very high motivation to leave. Whether it was the draw of untold wealth, not being killed by the current king, or not being killed because of your religion, the motivations were high enough that people were willing to take the risk..
If we were in the middle of the world war III draft, flying to mars and back in a plasma ship wouldn't sound too bad. It'd probably be much safer than sticking around. Given enough time the safety of space travel and the motivation to leave the planet will meet and people will go.
I'll bet if you look through the entire population of the earth you could find one person who would hop on a ship right now. I'll bet if you narrowed your search down to Trekkies you'd find one pretty fast.
That's crazy talk