A generator is just converting mechanical energy to electricity, not actually creating power.
You are definately confusing power with energy. Power is not energy. My concrete slab floor has a good deal of energy. E=mc^2 plus a certain amount of thermal energy. It is doing no work so it is producing no energy.
A coal fired steam generator converts heat energy into electrical potential energy. When the potential energy is released by your opening the valve at your computer (pushing the "on" button) electrons move through the wires. It is the motion over time that is power.
The generator is the source of the potential. The power supply is not. A battery and a dam are actually reseviors of potential energy. Thus a battery is a power supply. It is the resevoir of surplus electrons and the motive force to push them through the wire.
A power supply is a passive componant.
There's a dam on a pond near your house. The pond is the water supply, the dam the means by which potential energy is stored in the pond. There is a big pipe from the dam to your house. A littler pipe goes from the big pipe into your house, where there is a network of various pipes of various sizes that "convert" the flow of the water (make the water move faster or slower). Your home plumbing is the "power supply."
Except in this case you can more easily intuit that it is the pond that is really the water supply.
When you open a faucet water flows through the pipes and it is the motion of the water that is power, and the potential energy stored in the pond by the dam that supplies the energy to create the motion.
Your plumbing is passive.
If instead of a pond you have a water tower on your roof, you fill it with water from somewhere or other (which is going to require the use of power, maybe your arm moving in a circle). The tower is the water supply, the water in it has potential energy transfered to it when it was put into the tank (converted from the heat energy of a Mars bar).
The tank is a water battery. The potential energy stored in it will make water move through your pipes.
Your plumbing (power supply) is still just plumbing. It "converts" the water from flowing down at one speed to water flowing left at another. It doesn't supply the water, the energy or have anything at all to do with power. The falling water is power.
A generator takes electrons from a resevoir at point A (its coils) and pushes them through the wires to point B. In the process they move through your power "supply" which makes them "go left."
You are confusing power, which is the flow of electricity through the wire, with energy. It is the potential energy which supplies the power. The power supply is just a system of pipes and valves, the pump, which provides the potential, is the supplier. Remove the power supply and electrical energy still flows to the componants of the computer (although the computer will not be "happy" about it). Turn of the pump and it does not.
A battery and dam actually store and release potential energy. They are pumps. A power supply just sits there in the way of the flow, it is a passive componant.
By your logic they just convert the component parts into processors.
Well I presume they are not producing matter from the void, but using preexisting, found matter, yes. I produce a chair, but I do so by converting a tree into a chair. It would be a pretty neat trick if I could actually produce a tree.
But this has nothing to do with the power supply of a computer. The electrons already exist in the wire. The generating plant pushes them through the wire. It's their motion that is power. A constriction in a pipe is not a water supply. That would be the cistern (water battery) on the roof, converting the potential energy of gravity into power.
A battery (like a fuel tank, or a dam) stores energy.
An AC to DC power "supply" is not a battery, fuel tank, or dam. It neither stores nor actually supplies power. The potential energy comes from a source external to the power "supply" and is "pushed" through it.
They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.
They understand that perfectly well. They also understand that sound cards and speakers can be chipped to refuse to reproduce the sound of a file that does not have a valid license code. See DVD players. See the current issue of the broadcast flag.
They're working on chips for your ears and brain. I think they're just going to duct tape mittens on your hands and a super ball in your mouth. Don't even think about nose flute, if you know what's good for you. You won't like the solution with mittens on your hands and that super ball already in your mouth.
The cause of this problem is complex, but the state of public secondary teaching is slacking, and that's bound to impact the graduates at some level, too.
Having read the article I have certain empathies with the author. The state of teaching at the university level is in a sad state these days in many, if not most, places.
However, it's also clear to see that much of his trouble stems from the fact that his secondary education, and remember he reports that he exceled there, simply did not prepare him for college to such an extent that he does not yet even realize that the fault lies with that secondary education he regards so highly. College is not the next year of High School and he does not even understand what is expected of him as a student. Especially in a "genius" course where one is expected to be self directed. This is not his fault. It is the fault of the teaching system he regards as a model for teaching excellence.
I live in area well populated by a wide variety of institutions of tertiary education. Had he risen to being laid off from GE he likely would have lived in my very neighborhood. We've got a lot of that kind around here. We've also got Union College, RPI, Skidmore and the home campus of the NYS University system, a two year branch of which is a mere ten minute walk from my home.
I make part of my living tutoring kids like him, trying to get them through their first year of culture shock. It's a difficult undertaking because while they are facing an upcoming midterm what I really have to teach them is what they should have been taught in their final year of secondary school. They have to learn last year's stuff while under the gun to be tested for this year's stuff.
With a background consisting entirely of taking standardized tests to see if you can exactly match an already known answer (and thinking that's good education) how the hell is he to be expected to undertake a course of study on coming up with unique, workable solutions to problems whose solution is as yet entirely unknown?
He doesn't even know that is something to be done. He's thinking of engineering as somehow akin to taking a standarized test and getting the "right" answers, and a Brownie Point for it.
In "Real Life (tm)" engineering there is no "right answer," only groups of possible solutions, all of which are, in some respect, known to be wrong.
I'm getting really tired of trying to teach these kids basic problem solving skills, to the extent that I even have to teach them what a problem is; and what an answer to that problem is; when it's already far, far too late for that kind of thing.
And the newer generation of teachers in college are the product of this same system. It's no wonder they're clueless how to teach.
There are lots and lots of places where a portable computing device would be useful, for all sorts of things other than WoW, where there are simply no outlets.
I also trust cigarette companies to tell me all the negative side effects of smoking tobacco.
Have you read the actual 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health, you know, the one that put all the warning lables on the packages in multiple countries?
Just because a study is funded by the government doesn't mean there isn't a biased agenda at work and it's not a steaming pile of poo whose actual results weren't as badly handled by the press as the case currently in question.
And if you don't believe me just refer to what's going on right now with ID and the "faith based" American government administration;and the press. Governments are perfectly willing to tell you what to think and offer "scientific studies" to back it up; and the clueless journalism majors who don't understand even the basics of the issues (or even of journalism) are perfectly willing to misreport it, as fact.
So if a child steals from a store that they go to without a parent, it should be OK because the minor can't afford to purchase the item?
Why do you suppose the RIAA didn't file a larceny charge against the child?
Answer: Because the child did not steal anything.
When you steal something you a)deprive the legitimate owner of that something of possession, b)do so with intent to so deprive; c) do not merely aquire something for nothing (which isn't illegal at all), or deprive someone of what they perceive as a potential sale (something the law actually, and rightly, denies as actionable), but impose an actual financial loss upon them. A CD has innate value and cost the store money up front. It's property.
The RIAA would have a better case if what they were selling were property, instead of a license.
Oh, yeah, they're going to do that in a hurry. They don't hate music as licensed files. It's their Goddam wet dream. They've been trying to figure out how to sell the stuff under license for a century.
It's the Apple Mighty Mouse (Heeeeere it comes to save the daaaaaay!) that has boob like fondleability. It's even got a nipple that you're encouraged to stroke. It should be a big seller in the youth market.
The iPod is more like a supossitory. Why do you think each generation is narrower than the last?
Probably. I knew it was wrong the three times I retyped it trying to get it right. My mind just couldn't come up with the "correct" spelling (yes, I am dyslexic) and I just didn't feel like taking further time to look it up. So sue me. You were smart enough to figure it out.
2. I don't think you should fondle your iPod in public.
Don't got one, although I hear you can get one for "free" in exchange for being an annoying asshole.
Correct. StarOffice was originally propriatary closed source. Sun bought it and opened the nonprotected code (some of it is used under commercial license, which is one of the reasons StarOffice has to cost money) and OpenOffice branched off from that, but many of the OpenOffice developers are actually Sun developers.
You can think that OpenOffice is to StarOffice as Fedora is to Red Hat. The current "community" developed code base that the commercial product is developed from, but having started with the code base of the commercial product in the first place.
The mosquito, however, is not eating. She is sucking your blood in order to develop and lay fertile eggs, not for personal nourishment. No blood, no eggs. It is a necessary componant of the mosquito reproductive process. It's a sex act from the mosquito's point of view. She's getting off, not getting fed. When a female moquito copulates with a male she stores the sperm and then goes looking for blood in order to complete the act. An interspecies manage a trois. Males do not suck blood because males are not females. No eggs.
Conversely when a parasitic wasp lays it's eggs in you it is no more a sex act than a chicken laying an egg is a sex act.
..is it not possible that the iPod was developed w/o Apple having any knowledge of this?
No, not likely. They've been seeing electronic gear in a box with a dial on it all of their lives. In fact, just about every electronic piece of equipment I own is some sort of box with some sort of dial on it. The "dial" on my VCR is even a "click wheel."
Who woulda thunk that a thing in a box would look vaguely like a thing in a box. The TR-1 itself looked rather like a table radio except for its size and standing long side up to slip in a pocket, instead of long side down to rest on a table. Form followed function, and the form was largely determined by the fact the case was predominantely a speaker enclosure (plus battery box).
It's not like this is some mega-complicated design... it's a small, sqaure MP3 player.
And honestly, if you saw them side by side you wouldn't think they looked any more similar than a table radio and the TR-1. For starters there's about the same proportinal difference in size. The photo of the TR-1 in the story is about life size. Rather noticably larger than a pack of cigarettes, including (which doesn't show in the photo) thickness.
If you put these two devices next to each other with a modern, slim, pocket calculator you'd think the iPod looked far more like the calculator than the radio.
Perhaps the author is reacting to the entirely overhyped nonsense about the iPod's design "innovation." The reason it took so much work to do the "design" of the iPod was specifically because it's just a project box. You just go try and make a project box unique. It's just a bloody box.
Apple managed to do this. When you see an iPod a block away you know it's an iPod. Period. From a block away it bears absolutely no resemblence to the TR-1. Up close the iPod has "fondalability." The TR-1 does not.
This, however, is not technical innovation. It is marketing, and it is marketing again that has given people the idea that the marketing is itself innovation in the device.
It's just a pocket radio. What do you want it to look like, a bunny or something?
. ..the purpose of exteriors is to protect the interiors. ..
First fly rods came in bags to protect their finish. Then they started putting the bags in aluminum tubes. Then they started polishing and anodizing the tubes so that they looked nice, until they got all scratched up in the trunk of the car, so then they started putting the tubes in Cordura Nylon covers.
Any day now I expect to start seeing shrink wrap for the Nylon. Then it'll be UV protection for the shrink wrap.
Still, to be fair, the purpose of a screen is not merely to protect the interior of the device. You're also supposed to be able to look through it at the interior of the device.
Well, perhaps I'm jaded by being a guy who's comfortable with a soldering iron in his hand, or perhaps that simply makes me aware how simple the device really is.
Open it up? There's nothing to open up. Really. It's just a blinkenlichten box in a bunny suit (ok, the ear thingy is spinnenmoteren, but that's really just the same thing as a blinkenlicht when you get down to it).
Learn how to use your computer/the Internet to switch an LED on and off and you can just make any device like this you want, for a fraction the $200 price, with stuff from Radio Shack. If you're willing to pay the price just get one of these bunnies and bust the plastic shell open. Now put the lights in anything you want, and attach the ear motor to a flag it can move up and down, or a door it can open and close, or a camera it can rotate, or an Airsoft BB gun it can. . .
Hey, go read that article. It's far more advanced than this bunny thingy, which is actually pretty 1970.
The only thing that sets this device apart from anything is the bunny suit, not the technology behind it. Well, that and the idea that you'd rather have a Tux doll burp when a torrent is complete instead of just having your computer go "Ping!"
And if you leave out the Internet part, but leave in the wireless part, that's actually pretty 1920. By 1950 any eight year old geek could show you how to do it. Forgive me if saying "On the Internet!" leaves me somewhat underwhelmed.
By not giving the theater owners a fair cut, say 50/50, instead of soaking the opening receipts for themselves?
It's a wonder how Slashdot is glad that illegal activities are forcing people to change how they do business.
Illegal activities? You're suggesting now that I should be arrested for buying DVDs and watching Encore instead of going to the theater? I'm afraid I wasn't aware that not going to the theater was a crime, let alone in any way analogous to stealing bread.
Stop sympathising with people who break the law.
Ah, well, ya see, I haven't done that. What I've done is joined the people who don't go to theaters anymore because the experience sucks, and you might note that story which I'm commenting under is about buying DVDs rather than going to the theater.
I've never downloaded a movie or TV show. Most of them suck too hard to make it worthwhile anyway. Yes, that's the fault of the people who made them.
There's some decent older stuff out there though, ya know, the stuff that when I saw it first run in the theaters (or on TV) 40 years ago they promised me it would be perfectly legal to freely copy when I got to be my age. That's was before they pulled their hands out from behind their backs and said, "Ha ha! Only joking."
Simple enough, people don't want them. They're perfectly happy just pushing the "on" button of the radio if they want a weather report or to hear a song. They can even carry the "on" button around with them these days.
You could, if you really wanted to, just plug the radio into The Clapper; and we've seen how that's had a cultural impact equal to the cell phone.
merekat technology. That'll kick a WiFi bunny's cottony little arse.
Or how about a cute, plush Tux that burps real rancid herring smell everytime a kernel patch is released? A Hello Kitty the spits up a real simulated hairball when there's a sale at Penney's?
Boy, this technology stuff sure is fun. The future's so bright I have to go barf.
Slashdot Mirror
Same for vampire bats and Masai, except for the making them explode part. From our point of view it's called "bleeding."
KFG
By your definition, what does produce power?
A mass in motion. Delta W/Delta t.
A generator is just converting mechanical energy to electricity, not actually creating power.
You are definately confusing power with energy. Power is not energy. My concrete slab floor has a good deal of energy. E=mc^2 plus a certain amount of thermal energy. It is doing no work so it is producing no energy.
A coal fired steam generator converts heat energy into electrical potential energy. When the potential energy is released by your opening the valve at your computer (pushing the "on" button) electrons move through the wires. It is the motion over time that is power.
The generator is the source of the potential. The power supply is not. A battery and a dam are actually reseviors of potential energy. Thus a battery is a power supply. It is the resevoir of surplus electrons and the motive force to push them through the wire.
A power supply is a passive componant.
There's a dam on a pond near your house. The pond is the water supply, the dam the means by which potential energy is stored in the pond. There is a big pipe from the dam to your house. A littler pipe goes from the big pipe into your house, where there is a network of various pipes of various sizes that "convert" the flow of the water (make the water move faster or slower). Your home plumbing is the "power supply."
Except in this case you can more easily intuit that it is the pond that is really the water supply.
When you open a faucet water flows through the pipes and it is the motion of the water that is power, and the potential energy stored in the pond by the dam that supplies the energy to create the motion.
Your plumbing is passive.
If instead of a pond you have a water tower on your roof, you fill it with water from somewhere or other (which is going to require the use of power, maybe your arm moving in a circle). The tower is the water supply, the water in it has potential energy transfered to it when it was put into the tank (converted from the heat energy of a Mars bar).
The tank is a water battery. The potential energy stored in it will make water move through your pipes.
Your plumbing (power supply) is still just plumbing. It "converts" the water from flowing down at one speed to water flowing left at another. It doesn't supply the water, the energy or have anything at all to do with power. The falling water is power.
A generator takes electrons from a resevoir at point A (its coils) and pushes them through the wires to point B. In the process they move through your power "supply" which makes them "go left."
You are confusing power, which is the flow of electricity through the wire, with energy. It is the potential energy which supplies the power. The power supply is just a system of pipes and valves, the pump, which provides the potential, is the supplier. Remove the power supply and electrical energy still flows to the componants of the computer (although the computer will not be "happy" about it). Turn of the pump and it does not.
A battery and dam actually store and release potential energy. They are pumps. A power supply just sits there in the way of the flow, it is a passive componant.
By your logic they just convert the component parts into processors.
Well I presume they are not producing matter from the void, but using preexisting, found matter, yes. I produce a chair, but I do so by converting a tree into a chair. It would be a pretty neat trick if I could actually produce a tree.
But this has nothing to do with the power supply of a computer. The electrons already exist in the wire. The generating plant pushes them through the wire. It's their motion that is power. A constriction in a pipe is not a water supply. That would be the cistern (water battery) on the roof, converting the potential energy of gravity into power.
KFG
A battery (like a fuel tank, or a dam) stores energy.
An AC to DC power "supply" is not a battery, fuel tank, or dam. It neither stores nor actually supplies power. The potential energy comes from a source external to the power "supply" and is "pushed" through it.
KFG
Do you understand that this isn't about casual copying for personal use, but about file trading?
Labor is distributed.
KFG
They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.
They understand that perfectly well. They also understand that sound cards and speakers can be chipped to refuse to reproduce the sound of a file that does not have a valid license code. See DVD players. See the current issue of the broadcast flag.
They're working on chips for your ears and brain. I think they're just going to duct tape mittens on your hands and a super ball in your mouth. Don't even think about nose flute, if you know what's good for you. You won't like the solution with mittens on your hands and that super ball already in your mouth.
KFG
The cause of this problem is complex, but the state of public secondary teaching is slacking, and that's bound to impact the graduates at some level, too.
Having read the article I have certain empathies with the author. The state of teaching at the university level is in a sad state these days in many, if not most, places.
However, it's also clear to see that much of his trouble stems from the fact that his secondary education, and remember he reports that he exceled there, simply did not prepare him for college to such an extent that he does not yet even realize that the fault lies with that secondary education he regards so highly. College is not the next year of High School and he does not even understand what is expected of him as a student. Especially in a "genius" course where one is expected to be self directed. This is not his fault. It is the fault of the teaching system he regards as a model for teaching excellence.
I live in area well populated by a wide variety of institutions of tertiary education. Had he risen to being laid off from GE he likely would have lived in my very neighborhood. We've got a lot of that kind around here. We've also got Union College, RPI, Skidmore and the home campus of the NYS University system, a two year branch of which is a mere ten minute walk from my home.
I make part of my living tutoring kids like him, trying to get them through their first year of culture shock. It's a difficult undertaking because while they are facing an upcoming midterm what I really have to teach them is what they should have been taught in their final year of secondary school. They have to learn last year's stuff while under the gun to be tested for this year's stuff.
With a background consisting entirely of taking standardized tests to see if you can exactly match an already known answer (and thinking that's good education) how the hell is he to be expected to undertake a course of study on coming up with unique, workable solutions to problems whose solution is as yet entirely unknown?
He doesn't even know that is something to be done. He's thinking of engineering as somehow akin to taking a standarized test and getting the "right" answers, and a Brownie Point for it.
In "Real Life (tm)" engineering there is no "right answer," only groups of possible solutions, all of which are, in some respect, known to be wrong.
I'm getting really tired of trying to teach these kids basic problem solving skills, to the extent that I even have to teach them what a problem is; and what an answer to that problem is; when it's already far, far too late for that kind of thing.
And the newer generation of teachers in college are the product of this same system. It's no wonder they're clueless how to teach.
KFG
Now, if it were giant squids with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads...
.and tits.
. .
KFG
There are lots and lots of places where a portable computing device would be useful, for all sorts of things other than WoW, where there are simply no outlets.
Cities are wired. The world is not.
KFG
So now you know that when you start to itch that's your mosquito sex orgasm. Try not to be too creeped out by the idea. :)
KFG
I also trust cigarette companies to tell me all the negative side effects of smoking tobacco.
Have you read the actual 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health, you know, the one that put all the warning lables on the packages in multiple countries?
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr_1964/sgr64.htm
Just because a study is funded by the government doesn't mean there isn't a biased agenda at work and it's not a steaming pile of poo whose actual results weren't as badly handled by the press as the case currently in question.
And if you don't believe me just refer to what's going on right now with ID and the "faith based" American government administration;and the press. Governments are perfectly willing to tell you what to think and offer "scientific studies" to back it up; and the clueless journalism majors who don't understand even the basics of the issues (or even of journalism) are perfectly willing to misreport it, as fact.
KFG
So if a child steals from a store that they go to without a parent, it should be OK because the minor can't afford to purchase the item?
Why do you suppose the RIAA didn't file a larceny charge against the child?
Answer: Because the child did not steal anything.
When you steal something you a)deprive the legitimate owner of that something of possession, b)do so with intent to so deprive; c) do not merely aquire something for nothing (which isn't illegal at all), or deprive someone of what they perceive as a potential sale (something the law actually, and rightly, denies as actionable), but impose an actual financial loss upon them. A CD has innate value and cost the store money up front. It's property.
The RIAA would have a better case if what they were selling were property, instead of a license.
Oh, yeah, they're going to do that in a hurry. They don't hate music as licensed files. It's their Goddam wet dream. They've been trying to figure out how to sell the stuff under license for a century.
KFG
It's the Apple Mighty Mouse (Heeeeere it comes to save the daaaaaay!) that has boob like fondleability. It's even got a nipple that you're encouraged to stroke. It should be a big seller in the youth market.
The iPod is more like a supossitory. Why do you think each generation is narrower than the last?
KFG
1. I think you should spell that "fondleability".
Probably. I knew it was wrong the three times I retyped it trying to get it right. My mind just couldn't come up with the "correct" spelling (yes, I am dyslexic) and I just didn't feel like taking further time to look it up. So sue me. You were smart enough to figure it out.
2. I don't think you should fondle your iPod in public.
Don't got one, although I hear you can get one for "free" in exchange for being an annoying asshole.
KFG
Correct. StarOffice was originally propriatary closed source. Sun bought it and opened the nonprotected code (some of it is used under commercial license, which is one of the reasons StarOffice has to cost money) and OpenOffice branched off from that, but many of the OpenOffice developers are actually Sun developers.
You can think that OpenOffice is to StarOffice as Fedora is to Red Hat. The current "community" developed code base that the commercial product is developed from, but having started with the code base of the commercial product in the first place.
KFG
The mosquito, however, is not eating. She is sucking your blood in order to develop and lay fertile eggs, not for personal nourishment. No blood, no eggs. It is a necessary componant of the mosquito reproductive process. It's a sex act from the mosquito's point of view. She's getting off, not getting fed. When a female moquito copulates with a male she stores the sperm and then goes looking for blood in order to complete the act. An interspecies manage a trois. Males do not suck blood because males are not females. No eggs.
Conversely when a parasitic wasp lays it's eggs in you it is no more a sex act than a chicken laying an egg is a sex act.
Adult mosquitos are sugar eaters, like bees.
KFG
..is it not possible that the iPod was developed w/o Apple having any knowledge of this?
No, not likely. They've been seeing electronic gear in a box with a dial on it all of their lives. In fact, just about every electronic piece of equipment I own is some sort of box with some sort of dial on it. The "dial" on my VCR is even a "click wheel."
Who woulda thunk that a thing in a box would look vaguely like a thing in a box. The TR-1 itself looked rather like a table radio except for its size and standing long side up to slip in a pocket, instead of long side down to rest on a table. Form followed function, and the form was largely determined by the fact the case was predominantely a speaker enclosure (plus battery box).
It's not like this is some mega-complicated design... it's a small, sqaure MP3 player.
And honestly, if you saw them side by side you wouldn't think they looked any more similar than a table radio and the TR-1. For starters there's about the same proportinal difference in size. The photo of the TR-1 in the story is about life size. Rather noticably larger than a pack of cigarettes, including (which doesn't show in the photo) thickness.
If you put these two devices next to each other with a modern, slim, pocket calculator you'd think the iPod looked far more like the calculator than the radio.
Perhaps the author is reacting to the entirely overhyped nonsense about the iPod's design "innovation." The reason it took so much work to do the "design" of the iPod was specifically because it's just a project box. You just go try and make a project box unique. It's just a bloody box.
Apple managed to do this. When you see an iPod a block away you know it's an iPod. Period. From a block away it bears absolutely no resemblence to the TR-1. Up close the iPod has "fondalability." The TR-1 does not.
This, however, is not technical innovation. It is marketing, and it is marketing again that has given people the idea that the marketing is itself innovation in the device.
It's just a pocket radio. What do you want it to look like, a bunny or something?
KFG
. . .the purpose of exteriors is to protect the interiors. . .
First fly rods came in bags to protect their finish. Then they started putting the bags in aluminum tubes. Then they started polishing and anodizing the tubes so that they looked nice, until they got all scratched up in the trunk of the car, so then they started putting the tubes in Cordura Nylon covers.
Any day now I expect to start seeing shrink wrap for the Nylon. Then it'll be UV protection for the shrink wrap.
Still, to be fair, the purpose of a screen is not merely to protect the interior of the device. You're also supposed to be able to look through it at the interior of the device.
KFG
As my dear, old granny used to say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
Oh, bloody hell. Now that would be deviant.
KFG
Well, perhaps I'm jaded by being a guy who's comfortable with a soldering iron in his hand, or perhaps that simply makes me aware how simple the device really is.
Open it up? There's nothing to open up. Really. It's just a blinkenlichten box in a bunny suit (ok, the ear thingy is spinnenmoteren, but that's really just the same thing as a blinkenlicht when you get down to it).
Learn how to use your computer/the Internet to switch an LED on and off and you can just make any device like this you want, for a fraction the $200 price, with stuff from Radio Shack. If you're willing to pay the price just get one of these bunnies and bust the plastic shell open. Now put the lights in anything you want, and attach the ear motor to a flag it can move up and down, or a door it can open and close, or a camera it can rotate, or an Airsoft BB gun it can. . .
Hey, go read that article. It's far more advanced than this bunny thingy, which is actually pretty 1970.
The only thing that sets this device apart from anything is the bunny suit, not the technology behind it. Well, that and the idea that you'd rather have a Tux doll burp when a torrent is complete instead of just having your computer go "Ping!"
And if you leave out the Internet part, but leave in the wireless part, that's actually pretty 1920. By 1950 any eight year old geek could show you how to do it. Forgive me if saying "On the Internet!" leaves me somewhat underwhelmed.
KFG
KFG
how are they the problem?
By not giving the theater owners a fair cut, say 50/50, instead of soaking the opening receipts for themselves?
It's a wonder how Slashdot is glad that illegal activities are forcing people to change how they do business.
Illegal activities? You're suggesting now that I should be arrested for buying DVDs and watching Encore instead of going to the theater? I'm afraid I wasn't aware that not going to the theater was a crime, let alone in any way analogous to stealing bread.
Stop sympathising with people who break the law.
Ah, well, ya see, I haven't done that. What I've done is joined the people who don't go to theaters anymore because the experience sucks, and you might note that story which I'm commenting under is about buying DVDs rather than going to the theater.
I've never downloaded a movie or TV show. Most of them suck too hard to make it worthwhile anyway. Yes, that's the fault of the people who made them.
There's some decent older stuff out there though, ya know, the stuff that when I saw it first run in the theaters (or on TV) 40 years ago they promised me it would be perfectly legal to freely copy when I got to be my age. That's was before they pulled their hands out from behind their backs and said, "Ha ha! Only joking."
Social contract? What fucking social contract?
KFG
Why the hell isn't it already here?
Simple enough, people don't want them. They're perfectly happy just pushing the "on" button of the radio if they want a weather report or to hear a song. They can even carry the "on" button around with them these days.
You could, if you really wanted to, just plug the radio into The Clapper; and we've seen how that's had a cultural impact equal to the cell phone.
KFG
. . .novelties with very mundane technology that's just hyped up. . .
Blinkenlichten in a bunny suit.
KFG
Batter up!
KFG
merekat technology. That'll kick a WiFi bunny's cottony little arse.
Or how about a cute, plush Tux that burps real rancid herring smell everytime a kernel patch is released? A Hello Kitty the spits up a real simulated hairball when there's a sale at Penney's?
Boy, this technology stuff sure is fun. The future's so bright I have to go barf.
KFG