The Samsung OLED is a working prototype of a 17" computer display running at 1600x1200. Product launch will be next year.
The Seiko Epson is only an anouncment about a 40" TV display that will be productized for 2007 (marketing speak for..."our engineers just laughed at us so we made up some numbers").
I predict the "Decamillenium bug"! Think of all those boxes that are still running 8000 years from now switching from 9999-12-31 to 10000-01-01, there goes the lexically sorted database.
I am a designer of cellphone cameras and offer the following insight: Our cameras primary mode of operation is 'fully automatic'. This includes auto exposure, auto white balance, auto flash use (yes, some cellphone cameras come with flash now)....auto everything really. Click and shoot. Nothing else. No need for a manual.
That said, the full auto mode is targeted to satisfy the majority of users. Then there are those users that are willing to spend the time WITH the manual to get more out of the camera. Override Auto White Balance to your own satisfaction. Take pictures of the stars by overriding the Auto Exposure forcing the flash off. Do thousands of other non-trivial things the camera is capable of. It is completely up to the cellphone manufacterers (marketing) to allow or ignore these extra features.
I for one am happy to see that Lego is making some serious changes. I disagree that it is the youth that is to blame. I have several young cousins that love to play with Lego but I see them less and less impressed with the "put these 4 custom pieces together and you have a Star-Jedi-Saurus-O-Tron-Laser-Car-Thingy". In my opinion Lego took to much to the 'build it once' toys and todays youth, just like in the good old days gets its real pleasure from the huge collection of small blocks with which you can build a House, a Plane, a Car or even a Spaceship.
Just before christmass I walked into a newly found Lego store at Valley Fair Mall (popular luxury mall in San Jose) and was discusted by the choices offered. Crappy replica's of crappy movies and stories that would not add anything of value to a kid's Lego collection other then a bunch of unusable custom pieces. Let alone the rediculous prices.
Rethink your strategy Lego. What worked in the past will really work in the future, there is still time since there is still no competition!
given the current mess of objectionable content floating around on the internet it is about time we get our act together.
Before you flame me about how your favorite information should be free consider that information includes: - child porn pictures or other snuff - virus/worm/hacking tool source code and instructions - stolen intelectual property (for example: HL2 source) - [fill in other human rights violation here]
Some of the above might still not be a black and white example of where to draw the line, but at least there are gray areas that need to be discussed on an international level. The conclusion will likely be the need for more then the current inability to remove internationally-agreed-upon unwanted content.
The UN seems to be the right place for this discussion. Just say it out loud "United Nations". Discussions about wether this organization is efficient at all are to be taken up with your national representatives:)
If you live in or around San Jose California you quickly become familiar with El Camino Real. Indeed not the place to get you from point A to point B very quickly. I do have a fun reccommendation for anyone in Silicon Valley though. Pick a sunny weekend and drive El Camino Real allll the way to San Francisco! Is quite a trip that gets you through an amazing amount of interesting, quircky, rich, poor, really poor and other weird neighbourhoods. Fun, really!
The Dutch men are the tallest male population in the world. The average full grown male in the Netherlands is just under "6'1 (american man average at "5'9)
not claiming this has any relevance to the incoming, just a fun little fact for your friday:-)
companies are afraid of losing their current customers. My question to the Slashdot community is this: is that a valid concern?
No it is not! The amount of US businesses that are taking a legal road to hold on to customers is sickening. This is anti-inovation. Wasn't there something about free-trade in this country? I always asumed that was a two way street, where new companies where allowed to coexist next to esthablished companies AND customers where allowed to make their own free choice with whom they did business.
When the 'number portability' issue is solved, there will be just as many phone companies who end up with MORE customers as there will be ones with LESS. If you think you are a company that will lose customers I suggest you step up on your service.
I can't believe the amount of posters that come up with 'reasons' why this leaking of the source code would be a good thing. Think about it, 4+ years of a companies hard work just leaked (to competitors). HL2 is leaps and bounds ahead of it's competition on many fronts, any bennefit of this leak is quickly wiped away by providing your competition with the full insight to where you are now. It is not the cut-and-paste that Valve will be worried about, but the ability to read how their algorithms work. That piece of intelectual property is the core of Valves worth. It being available to anyone outside Valve is a serious threat to the further growth and development of this great company.
Have a look at the Handspring Treo 600. This cellphone, with a palm (Palm5) build in, is getting some rave reviews (best of CeBit). I very much agree with you that the right combo is a cellphone with PDA capabilities and not the other way around. My single biggest issue with anything out there is the 'input capabilities'. I have still not come to terms with grafiti or any of it's siblings, and don't get me started on the alphanumeric input through a numeric keypad...thats just evil:-)
Anyways, the handspring has this fully integrated qwerty keyboard and I have had a chance to try it. Works much better then I expected. I managed to type someones address as they where giving it to me.
Well, my father was recently telling me that he was considering repainting the garage with some kind of latex paint but was concerned about wether it would bond appropriatly to the wall. He wanted to see results of how that would work out...
I can allready see him going to MSN image search and searching for "Latex Bondage"
yeah, this was taken from some silly flash clip about parents and the internet...
Your are ofcourse correct. Science fiction doesn't by defenition have to match science reality, the genre allows some breathing room. In literature this has been nicely fixed by adding a new (sub) genre that of "Hard Science Fiction".
Flubber == Science Fiction Flubber != Hard Science Fiction
wow, you had me upto the "force-field" thingy. The topic is about use of hypothetical scientific concepts. And though a 'significantly advanced technology will seem to us like magic' your expanding force-field suffers from a few flaws: You still need a scientificaly plausible explenation for it if you want to use in the movie. It doesn't save the scene either. Still the bulging eyeballs (as you said) and the 'force-field' would be expending probably even slower then the rush of air in the original scene, which would leave our govern[backspaces]actor dead before the air arives.
The idea of linking Real World(tm) money to MMORPG ingame money is exactly what Project Entropia is all about. You start out with the bare minimum of clothes, tools and skills and are only able to upgrade and buy stuff with in game money, which you don't have yet. To get money in the game you have two options: 1) Exchange real money for ingame money 2) Make money in the game by performing services, selling items, doing stuff, trading, gambling...
The most novel aspect of the game is that it allows you to exchange ingame money back into real money too.
Some things to note about this game is that stuff deteriorates, so over time without updating your items they would lose their monetary value.
What I liked about the idea is that for a certain amount of real money you can buy yourself the skills and tools to keep you busy for a certain amount of time. Then when you want to continue playing you have to either put in an enormous effort to make money in the game, or simply add some more real money. You are paying for playing. Not sure if it is very well balanced in Project Entropia, but the idea is interesting.
I wouldn't worry to much about those high resolution displays yet. Modern LCD's support multiple resoltions too. The difference is that LCD's have a sweet spot (their native resolution) but they typically stretch or shrink to support the legacy resolutions that you wish to use.
How to stay in shape when you are a geek: The simple answer: Don't. Really, you work 10 hours a day behind a computer. You have managed to justify this behaviour for yourself. You plan to do this for the rest of your life. No time for silly socializing, let alone mingling with the other gender. So, why the need to stay in shape? The only other people that will notice you are other geeks at the LAN. Don't worry about it beeing unhealthy either, by the time you keel over because your arteries have clogged up (50-ish) you will have become obsolete and are allready the laughing stock of younger more talented more dedicated geeks.
or
Get a life(tm). To have a life, you would want to start out by experimenting with a social life. Make friends. Now make friends outside your company. Have stuff to talk about. Be happy(c)(tm)(r). Find the things that you like. For all these things to succeed, the key is "hobbies". Find them. Now find a 'sports' hobby. Experience the enormous amount of energy you feel when participating in a sports a few times a week. You will end up with all this fun stuff...and it will solve the belly problem as a side bonus.
Me? I play volleyball, I run, hike, bike, ski, board (wake&snow) and have [censored] with my wife. I play the piano. I read sci-fi. I read Harry Potter. I read (speudo-)philosophy. I play with Lego. I travel to weird countries. I play PlanetSide. I party with friends who don't let me drive while under the influence of alcohol. I'm a member of Clan Erinyes the happiest clan around
Actually, there are words for really large numbers. And 2^128 isn't that large.
Here is the full number: 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 and here is how you pronounce it in the american system: three hundred forty undecillion, two hundred eighty two decillion, three hundred sixty six nonillion, nine hundred twenty octillion, nine hundred thirty eight septillion, four hundred sixty three sextillion, four hundred sixty three quintillion, three hundred seventy four quadrillion, six hundred seven trillion, four hundred thirty one billion, seven hundred sixty eight million, two hundred eleven thousand, four hundred fifty six
or in the European system: three hundred forty sextillion, two hundred eighty two quintilliard, three hundred sixty six quintillion, nine hundred twenty quadrilliard, nine hundred thirty eight quadrillion, four hundred sixty three trilliard, four hundred sixty three trillion, three hundred seventy four billiard, six hundred seven billion, four hundred thirty one milliard, seven hundred sixty eight million, two hundred eleven thousand, four hundred fifty six
It's tough fighting the right battles on Slashdot. Everyone and their uncle has an opinion here and, stunningly, most of those are not the same as yours (or mine). Though English is still not my first language, I have been putting in an effort to better it since I happened to live in California. I have actually picked up a few grammar lessons here on slashdot:-) And yes, like most other posters I am frequently guilty of grammatical laziness. The thing is, I don't really care all to much. It is rare that I can't get the gist of what someone is trying to say in a post. Whether it is obfuscated through l34t speak or "it is language wrong is you know yes" everyone has the right to express themselves out here the way they see fit. Kinda the good thing about slashdot.
Checking grammar takes time and effort, thus it becomes a tradeoff with the importance the poster assigns to the ideas he or she is trying to convey.
Like, I put some time into the above sentence:-) (hope you like it). Yet, my original post in this (lonely) thread was a quicky "who cool comercial!"
Do you really care I misspelled commercial?
Man, I'm so bored. I'm sorry for going on so long. I accept your apology and must say that I wasn't really looking for one though it's good to just say 'sorry man, lets just be friend' (or as we say in Holland "Why can't we all just get a Bong";-).
You yourself are entitled to an opinion and that is all it was.
Why not go play outside instead of posting a non-informative reply to someone's simple remark on slashdot. Let's just say you covered your spelling-elitist self with the remark "i'm not trying to personally attack traa". But since you seem to want some form of explanation for my shortcomings, let me go over a few points:
1) English is my 2nd language, after Dutch (en mijn Nederlands is prima, eikel). 2) This is slashdot. For fun with spelling maybe you should try www.dictionary.com. 3) Not ever did any of my English teachers tell me it was ok to leave out capitals. Being the spelling nazi that you aspire to be, you should at least have been consistent. Puzzle: find the capital letter in your post. 4) Comparing programming languages to regular languages on slashdot shows a level of insight for which this margin is to small to explain the psychoanalysis.
Slashdot Mirror
The Samsung OLED is a working prototype of a 17" computer display running at 1600x1200. Product launch will be next year.
The Seiko Epson is only an anouncment about a 40" TV display that will be productized for 2007 (marketing speak for..."our engineers just laughed at us so we made up some numbers").
"zoek" == "search" in Dutch
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
I just paid $430 to have a plumber replace two toilets. $180 for the two new toilets, $200 labor cost(!) and $50 to dispose of the old toilets.
Somehow I wasn't shocked.
This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Kodak is way behind in the digital camera market now would it?
If you can't join em, sue em?
I predict the "Decamillenium bug"! Think of all those boxes that are still running 8000 years from now switching from 9999-12-31 to 10000-01-01, there goes the lexically sorted database.
(j/k)
I am a designer of cellphone cameras and offer the following insight: Our cameras primary mode of operation is 'fully automatic'. This includes auto exposure, auto white balance, auto flash use (yes, some cellphone cameras come with flash now)....auto everything really. Click and shoot. Nothing else. No need for a manual.
That said, the full auto mode is targeted to satisfy the majority of users. Then there are those users that are willing to spend the time WITH the manual to get more out of the camera. Override Auto White Balance to your own satisfaction. Take pictures of the stars by overriding the Auto Exposure forcing the flash off. Do thousands of other non-trivial things the camera is capable of. It is completely up to the cellphone manufacterers (marketing) to allow or ignore these extra features.
I for one am happy to see that Lego is making some serious changes. I disagree that it is the youth that is to blame. I have several young cousins that love to play with Lego but I see them less and less impressed with the "put these 4 custom pieces together and you have a Star-Jedi-Saurus-O-Tron-Laser-Car-Thingy". In my opinion Lego took to much to the 'build it once' toys and todays youth, just like in the good old days gets its real pleasure from the huge collection of small blocks with which you can build a House, a Plane, a Car or even a Spaceship.
Just before christmass I walked into a newly found Lego store at Valley Fair Mall (popular luxury mall in San Jose) and was discusted by the choices offered. Crappy replica's of crappy movies and stories that would not add anything of value to a kid's Lego collection other then a bunch of unusable custom pieces. Let alone the rediculous prices.
Rethink your strategy Lego. What worked in the past will really work in the future, there is still time since there is still no competition!
given the current mess of objectionable content floating around on the internet it is about time we get our act together.
:)
Before you flame me about how your favorite information should be free consider that information includes:
- child porn pictures or other snuff
- virus/worm/hacking tool source code and instructions
- stolen intelectual property (for example: HL2 source)
- [fill in other human rights violation here]
Some of the above might still not be a black and white example of where to draw the line, but at least there are gray areas that need to be discussed on an international level. The conclusion will likely be the need for more then the current inability to remove internationally-agreed-upon unwanted content.
The UN seems to be the right place for this discussion. Just say it out loud "United Nations".
Discussions about wether this organization is efficient at all are to be taken up with your national representatives
If you live in or around San Jose California you quickly become familiar with El Camino Real. Indeed not the place to get you from point A to point B very quickly. I do have a fun reccommendation for anyone in Silicon Valley though. Pick a sunny weekend and drive El Camino Real allll the way to San Francisco! Is quite a trip that gets you through an amazing amount of interesting, quircky, rich, poor, really poor and other weird neighbourhoods. Fun, really!
The Dutch men are the tallest male population in the world. The average full grown male in the Netherlands is just under "6'1 (american man average at "5'9)
:-)
not claiming this has any relevance to the incoming, just a fun little fact for your friday
companies are afraid of losing their current customers. My question to the Slashdot community is this: is that a valid concern?
No it is not! The amount of US businesses that are taking a legal road to hold on to customers is sickening. This is anti-inovation. Wasn't there something about free-trade in this country? I always asumed that was a two way street, where new companies where allowed to coexist next to esthablished companies AND customers where allowed to make their own free choice with whom they did business.
When the 'number portability' issue is solved, there will be just as many phone companies who end up with MORE customers as there will be ones with LESS. If you think you are a company that will lose customers I suggest you step up on your service.
computer, please provide me with the same stuff they are smoking over at Google!
I can't believe the amount of posters that come up with 'reasons' why this leaking of the source code would be a good thing. Think about it, 4+ years of a companies hard work just leaked (to competitors). HL2 is leaps and bounds ahead of it's competition on many fronts, any bennefit of this leak is quickly wiped away by providing your competition with the full insight to where you are now. It is not the cut-and-paste that Valve will be worried about, but the ability to read how their algorithms work. That piece of intelectual property is the core of Valves worth. It being available to anyone outside Valve is a serious threat to the further growth and development of this great company.
A truly sad day.
Have a look at the Handspring Treo 600. This cellphone, with a palm (Palm5) build in, is getting some rave reviews (best of CeBit). I very much agree with you that the right combo is a cellphone with PDA capabilities and not the other way around. My single biggest issue with anything out there is the 'input capabilities'. I have still not come to terms with grafiti or any of it's siblings, and don't get me started on the alphanumeric input through a numeric keypad...thats just evil :-)
Anyways, the handspring has this fully integrated qwerty keyboard and I have had a chance to try it. Works much better then I expected. I managed to type someones address as they where giving it to me.
and here is the link to that very funny Flash clip about keeping your parents off the internet.
Well, my father was recently telling me that he was considering repainting the garage with some kind of latex paint but was concerned about wether it would bond appropriatly to the wall. He wanted to see results of how that would work out...
I can allready see him going to MSN image search and searching for "Latex Bondage"
yeah, this was taken from some silly flash clip about parents and the internet...
Your are ofcourse correct. Science fiction doesn't by defenition have to match science reality, the genre allows some breathing room. In literature this has been nicely fixed by adding a new (sub) genre that of "Hard Science Fiction".
Flubber == Science Fiction
Flubber != Hard Science Fiction
wow, you had me upto the "force-field" thingy. The topic is about use of hypothetical scientific concepts. And though a 'significantly advanced technology will seem to us like magic' your expanding force-field suffers from a few flaws:
You still need a scientificaly plausible explenation for it if you want to use in the movie. It doesn't save the scene either. Still the bulging eyeballs (as you said) and the 'force-field' would be expending probably even slower then the rush of air in the original scene, which would leave our govern[backspaces]actor dead before the air arives.
sorry.
The idea of linking Real World(tm) money to MMORPG ingame money is exactly what Project Entropia is all about. You start out with the bare minimum of clothes, tools and skills and are only able to upgrade and buy stuff with in game money, which you don't have yet. To get money in the game you have two options:
1) Exchange real money for ingame money
2) Make money in the game by performing services, selling items, doing stuff, trading, gambling...
The most novel aspect of the game is that it allows you to exchange ingame money back into real money too.
Some things to note about this game is that stuff deteriorates, so over time without updating your items they would lose their monetary value.
What I liked about the idea is that for a certain amount of real money you can buy yourself the skills and tools to keep you busy for a certain amount of time. Then when you want to continue playing you have to either put in an enormous effort to make money in the game, or simply add some more real money. You are paying for playing. Not sure if it is very well balanced in Project Entropia, but the idea is interesting.
I wouldn't worry to much about those high resolution displays yet. Modern LCD's support multiple resoltions too. The difference is that LCD's have a sweet spot (their native resolution) but they typically stretch or shrink to support the legacy resolutions that you wish to use.
I thought the RIAA was more like
1. PROFIT!!!
2.
3. Sue your customers, and make a bunch of penniless college kids into matryrs in the media.
How to stay in shape when you are a geek:
The simple answer: Don't.
Really, you work 10 hours a day behind a computer. You have managed to justify this behaviour for yourself. You plan to do this for the rest of your life. No time for silly socializing, let alone mingling with the other gender. So, why the need to stay in shape? The only other people that will notice you are other geeks at the LAN. Don't worry about it beeing unhealthy either, by the time you keel over because your arteries have clogged up (50-ish) you will have become obsolete and are allready the laughing stock of younger more talented more dedicated geeks.
or
Get a life(tm). To have a life, you would want to start out by experimenting with a social life. Make friends. Now make friends outside your company. Have stuff to talk about. Be happy(c)(tm)(r). Find the things that you like. For all these things to succeed, the key is "hobbies". Find them. Now find a 'sports' hobby. Experience the enormous amount of energy you feel when participating in a sports a few times a week. You will end up with all this fun stuff...and it will solve the belly problem as a side bonus.
Me? I play volleyball, I run, hike, bike, ski, board (wake&snow) and have [censored] with my wife. I play the piano. I read sci-fi. I read Harry Potter. I read (speudo-)philosophy. I play with Lego. I travel to weird countries. I play PlanetSide. I party with friends who don't let me drive while under the influence of alcohol. I'm a member of Clan Erinyes the happiest clan around
I'm a 35 year old Senior Software Engineer.
I'm happy.
Actually, there are words for really large numbers. And 2^128 isn't that large.
Here is the full number:
340282366920938463463374607431768211456
and here is how you pronounce it in the american system:
three hundred forty undecillion,
two hundred eighty two decillion,
three hundred sixty six nonillion,
nine hundred twenty octillion,
nine hundred thirty eight septillion,
four hundred sixty three sextillion,
four hundred sixty three quintillion,
three hundred seventy four quadrillion,
six hundred seven trillion,
four hundred thirty one billion,
seven hundred sixty eight million,
two hundred eleven thousand,
four hundred fifty six
or in the European system:
three hundred forty sextillion,
two hundred eighty two quintilliard,
three hundred sixty six quintillion,
nine hundred twenty quadrilliard,
nine hundred thirty eight quadrillion,
four hundred sixty three trilliard,
four hundred sixty three trillion,
three hundred seventy four billiard,
six hundred seven billion,
four hundred thirty one milliard,
seven hundred sixty eight million,
two hundred eleven thousand,
four hundred fifty six
try it yourself
It's tough fighting the right battles on Slashdot. Everyone and their uncle has an opinion here and, stunningly, most of those are not the same as yours (or mine). Though English is still not my first language, I have been putting in an effort to better it since I happened to live in California. I have actually picked up a few grammar lessons here on slashdot :-)
:-)
;-).
:-)
And yes, like most other posters I am frequently guilty of grammatical laziness. The thing is, I don't really care all to much. It is rare that I can't get the gist of what someone is trying to say in a post. Whether it is obfuscated through l34t speak or "it is language wrong is you know yes" everyone has the right to express themselves out here the way they see fit. Kinda the good thing about slashdot.
Checking grammar takes time and effort, thus it becomes a tradeoff with the importance the poster assigns to the ideas he or she is trying to convey.
Like, I put some time into the above sentence
(hope you like it). Yet, my original post in this (lonely) thread was a quicky "who cool comercial!"
Do you really care I misspelled commercial?
Man, I'm so bored. I'm sorry for going on so long. I accept your apology and must say that I wasn't really looking for one though it's good to just say 'sorry man, lets just be friend' (or as we say in Holland "Why can't we all just get a Bong"
You yourself are entitled to an opinion and that is all it was.
Sincerely,
Traa
PS That was not a real saying in Holland
Dear Mr. Sheesh,
Why not go play outside instead of posting a non-informative reply to someone's simple remark on slashdot. Let's just say you covered your spelling-elitist self with the remark "i'm not trying to personally attack traa". But since you seem to want some form of explanation for my shortcomings, let me go over a few points:
1) English is my 2nd language, after Dutch (en mijn Nederlands is prima, eikel).
2) This is slashdot. For fun with spelling maybe you should try www.dictionary.com.
3) Not ever did any of my English teachers tell me it was ok to leave out capitals. Being the spelling nazi that you aspire to be, you should at least have been consistent. Puzzle: find the capital letter in your post.
4) Comparing programming languages to regular languages on slashdot shows a level of insight for which this margin is to small to explain the psychoanalysis.
At least try something humorous next time.
Sincerely,
Traa