No, people were pretty much crushed by tanks. You see, GP was basically repeating (and I assume satirizing) the party line. For instance, if you are in the United States and do a google image search for Tiananmen Square you mostly find pictures of tanks. Do a China google images search for the same term and you get a much more patriotic view of things. Hmm... the ratio used to be a lot more unbalanced... I wonder if Google is intentionally letting the filtering slide, or if reporters have simply found ways around the google.cn filtering rules.
Chording keyboards? They've been around long enough for people to have heard about them, but they so far have failed to catch on. I think most people just wouldn't be able to grok using it.
Trackball sized pad on your hip? Would get uncomfortable after a while.
Head mounted displays have serious problems from headaches to inability to quickly change focus to the real world.
Speach recognition? Still not that great in studio quality silence, will be a disaster to use in loud areas, or places with multiple people speaking (Office, subway/bus, war zones...)
Not to say that these technologies and similar won't have incremental improvements that will make them less annoying to use, I doubt they'll able to be able to pass the "can you use them while driving a car" test. I guess what I'm thinking of is more along the lines of direct neural link. From preliminary experiments, it seems that the input part is practically trivial: the brain reorganizes itself around the electrodes to best communicate. There have also been extremely primitive visial input systems devised: basically the CCD of a video camera is connected to a subject's tongue. when activated, the subject can't yet make a visual picture from the stimulus provided, but they can react to the information presented within a short time (E.G. blindfolded subjects being able to tell which direction a brightly colored object is coming towards them from.) While using the tongue may seem odd for visual input, it is the most logical short term attachment site for neuron stimulus: highly innervated, fairly non-invasive, and the moisture allows for better electrical contact. The tongue would probably not be a good long-term site for neural communication, but just shows that the nervous system can adapt to information being presented in a different way than normal and allows us to refine theories and technology for actually using direct neural interfaces.
I suppose with a direct neural interface (I don't really think it's that far away) and omnipresent internet access, we'd be halfway to transuman. Just need to cross that pesky "living forever" barrier, develop near-instantaneous travel and solve the little problem of energy usage, and we'd be fully into the post-human state. But hey... instantaneous communication (essentially technologically mediated ESP to someone who doesn't understand the tech) is a good first step to godhood.
From the last sentence of the article... "The reality is that we are all talking with... many of the large ISPs in the United States."
I.E. They realize this is one of the major hurdles, and hope that the ISPs will allow users to do this. The theory is that it adds value to the ISP's services offered. Maybe one family can't afford broadband, but two families can afford to share it. But the real use of this service seems to be for roaming about with a laptop or something... you'll have access to a hotspot wherever there is a FON customer.
The owner's personal LAN is different than owner's personal internet connection. This just means that there is a firewall between the FON part of the wireless network and the owner's personal wireless network so they can't access/snoop your personal information/traffic.
Because you also get the privelege of using the router of anyone else who has the service. Assuming wide enough adoption, this would mean you could use Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere. Not very useful for me right now as I don't have a laptop (and not to mention it's probably not widespread enough.) I can, however, see that in the future this would be extremely convienient. Especially if we are able to figure out an alternative I/O to the standard mouse/keyboard/screen model that would take up much smaller real estate than a laptop... basically access to the internet's information wherever you go. I can see why the company is trying to get entrenched in this business early... it will be the future of communications. The question is whether this particular company will be around long enough to reap the fruit of it's labor.
While what you say makes sense on the outside, the truth may be a little scarier than that.
According to the results of some experiments in quantum physics the act of observing an event can change the outcome. (I don't feel like looking up the names or whatnot, someone more familiar with the topic feel free to fill in details or refute my line of thinking. I think the experiment had something to do with unexpected results in the double slit experiment when one particle is propelled through the slits at a time, and a whether or not it is directly observed which slit the particle passes through.)
Okay, technically speaking, observing the event doesn't actually change the outcome, but collapses the probablility function into one or another outcome. But the interesting thing is that observing some other factor of the event after the fact can expand the oringal outcome back into the probability function. To understand this statement requires an understanding of the phrase "probability function" as I am using it. It basically means something along the lines of if there are two possible outcomes, what actually occurs is a blending between the two. For instance in the double slit experiement, a single particle fired at two slits will take BOTH paths. The particle also takes the right path, and the left path, and neither path all at the same time if it's waveform is not collapsed to one individual outcome. And it's not something like "Oh, you mean of all the particles fired, they make a random distribution?" Because a single particle fired at the slits takes the left path, the same particle also takes the right path, and in addition to that it takes both paths and no paths. Sort of like the concept behind Schroedinger's cat, where untill the box is opened the cat is neither actually alive nor dead. Some take this as the observer does not know whether the cat is alive or dead, but what Schroedinger meant is that the cat literally exists in a superposition between the state of being alive and the state of being dead.
So, what does this this all mean in response to your post? In the quantum world, observing a thing will ultimately change that thing. How the thing is observed will change how that thing is changed. How your understand physical phenomenon will change the way you observe it, so a difference in understanding can, according to a stretch quantum theory, change the outcome or possibly even the structure of the nature of the thing.
Why do I get the feeling that there is a zen master smiling somewhere based on what I just wrote?
The Mall of Americas is full of quite commercialized venues. To find that disc, you'd have to venture into an indie record store (I'm pretty sure Twin Cities has a few of them... it's just that kind of area.) Brick and Mortar stores are also not the only place to find cds
That "and maybe instruments" line is kinda funny. Let's put the costs together for a traditional four piece rock and roll band with halfway decent equipment capable of gigging out once every other weekend.
$1000 drum set
$250 drum microphones and cables to record/play live
2X the following for two guitars
$750 guitar
$500 amplifier
$250 effects pedals
$175 straps, cables, etc
$3,400 for two guitarists
$200 2 vocal microphones, stands, cables
$150 for microphones to mic the instrunments (if you line out, you're never going to sell a record)
$1000 PA system (Even if the club has one, you'll need this to practice with)
This brings us up to a little over 7,000 dollars for quite modest equipment if the band wants to sound good enough to play a local bar or club. Yes, you can get buy with a $200 acoustic guitar and write some songs that will wow the girls at a party or maybe even captivate a coffe house croud, but that's not going to get you anywhere close to professional unless you have extraordinary talent.
While it would appear that a genre like techno could be done a lot cheaper, you're not going to be able to get a sound that's good enough for people to actually pay for if you just do it on a $1000 PC. You'll need several synthesisers, drum machine, high end equalizing mixing board and other hardware. On top of that you'll probably need a few thousand dollars in software (if you're making money with the project, you'll get your ass handed to you if you pirate the stuff. open source software and amateur commercial stuff (E.G. Garageband) won't get you anywhere near a professional career.)
Let's go other styles of music. Classical music would probably take a post-grad degree and an instrunment that costs well over $10,000 to get you anywhere near pro level, and that's just one person. Hip-hop? Decent set of decks and mixer will run about $1000, but you'll have spent a number of years digging and several thousands of dollars on records before you have a colletion that will gain any respect. If your hip-hop is studio crafted and not mixed by a DJ, see techno music for costs. Folk music? Still be prepared to spend thousands of dollars if you want to get out of the coffee house, and that's assuming you can find a market.
Add on top of all this up front costs in merchandising, advertising, travel costs, studio time, a practice space, replacing lost/broken equipment, theft and the opportunity costs involved with the time spent getting your music together and getting your name out there... it is very difficult to maintain a full time professional career, maintain your home and health, keep a social life and put forth the energy to bringing a band to life. If you have a family to take care of, something will eventually give as there likely isn't enough time and money. Even large name professional musicians that don't have any other job and don't have to worry about cleaning the house and repairing the toilet or a broken window at home because they can afford to hire someone to do that will have problems maintaining a family due to the time constraints of touring.
So yes, it is possible to create music with $1000 of equipment. You will most likely not be able to turn that music into a career, it takes a much higher level of dedication both financially and timewise. $1000 is about what it costs to rent a studio for a day to record a 5 or 6 track demo to shop around to distributors or clubs. After you have this master demo pressed, you have to spend even more money to send it out to the pressing shop to have cds made. A CDR will get you laughed out of most clubs, just as sending a cassette into a radio station in the eighties never got you anywhere.
If someone is forced to sign a contract under those conditions, they have signed under duress and a good lawyer can get them out of the contract. But if someone signs the contract without fully understanding every line because they are simply impatient and want to get started on making money, then that's the signer's fault.
I think it more goes to show that Americans can produce something worthwhile when it is not an advertiser pays for-profit system.
It really really makes sense. In traditional transactions the customer is the entity which pays for the transaction. In advertising supported media, the customer would therefore be the advertiser. What is the advertiser purchasing? The viewing time of the audience. So, this means that the audience is the PRODUCT rather than the customer.
It makes sense that a company will do its best to provide the best product it can to the customer, so advertising supported television will do it's best to provide the best audience to the advertisers. What sort of people make the best product then? Those easilly swayed by advertising. That means it is fiscally irresponsible for an advertising supported media company to produce intelligent, thought provoking material. Profitable shows have to be able to appeal to the lowest common denominator, if they appeal to more discerning audiences that has very little effect on the bottom line, and indeed makes for a more inferior product. The TV show/radio broadcast/etc is simply used to ensnare viewers, they are more like the machines in a factory that actually make the product the customer buys. It makes sense that TV and most radio appeals mainly to the lowest common denominator, and in fact creating programming that makes the audence dumber, or at least puts them in a trance-like state where in theory they are more susceptible to advertising. Ever look into the eyes of someone who has been watching TV for a while? Usually a complete blank stare. And it takes a little time to shake the haze off once their concentration is broken from the tube.
So, in advertiser supported media you may occasionally get a smart show that appeals primarilly to intelligent, discerning people but this is expected to be a fluke rather than the norm. If you want good quality stuff, you either have to go the routes audience supported rather than advertiser supported: either a donation based model such as public television/radio or college radio, or you go with an entirely subscription based model as HBO or Showtime does. Not that everything on audience supported media will be good, and not that everything on advertiser supported media will be good, but audience supported media will carry a much higher proportion of quality programming even if the advertisements themselves are omitted.
One problem I foresee with using the Wii controler or any other handheld 3D analogue on a computer is two handed typing. You'd have to either A)set the controller down to type or B) try to hold the controller while typing. Either way you would likely end up changing your cursor position or view in the process. The problem could be solved with a one handed chording keyboard, but I don't know how many people would be willing to learn how to use them well enough to type with one while manipulating the controller with the other hand.
I suppose you might be able to create a slightly better input device with a glove, where you would hold down a button (say, press thumb in) to start navigating, although I have a feeling that this would be very RSI prone.
And as far as display devices, you are still left with a flat 2D portal into the 3D environment which makes navigation more cumbersome.
Scroll button can be used fairly effectively for the z-plane. Already used for scrollbars? Get a mouse with a second scroll button. But without a large actual 3D display of some sort, the whole thing becomes fairly moot as navigation becomes more of a hassle than the 2D desktop metaphor.
And by the time a full 3D display comes out which is large enough to use more effectively than a standard 2D display, I personally would wager that we will have direct neural links to information anyways. Although working on the framework now and squashing it on a 2D display does at least lessen the catch 22 where people are not developing 3D apps because nobody has a 3D display, and people aren't buying (or even developing) 3D displays because there are no apps for it.
the stuff is very hot and heavy and puts rust marks on your gambeson
Making titanium a much better choice of metal as it is significantly lighter than steel, and doesn't rust. Not sure about the thermal characteristics of titanium and how that would affect heat transfer, but the fact that it is lighter would mean the wearer expends less energy and therefore overheating would be less of a concern.
I'm not sure how much more difficult it would be to work titanium into rings, although most chain maille artists that I know of purchase the links rather than making their own. Titanium wire may also be a bit easier to work with than other forms (sheet, etc.) Welded links would require MIG or TIG, while I assume most handmade welded link chain maille is done with a torch.
Inductive charging and a lower-powered networking tool would allow for the electronics to be completely sealed. Both are fairly commodicized at this point.
What you say? Apple would never do anything like THAT, would they? Taking community created and tested technology and putting it in a slick package would simply be unthinkable.
What are they gonna do next... take on open source operating system, put a slick UI on it and call it their own?
You're probably right. I've heard of places, but probably just in urban legend of sorts. Things like in Texas they have to be on your property, so stories of people dragging bodies back onto the property. Stories I'd normally take with a grain of salt, but I've had a really long week so my brain is fuzzy enough right now to not validate things before I say them. I probably realized the stories were false at the time that I heard them, but... eh.
I know how odd questions can seem like trolls, but I didn't mean to troll. I think another poster answered my question enough that I don't have to post person info. (I assume you understand.)
I didn't think that shooting trespassers was reasonable, but i know that some jurisdictions do allow it under various circumstances. That's why I asked... I suppose I should have just searched for the term "adverse possession" but couldn't initially figure out the key term to search on.
So yeah... I wasn't trying to nail you on using jargon, simply trying to learn.
Question about the language used here. Does this basically mean that in those jurisdictions, a property owner is able to shoot trespassers (or take other such actions as allowed by law) if and only if they have a no trespassing sign posted?
You'd better make sure that you have an excellent power supply and superb cooling if you're running that many drives on a computer. High heat and spotty power run havoc an a hard drive's life expectancy. I really don't see 10 smallish disks being any more reliable than 1 big one.
And then... how are you storing the data? Having the data split up among many different drives causes usability issues where you must make a conscious decision where to put your data each time you save a file. Software is horrible at saving to different locations (not that it can't do it, but requires a lot of user interaction.) This puts multiple drives out of the reach of a large number of users. The possible reliability gains really are not going to be that much.
So the other option is to stripe against several volumes. Here you come into more problems. If you stripe just for size, you are DECREASING your reliability by spreading the data across multiple disks. If one disk fails, the whole thing goes. If you are striping simply for reliability and end up with... say single mirrors of all data there is some increase in reliability, although I have heard many horror stories about what happens when a proprietary RAID card goes out and is not replacable. The data is still sitting on the hardware just fine, but you simply can not get to it without the (now defunct) controller card. Pure software RAID will improve your reliability a little bit, but with a huger performance hit as you are not using the data bus nearly as efficiently as a hardware solution would be.
Or you could just drop the cash on a big drive, and selectively back up any important data. Maybe even get two big drives and mirror them, which would be a much simpler and robust system than having a patchwork of 10 small disks.
In addition to flat out larger hard drive storage sizes, using the perpendicular method will also allow physically smaller hard drives of decent storage ability. The potential benefit to laptops, mp3 players and all other manner of portable devices is quite real.
The problem is you would need an extremely large radiator, as there would only be radiative cooling. There would simply be no convective cooling. Similar to how your car would act if you blocked up the grill and turned off the radiator fan.
Slashdot Mirror
No, people were pretty much crushed by tanks. You see, GP was basically repeating (and I assume satirizing) the party line. For instance, if you are in the United States and do a google image search for Tiananmen Square you mostly find pictures of tanks. Do a China google images search for the same term and you get a much more patriotic view of things. Hmm... the ratio used to be a lot more unbalanced... I wonder if Google is intentionally letting the filtering slide, or if reporters have simply found ways around the google.cn filtering rules.
Chording keyboards? They've been around long enough for people to have heard about them, but they so far have failed to catch on. I think most people just wouldn't be able to grok using it.
Trackball sized pad on your hip? Would get uncomfortable after a while.
Head mounted displays have serious problems from headaches to inability to quickly change focus to the real world.
Speach recognition? Still not that great in studio quality silence, will be a disaster to use in loud areas, or places with multiple people speaking (Office, subway/bus, war zones...) Not to say that these technologies and similar won't have incremental improvements that will make them less annoying to use, I doubt they'll able to be able to pass the "can you use them while driving a car" test. I guess what I'm thinking of is more along the lines of direct neural link. From preliminary experiments, it seems that the input part is practically trivial: the brain reorganizes itself around the electrodes to best communicate. There have also been extremely primitive visial input systems devised: basically the CCD of a video camera is connected to a subject's tongue. when activated, the subject can't yet make a visual picture from the stimulus provided, but they can react to the information presented within a short time (E.G. blindfolded subjects being able to tell which direction a brightly colored object is coming towards them from.) While using the tongue may seem odd for visual input, it is the most logical short term attachment site for neuron stimulus: highly innervated, fairly non-invasive, and the moisture allows for better electrical contact. The tongue would probably not be a good long-term site for neural communication, but just shows that the nervous system can adapt to information being presented in a different way than normal and allows us to refine theories and technology for actually using direct neural interfaces.
I suppose with a direct neural interface (I don't really think it's that far away) and omnipresent internet access, we'd be halfway to transuman. Just need to cross that pesky "living forever" barrier, develop near-instantaneous travel and solve the little problem of energy usage, and we'd be fully into the post-human state. But hey... instantaneous communication (essentially technologically mediated ESP to someone who doesn't understand the tech) is a good first step to godhood.
From the last sentence of the article... "The reality is that we are all talking with... many of the large ISPs in the United States."
I.E. They realize this is one of the major hurdles, and hope that the ISPs will allow users to do this. The theory is that it adds value to the ISP's services offered. Maybe one family can't afford broadband, but two families can afford to share it. But the real use of this service seems to be for roaming about with a laptop or something... you'll have access to a hotspot wherever there is a FON customer.
The owner's personal LAN is different than owner's personal internet connection. This just means that there is a firewall between the FON part of the wireless network and the owner's personal wireless network so they can't access/snoop your personal information/traffic.
That line made me realize that this is the prime location for my new advertising initiative.
Because you also get the privelege of using the router of anyone else who has the service. Assuming wide enough adoption, this would mean you could use Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere. Not very useful for me right now as I don't have a laptop (and not to mention it's probably not widespread enough.) I can, however, see that in the future this would be extremely convienient. Especially if we are able to figure out an alternative I/O to the standard mouse/keyboard/screen model that would take up much smaller real estate than a laptop... basically access to the internet's information wherever you go. I can see why the company is trying to get entrenched in this business early... it will be the future of communications. The question is whether this particular company will be around long enough to reap the fruit of it's labor.
While what you say makes sense on the outside, the truth may be a little scarier than that.
According to the results of some experiments in quantum physics the act of observing an event can change the outcome. (I don't feel like looking up the names or whatnot, someone more familiar with the topic feel free to fill in details or refute my line of thinking. I think the experiment had something to do with unexpected results in the double slit experiment when one particle is propelled through the slits at a time, and a whether or not it is directly observed which slit the particle passes through.)
Okay, technically speaking, observing the event doesn't actually change the outcome, but collapses the probablility function into one or another outcome. But the interesting thing is that observing some other factor of the event after the fact can expand the oringal outcome back into the probability function. To understand this statement requires an understanding of the phrase "probability function" as I am using it. It basically means something along the lines of if there are two possible outcomes, what actually occurs is a blending between the two. For instance in the double slit experiement, a single particle fired at two slits will take BOTH paths. The particle also takes the right path, and the left path, and neither path all at the same time if it's waveform is not collapsed to one individual outcome. And it's not something like "Oh, you mean of all the particles fired, they make a random distribution?" Because a single particle fired at the slits takes the left path, the same particle also takes the right path, and in addition to that it takes both paths and no paths. Sort of like the concept behind Schroedinger's cat, where untill the box is opened the cat is neither actually alive nor dead. Some take this as the observer does not know whether the cat is alive or dead, but what Schroedinger meant is that the cat literally exists in a superposition between the state of being alive and the state of being dead.
So, what does this this all mean in response to your post? In the quantum world, observing a thing will ultimately change that thing. How the thing is observed will change how that thing is changed. How your understand physical phenomenon will change the way you observe it, so a difference in understanding can, according to a stretch quantum theory, change the outcome or possibly even the structure of the nature of the thing.
Why do I get the feeling that there is a zen master smiling somewhere based on what I just wrote?
Her inbox got slashdotted.
Actually, second time offenders are not as rare as you'd think.
Ever hear the phrase zombie host?
The Mall of Americas is full of quite commercialized venues. To find that disc, you'd have to venture into an indie record store (I'm pretty sure Twin Cities has a few of them... it's just that kind of area.) Brick and Mortar stores are also not the only place to find cds
That "and maybe instruments" line is kinda funny. Let's put the costs together for a traditional four piece rock and roll band with halfway decent equipment capable of gigging out once every other weekend.
$1000 drum set
$250 drum microphones and cables to record/play live
$1250 drummer
$500 bass guitar
$500 bass amplifier
$150 bass efects
$125 straps, cables, etc
$1275 for the bassist
2X the following for two guitars
$750 guitar
$500 amplifier
$250 effects pedals
$175 straps, cables, etc
$3,400 for two guitarists
$200 2 vocal microphones, stands, cables
$150 for microphones to mic the instrunments (if you line out, you're never going to sell a record) $1000 PA system (Even if the club has one, you'll need this to practice with)
This brings us up to a little over 7,000 dollars for quite modest equipment if the band wants to sound good enough to play a local bar or club. Yes, you can get buy with a $200 acoustic guitar and write some songs that will wow the girls at a party or maybe even captivate a coffe house croud, but that's not going to get you anywhere close to professional unless you have extraordinary talent.
While it would appear that a genre like techno could be done a lot cheaper, you're not going to be able to get a sound that's good enough for people to actually pay for if you just do it on a $1000 PC. You'll need several synthesisers, drum machine, high end equalizing mixing board and other hardware. On top of that you'll probably need a few thousand dollars in software (if you're making money with the project, you'll get your ass handed to you if you pirate the stuff. open source software and amateur commercial stuff (E.G. Garageband) won't get you anywhere near a professional career.)
Let's go other styles of music. Classical music would probably take a post-grad degree and an instrunment that costs well over $10,000 to get you anywhere near pro level, and that's just one person. Hip-hop? Decent set of decks and mixer will run about $1000, but you'll have spent a number of years digging and several thousands of dollars on records before you have a colletion that will gain any respect. If your hip-hop is studio crafted and not mixed by a DJ, see techno music for costs. Folk music? Still be prepared to spend thousands of dollars if you want to get out of the coffee house, and that's assuming you can find a market.
Add on top of all this up front costs in merchandising, advertising, travel costs, studio time, a practice space, replacing lost/broken equipment, theft and the opportunity costs involved with the time spent getting your music together and getting your name out there... it is very difficult to maintain a full time professional career, maintain your home and health, keep a social life and put forth the energy to bringing a band to life. If you have a family to take care of, something will eventually give as there likely isn't enough time and money. Even large name professional musicians that don't have any other job and don't have to worry about cleaning the house and repairing the toilet or a broken window at home because they can afford to hire someone to do that will have problems maintaining a family due to the time constraints of touring.
So yes, it is possible to create music with $1000 of equipment. You will most likely not be able to turn that music into a career, it takes a much higher level of dedication both financially and timewise. $1000 is about what it costs to rent a studio for a day to record a 5 or 6 track demo to shop around to distributors or clubs. After you have this master demo pressed, you have to spend even more money to send it out to the pressing shop to have cds made. A CDR will get you laughed out of most clubs, just as sending a cassette into a radio station in the eighties never got you anywhere.
If someone is forced to sign a contract under those conditions, they have signed under duress and a good lawyer can get them out of the contract. But if someone signs the contract without fully understanding every line because they are simply impatient and want to get started on making money, then that's the signer's fault.
I think it more goes to show that Americans can produce something worthwhile when it is not an advertiser pays for-profit system.
It really really makes sense. In traditional transactions the customer is the entity which pays for the transaction. In advertising supported media, the customer would therefore be the advertiser. What is the advertiser purchasing? The viewing time of the audience. So, this means that the audience is the PRODUCT rather than the customer.
It makes sense that a company will do its best to provide the best product it can to the customer, so advertising supported television will do it's best to provide the best audience to the advertisers. What sort of people make the best product then? Those easilly swayed by advertising. That means it is fiscally irresponsible for an advertising supported media company to produce intelligent, thought provoking material. Profitable shows have to be able to appeal to the lowest common denominator, if they appeal to more discerning audiences that has very little effect on the bottom line, and indeed makes for a more inferior product. The TV show/radio broadcast/etc is simply used to ensnare viewers, they are more like the machines in a factory that actually make the product the customer buys. It makes sense that TV and most radio appeals mainly to the lowest common denominator, and in fact creating programming that makes the audence dumber, or at least puts them in a trance-like state where in theory they are more susceptible to advertising. Ever look into the eyes of someone who has been watching TV for a while? Usually a complete blank stare. And it takes a little time to shake the haze off once their concentration is broken from the tube.
So, in advertiser supported media you may occasionally get a smart show that appeals primarilly to intelligent, discerning people but this is expected to be a fluke rather than the norm. If you want good quality stuff, you either have to go the routes audience supported rather than advertiser supported: either a donation based model such as public television/radio or college radio, or you go with an entirely subscription based model as HBO or Showtime does. Not that everything on audience supported media will be good, and not that everything on advertiser supported media will be good, but audience supported media will carry a much higher proportion of quality programming even if the advertisements themselves are omitted.
One problem I foresee with using the Wii controler or any other handheld 3D analogue on a computer is two handed typing. You'd have to either A)set the controller down to type or B) try to hold the controller while typing. Either way you would likely end up changing your cursor position or view in the process. The problem could be solved with a one handed chording keyboard, but I don't know how many people would be willing to learn how to use them well enough to type with one while manipulating the controller with the other hand.
I suppose you might be able to create a slightly better input device with a glove, where you would hold down a button (say, press thumb in) to start navigating, although I have a feeling that this would be very RSI prone.
And as far as display devices, you are still left with a flat 2D portal into the 3D environment which makes navigation more cumbersome.
Scroll button can be used fairly effectively for the z-plane. Already used for scrollbars? Get a mouse with a second scroll button. But without a large actual 3D display of some sort, the whole thing becomes fairly moot as navigation becomes more of a hassle than the 2D desktop metaphor.
And by the time a full 3D display comes out which is large enough to use more effectively than a standard 2D display, I personally would wager that we will have direct neural links to information anyways. Although working on the framework now and squashing it on a 2D display does at least lessen the catch 22 where people are not developing 3D apps because nobody has a 3D display, and people aren't buying (or even developing) 3D displays because there are no apps for it.
the stuff is very hot and heavy and puts rust marks on your gambeson
Making titanium a much better choice of metal as it is significantly lighter than steel, and doesn't rust. Not sure about the thermal characteristics of titanium and how that would affect heat transfer, but the fact that it is lighter would mean the wearer expends less energy and therefore overheating would be less of a concern.
I'm not sure how much more difficult it would be to work titanium into rings, although most chain maille artists that I know of purchase the links rather than making their own. Titanium wire may also be a bit easier to work with than other forms (sheet, etc.) Welded links would require MIG or TIG, while I assume most handmade welded link chain maille is done with a torch.
Inductive charging and a lower-powered networking tool would allow for the electronics to be completely sealed. Both are fairly commodicized at this point.
Sarcasm.
What you say? Apple would never do anything like THAT, would they? Taking community created and tested technology and putting it in a slick package would simply be unthinkable.
What are they gonna do next... take on open source operating system, put a slick UI on it and call it their own?
You're probably right. I've heard of places, but probably just in urban legend of sorts. Things like in Texas they have to be on your property, so stories of people dragging bodies back onto the property. Stories I'd normally take with a grain of salt, but I've had a really long week so my brain is fuzzy enough right now to not validate things before I say them. I probably realized the stories were false at the time that I heard them, but... eh.
I know how odd questions can seem like trolls, but I didn't mean to troll. I think another poster answered my question enough that I don't have to post person info. (I assume you understand.)
I didn't think that shooting trespassers was reasonable, but i know that some jurisdictions do allow it under various circumstances. That's why I asked... I suppose I should have just searched for the term "adverse possession" but couldn't initially figure out the key term to search on.
So yeah... I wasn't trying to nail you on using jargon, simply trying to learn.
Question about the language used here. Does this basically mean that in those jurisdictions, a property owner is able to shoot trespassers (or take other such actions as allowed by law) if and only if they have a no trespassing sign posted?
You'd better make sure that you have an excellent power supply and superb cooling if you're running that many drives on a computer. High heat and spotty power run havoc an a hard drive's life expectancy. I really don't see 10 smallish disks being any more reliable than 1 big one.
And then... how are you storing the data? Having the data split up among many different drives causes usability issues where you must make a conscious decision where to put your data each time you save a file. Software is horrible at saving to different locations (not that it can't do it, but requires a lot of user interaction.) This puts multiple drives out of the reach of a large number of users. The possible reliability gains really are not going to be that much.
So the other option is to stripe against several volumes. Here you come into more problems. If you stripe just for size, you are DECREASING your reliability by spreading the data across multiple disks. If one disk fails, the whole thing goes. If you are striping simply for reliability and end up with... say single mirrors of all data there is some increase in reliability, although I have heard many horror stories about what happens when a proprietary RAID card goes out and is not replacable. The data is still sitting on the hardware just fine, but you simply can not get to it without the (now defunct) controller card. Pure software RAID will improve your reliability a little bit, but with a huger performance hit as you are not using the data bus nearly as efficiently as a hardware solution would be.
Or you could just drop the cash on a big drive, and selectively back up any important data. Maybe even get two big drives and mirror them, which would be a much simpler and robust system than having a patchwork of 10 small disks.
In addition to flat out larger hard drive storage sizes, using the perpendicular method will also allow physically smaller hard drives of decent storage ability. The potential benefit to laptops, mp3 players and all other manner of portable devices is quite real.
The problem is you would need an extremely large radiator, as there would only be radiative cooling. There would simply be no convective cooling. Similar to how your car would act if you blocked up the grill and turned off the radiator fan.