While of course you're to be forgiven for not having a detailed knowledge of South American civilisations, the Mayan civilisation was strong until the 16th century when Europeans barged in and conquered them. It's not prehistory by a long chalk.
Ruins such as Tikal may feel prehistoric, discovered as they were beneath layers of compost and mature trees -- but they were only abandoned in the 10th century.
Apple was not the only company that could have produced a smartphone at its 2007 price of $599. But it could well have been the only company that could sell them at that price, and this is because Apple is -- as well as whatever else it is -- a high end fashion label.
According to Wikipedia, in 2009 40% of iPhone owners had household incomes >$100,000 (there are references; you can follow them if you like).
If Samsung, or even Nokia, had come up with something equivalent to the iPhone in 2007, at $599, do you think people would have bought it in the same numbers. I am certain they would not. Those brands simply don't have the pull, among wealthy consumers.
It's not that the 2007 iPhone was "overpriced". It was that only the rich could afford it.
Because multitouch was not at that point cheap enough to manufacture.
Apple had the manufacturing power to bring it down to a certain price (and they'd honed that on the iPod Touch). But even they couldn't bring it down to the kind of price normal people would pay.
Fortunately for Apple, they don't need to bring prices down to "normal people" levels -- they have a following of wealthy aficionados who will pay premium prices.
That only applies for current / savings accounts, who's interest rates barely keep up with inflation. If your balance stays still, you're losing money.
It occurs to me that if services existed that allowed us to trade faster, the current volatility wouldn't matter as much.
That is, a poster here complains that it took him 2 days to trade some BC for dollars, during which time they halved in dollar value. If he had been able to make the trade near-instantaneously, he would have suffered little, if any of that fall. So what's stopping that from happening?
Then it occurs to me, that if trading was faster, the bubbles and crashes would happen more quickly. I'm not enough of an economist to know what could damp these effects.
Furthermore, although I do disagree with state religion, it's not all that defines a country. I'm certain Iran has some areas of outstanding natural beauty, magnificent architecture, foot, culture etc.
...but seriously, neat idea but hardly for everyday use.
Or, perfect for everyday, low-end use.
Remember when digital cameras were expensive? Remember when those really cheap ones started showing up -- tiny, toy lens, 640x480 resolution -- yet they were fun.
TFA suggests these balls will sell for $100. I'd buy one, and I wouldn't care about the odd stitching artefact.
For all the cameras to have the same focal point, the focal point would need to be in the centre of the ball. I don't think that's impossible to achieve, but it boggles my mind a bit trying to visualise how it would fit together.
The only problem with 360 panoramas like this is that viewing it requires you to use some Quicktime-VR sort of setup that always looks bad with the corner distortion and awkward controls. It's hard to map a full spherical image onto a flat display.
That's the "only problem" with *any* photography, with the edge distortion getting more pronounced the wider angle you try to project. A traditional lens makes straight lines curve - most noticeable with fisheye lenses. A pinhole keeps the lines straight, but angles get distorted.
The solution in a scrollable view, is to zoom into the scene a bit more. Try it with Google Streetview -- zoom out and the edges look odd (although they maintain a rectilinear projection); zoom in a couple of steps and it's not a problem.
The more general solution is to embrace the distortion. Learn to see past it, or learn to enjoy it. Fisheye is widely used as an artistic effect. The "panorama" groups on Flickr etc. create 360 degree images in which straight objects become sweeping curves.
"True HDR" requires a sensor that can distinguish between a high range of brightnesses. That's all.
Film is one example. There's a huge amount of detail in a negative, that you throw away when you print, because neither paper nor eyes have the same range.
There are certainly electronic sensors that are equally able to capture a wide dynamic range.
Achieving it with multiple exposures is a hack (quite a cool hack, of course).
Oddly, by your logic,/. readers don't know what SQL Server and Azure are.
Nope. As I said, the definitions for those arbitrarily happen to be in the quote chosen for the summary. But those definitions aren't the pertinent part of the quote.
The Wired article tells you what Hadoop is, because it's written by journalists, and aimed at a broad readership.
The/. summary tells you what SQL Server and Azure are, because the descriptions arbitrarily happen to occur in the Wired paragraph that's been quoted.
The/. summary does not tell you what Hadoop is, because (unlike Wired readers),/. readers are expected to have some basic knowledge of the software world. If you think Hadoop is obscure, maybe this isn't the site for you?
But surely group selection is a weaker shade of the kin selection you're describing.
In a close-knit family, the grandmother is as much a part of the child "as another animal's armour or other biological adaptation". Albeit, the child has inherited (some of) its genes from the grandmother, rather than vice versa.
To look at it from a Selfish Gene perspective, the gene for "protect your grandchild" is increasing its own chances of being reproduced, by protecting a vessel that contains instances of itself.
Whether that's enough to explain the menopause, I dunno. But I'm certain that 'protect your descendants' is a evolutionary adaptation that benefits the gene.
Slashdot Mirror
"And so it begins...", from the summary, strongly implies disapproval.
Did it occur to you that the original author of that sentence knew all that, when he deliberately chose to use the word "Scotch"?
see also
"SIRI. When unable to understand the Scotch accent, have an educated guess by recommending the nearest public house. "
(source)
Can you dual boot a phone?
Yes. The basic way of installing Cyanogenmod (etc.) puts a recovery bootloader on your phone, such that you can select what OS to boot.
It's... complicated.
In a practical sense, you can run a free Android distro on your smartphone, install the non-free Google app bundle, and have access to the market.
What makes this OK, I'd like to understand. Perhaps that the handset vendor has already paid the license? Or that Google is turning a blind eye?
Support isn't worth anything if it's a guy in his garage that supports 10 other people.
Er, what's your point? Buy your Linux support from a company that has the resources to do the job.
While of course you're to be forgiven for not having a detailed knowledge of South American civilisations, the Mayan civilisation was strong until the 16th century when Europeans barged in and conquered them. It's not prehistory by a long chalk.
Ruins such as Tikal may feel prehistoric, discovered as they were beneath layers of compost and mature trees -- but they were only abandoned in the 10th century.
Apple was not the only company that could have produced a smartphone at its 2007 price of $599. But it could well have been the only company that could sell them at that price, and this is because Apple is -- as well as whatever else it is -- a high end fashion label.
According to Wikipedia, in 2009 40% of iPhone owners had household incomes >$100,000 (there are references; you can follow them if you like).
If Samsung, or even Nokia, had come up with something equivalent to the iPhone in 2007, at $599, do you think people would have bought it in the same numbers. I am certain they would not. Those brands simply don't have the pull, among wealthy consumers.
It's not that the 2007 iPhone was "overpriced". It was that only the rich could afford it.
There is *now*.
We're talking about 2007, when the original iPhone was announced.
Apple was making millions of them, but they were still expensive items for rich early adopters.
*Nowadays* they're less exclusive, yes.
For example, putting an apple in the corner of the desk...
Because multitouch was not at that point cheap enough to manufacture.
Apple had the manufacturing power to bring it down to a certain price (and they'd honed that on the iPod Touch). But even they couldn't bring it down to the kind of price normal people would pay.
Fortunately for Apple, they don't need to bring prices down to "normal people" levels -- they have a following of wealthy aficionados who will pay premium prices.
That only applies for current / savings accounts, who's interest rates barely keep up with inflation. If your balance stays still, you're losing money.
It occurs to me that if services existed that allowed us to trade faster, the current volatility wouldn't matter as much.
That is, a poster here complains that it took him 2 days to trade some BC for dollars, during which time they halved in dollar value. If he had been able to make the trade near-instantaneously, he would have suffered little, if any of that fall. So what's stopping that from happening?
Then it occurs to me, that if trading was faster, the bubbles and crashes would happen more quickly. I'm not enough of an economist to know what could damp these effects.
OK, accepted.
I was going to say that "monkey" isn't a common insult doled out at white idiots. But then I remembered Steve Bell's cartoon version of George Bush.
Well, nowhere's perfect. You yank derps execute innocent people.
Although the in the most recent UK case of a homeowner killing an intruder, the homeowner was released without charge.
You've just called the UK a shithole. Thanks.
Also, Canada, Costa Rica, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, Norway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion
Furthermore, although I do disagree with state religion, it's not all that defines a country. I'm certain Iran has some areas of outstanding natural beauty, magnificent architecture, foot, culture etc.
There's a couple of these on /. already, plus one poster eager to point out that he was beaten to it.
Are these just unreconstructed racism, or am I missing something? ... and on TFA, someone makes an Obama / Monkey comment in the same vein. Tsk.
Seriously, WTF? It's 2011.
I'd bad enough that I have to call this stuff out, before moving on to the anti-islamic sentiments. BAD Slashdotters. >:(
...but seriously, neat idea but hardly for everyday use.
Or, perfect for everyday, low-end use.
Remember when digital cameras were expensive? Remember when those really cheap ones started showing up -- tiny, toy lens, 640x480 resolution -- yet they were fun.
TFA suggests these balls will sell for $100. I'd buy one, and I wouldn't care about the odd stitching artefact.
For all the cameras to have the same focal point, the focal point would need to be in the centre of the ball. I don't think that's impossible to achieve, but it boggles my mind a bit trying to visualise how it would fit together.
The only problem with 360 panoramas like this is that viewing it requires you to use some Quicktime-VR sort of setup that always looks bad with the corner distortion and awkward controls. It's hard to map a full spherical image onto a flat display.
That's the "only problem" with *any* photography, with the edge distortion getting more pronounced the wider angle you try to project. A traditional lens makes straight lines curve - most noticeable with fisheye lenses. A pinhole keeps the lines straight, but angles get distorted.
The solution in a scrollable view, is to zoom into the scene a bit more. Try it with Google Streetview -- zoom out and the edges look odd (although they maintain a rectilinear projection); zoom in a couple of steps and it's not a problem.
The more general solution is to embrace the distortion. Learn to see past it, or learn to enjoy it. Fisheye is widely used as an artistic effect. The "panorama" groups on Flickr etc. create 360 degree images in which straight objects become sweeping curves.
"True HDR" requires a sensor that can distinguish between a high range of brightnesses. That's all.
Film is one example. There's a huge amount of detail in a negative, that you throw away when you print, because neither paper nor eyes have the same range.
There are certainly electronic sensors that are equally able to capture a wide dynamic range.
Achieving it with multiple exposures is a hack (quite a cool hack, of course).
Oddly, by your logic, /. readers don't know what SQL Server and Azure are.
Nope. As I said, the definitions for those arbitrarily happen to be in the quote chosen for the summary. But those definitions aren't the pertinent part of the quote.
The Wired article tells you what Hadoop is, because it's written by journalists, and aimed at a broad readership.
The /. summary tells you what SQL Server and Azure are, because the descriptions arbitrarily happen to occur in the Wired paragraph that's been quoted.
The /. summary does not tell you what Hadoop is, because (unlike Wired readers), /. readers are expected to have some basic knowledge of the software world. If you think Hadoop is obscure, maybe this isn't the site for you?
Darwin?
But surely group selection is a weaker shade of the kin selection you're describing.
In a close-knit family, the grandmother is as much a part of the child "as another animal's armour or other biological adaptation". Albeit, the child has inherited (some of) its genes from the grandmother, rather than vice versa.
To look at it from a Selfish Gene perspective, the gene for "protect your grandchild" is increasing its own chances of being reproduced, by protecting a vessel that contains instances of itself.
Whether that's enough to explain the menopause, I dunno. But I'm certain that 'protect your descendants' is a evolutionary adaptation that benefits the gene.