The competitors are Samsung and RIM, among others. No one else has anything else like it, true. But Apple needs actually to stay ahead of everyone else. I should've said "keep up the pace." If they let everyone else catch up, they'll just be another running in the pack. They need to keep out ahead of it.
The App Store will need considerable improvement if Apple is to keep up. There were early attempts to game Apple's system, and the number of apps is getting to "daunting" levels.
You don't resize with your eyeballs, NOW. You're looking over someone's shoulder saying "okay, make it just a bit bigger. Okay just a smidge too big. Okay split the difference." Then you get frustrated and "grab the mouse" and do it yourself, which is when you'd do the hand gesture thing.
Using the Powerglove is not like using a Wii. Try making a fist and waving it back and forth and up and down in front of you with the back of your hand level. Try this for hours. Eventually, you wind up trying to rest your elbow on something. With the Wii, you usually make specific gestures, after which you are free to go back to a more restful position. It's more like holding a sword/racquet/frying pan. The Powerglove is more like using a giant-sized air-joystick. There is no chance for resting. The Wii is much more "natural."
If the interface in the article allows you to make momentary gestures, then it won't be tiring. If your hands are way out in front of you for hours, it will be a drag.
The problem with this is that your arm gets tired! The Nintendo Powerglove from the 80's had this problem. A more natural interface would occasionally let you use your hands for rapid-fire intensive input or precision adjustments, but would follow your eyes and verbal instructions.
If we distributed a whole bunch of OpenMoko phones and a whole bunch (but not necessarily quite as many) OpenMoko development machines, this would accomplish what OLPC was trying to do.
Mobile Phones and SMS TXT services are already transforming large portions of Africa. Mobile phone infrastructure is a lot faster to set up and a lot less vulnerable to looting than wired infrastructure. It's a lot more scalable than the OLPC mesh networking -- after all the owners are economically motivated to expand it. SMS and mobile is already giving Africans access to networking and financial services that they didn't have before. (Yes, there's SMS banking in Africa now.) Completely open smartphones with completely indigenous developers would fuel innovation and economic growth in a way which is immediately practical, useful, and completely tailored to local needs.
Uh, aluminum generally doesn't go to landfills. It's too valuable. Generally, if there's aluminum bound for a landfill, someone else figures out it's worth their while to make an extra buck by recycling it.
I've owned an aluminum Powerbook for 5 years. It's still quite useful. And yes, it's definitely been dropped -- from waist-height onto asphalt! Result: some small dents and that's it! If, as you suggest, the ideal case is a replaceable, recyclable, soft thin metal, then aluminum is probably the ideal case material. (Pure aluminum is soft! It has to be alloyed to make it hard.)
Wires and poles are not in the reach of a 3rd world villager. Cleaning and maintaining electrical and optical equipment are. It could also be a valuable learning experience. (And, no, that's not "infrastructure." It's "sweat equity.")
It takes two hours to do the vote. The behind the scenes political manuvering is likely to take years.
If you used wear-leveling on drives built like this, you could market Crash Proof Hard Drives! They could be constructed to be immune to shock, and wear-leveling could make them last many decades. Hot-swappable RAID appliances using these would be awesome.
Yes, but solar panels can be supplied by aid organizations. They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure.
I agree with you that we should drop the farm subsidies. Before that happens, stuff like this could help. Would you rather they wait around for the subsidies to go away without whatever hand-up help we could give them?
I found the absorption heater that you can power by putting it into a fire interesting. The fact that we can use this to distribute vaccines strikes me as a good thing.
The Space Island Group is proposing that we use the empty external tanks to build space stations.
Those things are the size of 747s! They're already basically in orbit when we throw them away. They contain cryogenics that can easily be let to boil away cleanly. Why not use them?
1) Have your laptop insured. If you have renter's insurance, this can be a rider. 2) Encrypt your hard drive. Use a strong password. 3) Keep current backups
If you ever have your laptop stolen, buy a new one. Recover the hard disk from your backup. Don't worry about stolen data, because your drive is encrypted. Done.
Formaldehyde. Fumigate the the thing with formaldehyde gas for a couple of hours. The pros do it by heating up pellets on hot plates inside airtight tents. This is how they fumigated after the Marburg virus.
Something easier to access at home would be ozonation. There are lots of automotive detailers who have ozone machines. Have someone you trust do this to your car for a day with your laptop on the inside, and this will kill most pathogens through oxidation. You have to make sure they have a good ozone machine. Lots of them are crap. The good ones really work, however. I've had this done to my house after burning a pot of boiled eggs on my stove. I left for work and let the water evaporate, and the pot caught on fire! A couple of days of ozonation, and that brunt sulfurous small was gone!
If we run out of Rare Earth elements, how about mining asteroids? We would have to, and this would act as a huge stimulus to space exploration and technology. Mining Mars, which had many of the same hydrological processes that created ore deposits, would also be possible. We could build a space elevator on Mars much more easily than on Earth. This would make the export of materials from Mars to Earth very inexpensive. If we made the space elevator longer than Mars synchronous orbit, no rocket launch is needed at all, only a small correction burn. We could simply fling it off the end.
Dalek/Cylon crossover. Though it would be pretty gross seeing Six seducing Davros. Baltar could start talking to the Daleks, hack into the system and take Davros' place! I'd like to see the Daleks vs. the new Centurions!
The Roomba was the second cheapest option we considered
I too love my Roomba. The Roomba Discovery is quite robust. It's also possible to repair! I know because I've done it. (Replaced the edge-cleaning rotary brush motor.)
Panasonic makes cheap vacuums that hotels and other companies give their custodial employees. There's no fancy HEPA filter or any whizbang features. It's just a very cheaply but robustly made vacuum with a few basic attachments that are flimsy but really work. The first one I had lasted 12 years, which included a stint being used by a housemate working as a professional maid. The next one I bought was from a Fry's in Houston for around $50 new.
If you have serious allergies and need a HEPA filter, go ahead and buy some fancy vacuum. If you just want a basic vacuum, I recommend you look for one of these. The attachments are flimsy and won't stand up to abuse, but the actual vacuum parts seem to be very robust.
If we have the technology to build a plane that can fly at Mach 10, then we can build Zubrin's Hyersonic Skyhook without nanotube cables or any kind of unobtanium. This would give us Space Elevator priced access to space!
Basically, you build a beanstalk that doesn't go all the way to geosynch, and doesn't go all the way to the ground. It's a lot less massive and doesn't require the same stupendous tensile strength as a Space Elevator. A Mach 10 hypersonic plane could deliver cargoes to the bottom end, perhaps with the help of a small booster rocket on the cargo pod. After the cargo is attached, you winch it up and use ion engines or interaction with the earth's magnetic field to accelerate the skyhook. (Which would be cheaper, since ion engines have huge delta-V, and magnetic interaction requires power and no fuel.)
Morgan is dead-on! I've seen the same thing happen with the price of biodiesel in Houston. Since biodiesel is totally compatible with diesel, it *has* to trail the price of petro-diesel by 40 to 60 cents, or else the "diesel-sluts" (what we call them) will come around and buy up all the biodiesel. Last time I was in line at Houston Biodiesel, there was a guy with a flatbed trailer with two big honking tanks mounted on it, pumping from two nozzles at once.
That's how it works. You come up with the cheaper alternative, you sell it for a *huge* markup which is still cheaper and get filthy rich in the process. Then everyone else starts making it too and the price goes down.
The Dymaxion Car was *very* space efficient, and it had a teardrop shape. (Seated 11)
The Dymaxion Car plan would be great for a skateboard chassis like GM was planning.
If you applied carbon fiber construction to such a "skateboard," combined with wheel hub motors, you could probably get beyond 100 miles range with just Lead Acid batteries. (Simply because the shape could be optimized for strength without compromises for doors, and you could use the entire bed for batteries, as in the Red Beastie)
Heck with all that Star Trek sex rubbish! The true geek-gasm these things should give you is the potential for the Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber game! Construct something like the Wiimote controller, but with lightsaber designs from the Star Wars movies. Throw in some gesture recognition for some force powers, and you have the ultimate geek game. Imagine it -- immersive 3D effects with physics, you holding a lightsaber, or gesturing to telekinetically deflect objects.
Dave & Busters would make a killing on those! I wonder how many Jedi would show up in costume robes?
Slashdot Mirror
The competitors are Samsung and RIM, among others. No one else has anything else like it, true. But Apple needs actually to stay ahead of everyone else. I should've said "keep up the pace." If they let everyone else catch up, they'll just be another running in the pack. They need to keep out ahead of it.
The App Store will need considerable improvement if Apple is to keep up. There were early attempts to game Apple's system, and the number of apps is getting to "daunting" levels.
You don't resize with your eyeballs, NOW. You're looking over someone's shoulder saying "okay, make it just a bit bigger. Okay just a smidge too big. Okay split the difference." Then you get frustrated and "grab the mouse" and do it yourself, which is when you'd do the hand gesture thing.
Using the Powerglove is not like using a Wii. Try making a fist and waving it back and forth and up and down in front of you with the back of your hand level. Try this for hours. Eventually, you wind up trying to rest your elbow on something. With the Wii, you usually make specific gestures, after which you are free to go back to a more restful position. It's more like holding a sword/racquet/frying pan. The Powerglove is more like using a giant-sized air-joystick. There is no chance for resting. The Wii is much more "natural."
If the interface in the article allows you to make momentary gestures, then it won't be tiring. If your hands are way out in front of you for hours, it will be a drag.
I've heard of Ethan Verone. I used to read his posts on Eve-Pirate.
The problem with this is that your arm gets tired! The Nintendo Powerglove from the 80's had this problem. A more natural interface would occasionally let you use your hands for rapid-fire intensive input or precision adjustments, but would follow your eyes and verbal instructions.
If we distributed a whole bunch of OpenMoko phones and a whole bunch (but not necessarily quite as many) OpenMoko development machines, this would accomplish what OLPC was trying to do.
Mobile Phones and SMS TXT services are already transforming large portions of Africa. Mobile phone infrastructure is a lot faster to set up and a lot less vulnerable to looting than wired infrastructure. It's a lot more scalable than the OLPC mesh networking -- after all the owners are economically motivated to expand it. SMS and mobile is already giving Africans access to networking and financial services that they didn't have before. (Yes, there's SMS banking in Africa now.) Completely open smartphones with completely indigenous developers would fuel innovation and economic growth in a way which is immediately practical, useful, and completely tailored to local needs.
Uh, aluminum generally doesn't go to landfills. It's too valuable. Generally, if there's aluminum bound for a landfill, someone else figures out it's worth their while to make an extra buck by recycling it.
I've owned an aluminum Powerbook for 5 years. It's still quite useful. And yes, it's definitely been dropped -- from waist-height onto asphalt! Result: some small dents and that's it! If, as you suggest, the ideal case is a replaceable, recyclable, soft thin metal, then aluminum is probably the ideal case material. (Pure aluminum is soft! It has to be alloyed to make it hard.)
Wires and poles are not in the reach of a 3rd world villager. Cleaning and maintaining electrical and optical equipment are. It could also be a valuable learning experience. (And, no, that's not "infrastructure." It's "sweat equity.")
It takes two hours to do the vote. The behind the scenes political manuvering is likely to take years.
15 seconds of Googling turned up this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-strikeheliostatstrike-paraboli/
You can build a parabolic reflector out of whatever you want, as big as you have the room for.
If you used wear-leveling on drives built like this, you could market Crash Proof Hard Drives! They could be constructed to be immune to shock, and wear-leveling could make them last many decades. Hot-swappable RAID appliances using these would be awesome.
Any connection to Mr Horrible?
Yes, but solar panels can be supplied by aid organizations. They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure.
I agree with you that we should drop the farm subsidies. Before that happens, stuff like this could help. Would you rather they wait around for the subsidies to go away without whatever hand-up help we could give them?
I found the absorption heater that you can power by putting it into a fire interesting. The fact that we can use this to distribute vaccines strikes me as a good thing.
The Space Island Group is proposing that we use the empty external tanks to build space stations.
Those things are the size of 747s! They're already basically in orbit when we throw them away. They contain cryogenics that can easily be let to boil away cleanly. Why not use them?
http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/home.html
I was boiling a bunch of eggs -- 1 for breakfast and the rest as leftovers. I simply forgot.
Isn't consistently using the most insulting interpretation possible out of a variety of alternatives the quintessential trolling technique?
1) Have your laptop insured. If you have renter's insurance, this can be a rider.
2) Encrypt your hard drive. Use a strong password.
3) Keep current backups
If you ever have your laptop stolen, buy a new one. Recover the hard disk from your backup. Don't worry about stolen data, because your drive is encrypted. Done.
Formaldehyde. Fumigate the the thing with formaldehyde gas for a couple of hours. The pros do it by heating up pellets on hot plates inside airtight tents. This is how they fumigated after the Marburg virus.
Something easier to access at home would be ozonation. There are lots of automotive detailers who have ozone machines. Have someone you trust do this to your car for a day with your laptop on the inside, and this will kill most pathogens through oxidation. You have to make sure they have a good ozone machine. Lots of them are crap. The good ones really work, however. I've had this done to my house after burning a pot of boiled eggs on my stove. I left for work and let the water evaporate, and the pot caught on fire! A couple of days of ozonation, and that brunt sulfurous small was gone!
If we run out of Rare Earth elements, how about mining asteroids? We would have to, and this would act as a huge stimulus to space exploration and technology. Mining Mars, which had many of the same hydrological processes that created ore deposits, would also be possible. We could build a space elevator on Mars much more easily than on Earth. This would make the export of materials from Mars to Earth very inexpensive. If we made the space elevator longer than Mars synchronous orbit, no rocket launch is needed at all, only a small correction burn. We could simply fling it off the end.
http://www.affordablespaceflight.com/spaceelevator.html - search for "Mars Space Elevator"
Dalek/Cylon crossover. Though it would be pretty gross seeing Six seducing Davros. Baltar could start talking to the Daleks, hack into the system and take Davros' place! I'd like to see the Daleks vs. the new Centurions!
Give me 3D vector graphics, and let me play Battlezone in the browser!
The Roomba was the second cheapest option we considered
I too love my Roomba. The Roomba Discovery is quite robust. It's also possible to repair! I know because I've done it. (Replaced the edge-cleaning rotary brush motor.)
Panasonic makes cheap vacuums that hotels and other companies give their custodial employees. There's no fancy HEPA filter or any whizbang features. It's just a very cheaply but robustly made vacuum with a few basic attachments that are flimsy but really work. The first one I had lasted 12 years, which included a stint being used by a housemate working as a professional maid. The next one I bought was from a Fry's in Houston for around $50 new.
If you have serious allergies and need a HEPA filter, go ahead and buy some fancy vacuum. If you just want a basic vacuum, I recommend you look for one of these. The attachments are flimsy and won't stand up to abuse, but the actual vacuum parts seem to be very robust.
If we have the technology to build a plane that can fly at Mach 10, then we can build Zubrin's Hyersonic Skyhook without nanotube cables or any kind of unobtanium. This would give us Space Elevator priced access to space!
Basically, you build a beanstalk that doesn't go all the way to geosynch, and doesn't go all the way to the ground. It's a lot less massive and doesn't require the same stupendous tensile strength as a Space Elevator. A Mach 10 hypersonic plane could deliver cargoes to the bottom end, perhaps with the help of a small booster rocket on the cargo pod. After the cargo is attached, you winch it up and use ion engines or interaction with the earth's magnetic field to accelerate the skyhook. (Which would be cheaper, since ion engines have huge delta-V, and magnetic interaction requires power and no fuel.)
Another Paper
Morgan is dead-on! I've seen the same thing happen with the price of biodiesel in Houston. Since biodiesel is totally compatible with diesel, it *has* to trail the price of petro-diesel by 40 to 60 cents, or else the "diesel-sluts" (what we call them) will come around and buy up all the biodiesel. Last time I was in line at Houston Biodiesel, there was a guy with a flatbed trailer with two big honking tanks mounted on it, pumping from two nozzles at once.
That's how it works. You come up with the cheaper alternative, you sell it for a *huge* markup which is still cheaper and get filthy rich in the process. Then everyone else starts making it too and the price goes down.
You can't beat market forces.
The Dymaxion Car was *very* space efficient, and it had a teardrop shape. (Seated 11)
The Dymaxion Car plan would be great for a skateboard chassis like GM was planning.
If you applied carbon fiber construction to such a "skateboard," combined with wheel hub motors, you could probably get beyond 100 miles range with just Lead Acid batteries. (Simply because the shape could be optimized for strength without compromises for doors, and you could use the entire bed for batteries, as in the Red Beastie)
Heck with all that Star Trek sex rubbish! The true geek-gasm these things should give you is the potential for the Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber game! Construct something like the Wiimote controller, but with lightsaber designs from the Star Wars movies. Throw in some gesture recognition for some force powers, and you have the ultimate geek game. Imagine it -- immersive 3D effects with physics, you holding a lightsaber, or gesturing to telekinetically deflect objects.
Dave & Busters would make a killing on those! I wonder how many Jedi would show up in costume robes?