>And artists are, for the most part, a greedy and opportunistic breed.... >no 'gift culture' for them, thank you very much.
Excuse me? I completely disagree, but I would be interested to know why you believe this.
As for a 'gift culture', exactly how many new, free levels and wads were there for Doom again? Half-life? The man-hours that have gone into the "gift culture" of art quite possibly dwarf that of the entire open source movement. Perhaps you think that these people are different from the people who work commercially? I'll think you'll find a huge proportion of those commercial artists have poured hundreds, even thousands of hours into works they have distributed freely on the internet.
You should also note that there are a few fundamental differences in how (non-code) artistic works are created. I suspect that you have misinterpreted some of the repercussions of these in forming your opinion. For example, open source code often results in something better. Open source art usually results in worthless crap. I could explain why, but it would take a while and this is just an example. Consider that things done differently != things done for inferior motives.
(NB, for the record, I consider fine coding to be an art, however I have maintained a distinction between code and art in this post to avoid confusion).
As a game artist, my perception is that most game artists are fine with work-for-hire - that's what they do, that's what their contracts say. The problem is more to do with the (current?) nature of open-source - the existing revenue models are ill-equiped to pay the rent, and the intensive creative process just doesn't work very well (if at all) via internet communication if you're dealing with people you haven't spent significant time with IRL and don't know inside out. Even then, some get-togethers are going to be needed, or discrepancies in artist vision will either cause problems or limit the degree of collaboration achievable.
>The one thing I don't understand is the major difference between console video game development and PC development (for games).
One big reason would likely be that there is no point in doom-like openness on a console - the gamers still can't make their own mods because they've only got a console, not a computer. (Eg how could they have edited, compiled, and saved new levels?)
>Unlike other desktop applications, games tend to be hybrid organisms > half software program, half artistic work.
"Unlike" other applications? I would submit (again) that one big reason open-source is having difficulting gaining users other than technicians is because of this misconception that good software consists merely of code. Even the Sorceforge Help Wanted section re-inforces the detrimental (and simply incorrect) notion that non-coders are not developers. As long as open-source developement of software is done by "developers" of the Sourceforge definition, the results will continue to be largely inaccessible to non-coders and non-technicians.
>TO me, there is a huge difference between linking directly to a file and linking to a page. If you link to a web page, the content can >change without your knowledge. If you link to a file, it can be assumed you know what is in that file to begin with, and the chances of the >contents of a file being changed are extremely slim. As long as they keep this lawsuit about linking to files, and not linking to pages, the Internet >is in no danger.
I disagree. Firstly, you are drawing a distincion that technically does not exist - a page _is_ a file, and the contents of any type of file can (and do) change without the knowledge of the linker (you give pages as an example of this, but it is true of all other types of file, the closest thing to a disctionction that can be drawn is a statistical one - there is usually a higher frequency for html files to have their content changed than other types of files.).
In your analogy, you act as a middleman between Bob and the buyer, when this is not the case in linking - you give exact directions, but you take absolutely no further part in the relationship between the hostsite (bob) and the user(buyer). The site helps the user (including law enforcement agents) get in contact with the host and _nothing_ more. This is quite different from your analogy.
But as you might have guessed, my opinion stems more from fear of the lawsuit opening the way to massive internet-wide legal abuse by corporations than which side has the moral highground in the linking issue. We could easily see a repeat of the DMCA "if you take it offline as soon as someone complains, you escape liability" disaster. Imagine if this became the case for links to information companies didn't want people to see. That could signle-handedly be almost the end of the internet as a force for good.
And also of course, I'm gunning against the RIAA because my dislike of their "fuck-over-everyone-because-it's-better-for-us-and -because-we-can" tactics has progressed well beyond "sickened".
>Whatever the precedent is there, the same should apply to linking -- the linker knows something illegal is going to happen as a result >of his linking, and should be punished appropriately.
I don't think it's that simple. When the Mafiaboys come a lookin' for Bob - and they are fully capible of finding him on their own (they already have a pretty good idea of where he hiding) - some repugnant character figures he can score some brownie points by telling them where to find Bob. In this example, intense social dislike rather than criminal law is more likely to be applicable.
Besides which, the real problem (as I see it) is how the hell can the judge rule in favour of the RIAA without setting a precedent that is hidiously open to abuse from similarly well-financed bullys? No matter what restrictions or qualifiers he uses, it would be a powerful blow for might over right.
A wearable-style portable camera on my bike would be cool - next time some idiot driver fails to indicate then runs into me, it wouldn't matter that I had no witnesses but he's got a mate who's prepared to swear I was at fault, or that he's a (supposedly) respectable middle-age family man while I'm a "youth" and must therefore be a wild and unpredictable danger to "decent" road users.
It doesn't even need a wireless connection - just continuious recording into a 32meg RAM buffer, and when something happens that I want to keep, I just stop recording and it's all in the buffer. Make surveilance work for _me_ for a damn change. (Not only am I a "youth" (lingo that is locally applied to "young people" but means "thug" in the conservative middle-aged and elderly minds of those who use it), but I have long hair - double mistake. Bigoted "security" people earning a fraction of what I do wonder why they can't put a dent in shoplifting no matter how much they hassle long-haired "youths" who must clearly be the ones responsible...)
Rant ends. Apologies. Yes, I do feel much better now, thank you.
Replying to myself, I found this quote from a CNN article (linked elsewhere in this discussion):
"Sure, it looks silly. But so do women in one-inch platform shoes and kids who hike up their underwear. And they're not playing "Quake" at the same time."
Y'know, he's got a point:-)
(Allthough these things really _are_ fads, which would kinda bode ill for wearables).
(The article is at: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/ptech/01/07/xybernaut /index.html )
Regarding the future of wearables, there are a few things from the past that could be noteworthy. The only highly successful wearables to date are personal music players. The transistor radio was portable rather than wearable. I think the first wearable was probably the walkman - the key difference being the private soundspace it created. I may have my history muddled here - I imagine that a radio + headphones combination predated the walkman, but I'm under the impression that it took the twin development of earphones and a small unit before it all took off. So how do people wear these wearables? Typically, the actual unit is stashed out of sight somewhere (in a pocket or bag), while headphones - despite apparently superior sound quality, usually take a back seat to the more discrete earphones. Why is the unit usually stashed out of sight? I do it for a few reasons: it is more comfortable than clipped on the belt jiggling about, it's more secure (it won't fall off the belt and dash itself into a thousand high-tech pieces), it's padded (only really important with a shock-sensitive device such as CD), it's not going to get in the way, restrict your movement, it's not going to advertise that you feel an insecure need to advertise your toys, and it's not going to slap a big ugly box onto your profile (though the box itself might well be quite pretty). A lot of these things are going to apply to new types of wearables as well as old.
Have you noticed that most earphones these days seem designed to look a little bit like earrings or jewellery? (eg a curved gold band standing out on the visible part of the earphone). I'm curious about that - they don't seem to incur the fear of appearing effete that is often still precludes guys getting twin earrings, yet it does seem that the tech is trying to incorporate elements of this jewellery, and doing well as a result (once apon a time, all earphone were just black, which perhaps red and blue tags to identify left and right - not merely functional, but functional at the _expense_ of form!).
One of the more recently popular features are remotes on the earphone wires. (These have been around for years, but until the advent of CD players, were fairly rare due it being so much cheaper to have tape-reading mechanisms that required physical force to engage, via the play button). Some people don't use them, some people do, but they are testament to people choosing to sacrifice control of the unit (by stashing it away) rather than wear it on the outside where they can reach it. Unlike the full unit, remotes are more conveniently placed, and much smaller, thus many people prefer them. (Though I actually wear mine out of sight under my shirt collar:-).
Now, what is your opinion of people who wear cop-style underarm cell-phone holsters? I'm guessing you probably snicker behind their backs and hope like hell you'll never be reduced to such transparent (and failing) attempts at appearing important without appearing like you're trying to look important. There will always be people who buy underarm cell-phone holsters, but they're not where we want wearables to end up.
Recently, there was a discussion on brand marks on clothes, shoes etc. Several perceptive people pointed out that (in a gross simplification), there are two streams of wealth - those who can't afford many luxuries, so when they buy them, they buy blatant things that advertise that scream "look at me - I buy expensive things!" (eg a t-shirt with NIKE emblazoned on it), and the second stream of people who have sufficient wealth to almost have style custom-made for them - tailored clothes without logos but with fantastic fit and form, and so on. I think that thinking about this take on consumption in the context of wearables can result in some interesting insights into the future of the tech.
The technology exists to make these things actually wearable, yet the "I'm such a StarTrek weenie I get off on the borg image" still seems the predominant aesthetic. We have www.charmed.com with their equally dubious "cyberchicks with boxes and wires sticking out in all the wrong places that aren't actually very useful for anything, but will really reel in those trekkies with the high-paying jobs" look. Really, wearables that lack style of any substance (or a practical use for that matter) and presumably are intended to sell on wank factor (for whom?) alone are not going tempt very many people. Sure, they mostly just prototypes, but almost universally ignoring important considerations when prototyping is not going to help very much.
On the other hand, if you can browse the web on what could pass on the street for expensive sunglasses - and you can use them as normal sunglasses when not browsing (ie don't need to change headgear whenever you change tasks) then we're starting to get somewhere. And this kind of subtle, miniature heads up system has been built. But it seems the "plaster-junk-to-my-face" look is all the rage with a significant portion of the people involved (there of course some notable exceptions).
Rather than developing better ways to mount a wireless webcam on your head (the last place I'm putting a webcam is on my face! Shoulder, possibly, but face?!?), pour the effort into developing things to wearables more useful as a technology, eg a miniature retina or focus tracking system to incorporate into heads-up sunglasses, thus removing the need for a mouse or control panel larger than one or two buttons. Simply look at the icon and click the button, or whatever. These systems might be complex and difficult with today's tech - much easier to play with things like webcams, but they offer a hell of a lot more as well.
BTW, I'm not merely spouting here from a position of complete ignorance - I'm working on some miniaturised wearable stuff, but it's in a different direction, and the ultimate goal is stuff that I can actually wear yet still feel stylish:-) For me, that means extremely discrete is the top priority, with it's aesthetic design acting as a stylistic fallback measure. (Ie I'm only spouting from a position of mostly-ignorance:-)
Simple test for wearables: Would you be caught dead wearing that getup in a public place where you might meet people who would recognise you? I have yet to see any wearables that satisfy this extremely basic criteria. You might think this is kinda vain, but we're talking about wearable computers here - they are going to have to attain the same stylistic standards as clothing, sunglasses, shoes etc. Cell phones had to come a long way before being accepted, and they were greatly aided by the perception that only important people had a genuine need for them. With WAP phones already here, wearable are unlikely to enjoy such a boost.
I'd support that post getting moderated up. Sure, it sounds like a typical anti-govt rant, but it puts the finger on the usually invisible (yet rampant) problem of the massive over-use of classification for things that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with keeping gross incompetence and dirty deeds away from public scrutiney. "risk to lives" is perpetuated by the over-classification, but it's usually others (often innocents), not those who can cover their ass with "National Security" abuses of power, who suffer.
I'd vote to have that post moderated up. I can't be the only/.er who didn't know about emuisc. According to the FAQ, the artists get 50% (Hopefully tha means the _actual_ artists, and doesn't include a bunch of middlemen).
Re:Look back over the Internet 'revolution'
on
Cookiegate Explained
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· Score: 1
>What you find there is a calculated campaign by the Clinton administration, and his little >buddy Al Gore, to subvert the rights of the American people through the new technology.
You're mistaking the figureheads for the problem. Changing the names of the people who hold these positions will not affect the problem. Changing the name of the party which holds these positions will likewise, not affect the problem (indeed, could conceivably even exacerbate it).
Regarding this crap, it doesn't matter very much who wins the elections, because it's only a two-horse race, and both horses are heavily indebted to the same interest groups. Democracy does not really exist in any useful form when votes decide the name on the desk plaque, while finanical contributors (and others) decide the policies that eventually eminate from the office.
A big asset to maintaining the status quo of this system is that the vast majority of really important policy is either the sort of boring policy that the public is not interested in, or (like DMCA), the sting is in ramifactions that are not obvious to someone not intimately aquainted with it.
Something has to give, and it probably won't give soon. Which means hold on to your privacy, because there is a rough ride ahead.
>Hello. This is Mars. We noticed you've been looking at our water. >Feel free to visit, but be prepared to pay our very expensive water park entrance fees. >Also, there will be an airport fee assessed for each passenger landed on our planet.
Additionally, due to above water fees and restrictions, we will pay you to visit the bathroom.
We tried to advertise this aspect of our economy, but our emails were rejected as spam.
Three replies to this post, none of them noticed the real (though perhaps unintentional) joke - a meter is a needle display. Not to be confused with a metre - a unit of measurement.
(I don't mean funny in a haughty pedantic way, but that it reads like "NASA can do this as soon as they work out what a metre is, and to acheive this they are investigating analogue multimeters for clues". Hmmm, they won't get anywhere fast...)
Sorry, but I had to point it out when all three replies appeared to have missed it.
Implement photoshop plug-in compatibility and suddenly GIMP would have ten times as many features availible, from freeware on the net to extremely polished professional printshop stuff.
Don't implement photoshop plug-ins and people who have invested in them (be it money or learning-curve time) will not move to GIMP, and GIMP development will be slowed as people waste their time re-inventing wheels that are freely availible as plug-ins, leaving less time to improve the fundamentals.
It's so rare to get a useful and functioning plug-in standards for graphics. Use it, whatever the difficulty.
Yep, that would go a long way towards fixing it. However we are up against something bigger here. As an artist (specialising in computer work) it is becoming painfully obvious that the entire open source movement is still largely "by techies, for techies". And as long as this remains the case, any software that requires expertise outside that narrow range (such as graphics apps, games, 3d animation, possibly even word processing) is crippled by the nature of the open source movement.
A while back, I had the time to contribute to the movement. I couldn't find any projects that were looking for such help. Perhaps this was because you had to be a techie to know where to look to find such a project, or perhaps it was because many techies simply don't realise how crucial the non-programming parts are if you're trying to make a fully functional product that can compare to normal commercial software.
Hell, remember when/. reported that id Software had fired one of their developers, Paul Steed, allegely out of spite? I saw _multiple_ replies stating "Uh - Paul Steed isn't a developer, he does 3d models and art". What?!? If this thinking is symptomatic of a significant portion of linux developers, linux ain't going anywhere beyond servers and enthusiest machines anytime soon. Windows shall forever reign supreme.
Programming is only one part of good software, and now that everyone is an artist (because they can operate GIMP or PS), everyone is a designer (because they can write html), everyone is a UI developer (because they can write code), we're going to have to deal with the fact that these beliefs are simply false. Flawless html doesn't make flawless design, flawless programming doesn't make a useful UI, flawless pixel manupulation doesn't ensure flawless communication of a concept. These are different skills, and the sooner this is widely understood and accomodated, the sooner open source becomes a genuine alternative.
>Is that Aughra's orrery for real? It looks like the product of a mad scientist!
Yes and no. It's from the film "The Dark Crystal", and depicts a fictional solar system, however, they built the thing full size and motorised it etc. So it's real in the more important sense of "I could have something like that in my bedroom". (A good defense against burglars:-) A picture of Aughra: http://130.126.238.131/Sean/movies/dark_crystal/ pictures/Aughra.GIF Lots of Dark Crystal pics: http://130.126.238.131/Sean/movies/dark_crystal/ dc_pictures.html Dark Crystal has just been re-released on DVD, so if you want to see the orrery in motion, you know what to do. (I also recommend "Labyrinth" - made by many of the same people and is a better film as well).
>I suppose suspension of the bodies would be a problem.
Surperconductors reflect magnetism, so if you could make a superconducting disk (cooled from beneath) several metres wide... (And you'd get Tacky Mysterious Fog drifting off the device in the Bargain:)
On the other hand, having the huge brass rods and crescents and stuff has an appeal of its own.
My thinking is that this whole "oh no - the terrorists will use this" thinking is based on concepts of terrorism that are more the product of popular culture than actual reality. We know that many extremist groups have not been put off by the dangers in the technologies you mention, and indeed have sometimes been very sucessful at creating (but refraining from using) weapons built from them. This makes answering the question "why?" a bit more difficult.
Related to the topic, I would suggest that some of the groups that Uncle Sam would like us to believe are terrorists have somewhat more 3 dimensional motives than that magic sleeper word "anti-american" that switches off the minds of all who hear it. It may be that the real answers lie in those extra dimensions - in other words the reasons may be extremely specific to each persons cause, and not able to be easily boxed into a description of the motives of terrorists in general.
So yeah - some questions that should also be asked: Why would a terrorist want to use nano? Why would a terrorist want to kill indiscriminantly? Of all the cases of "terrorism" I can think of, very few actually planned or attempted any form of indiscriminant killing, and most sought not to kill, but were quite prepared to do so should they find it necessary. (A bit like your staunch NRA member? (that was a JOKE)) (BTW, for the slow of wit, I'm not condoning or defending any form of terrorism here, just trying to get past the mythology, despite being in a poor position to do so)
Now, the risks of nano from something like Columbine on the other hand... (actually, lets not go there:)
As it stands, I'm not too concerned by military or terrorist use of nano - both kinds of group already have sufficient weapon tech to wipe up the planet (with a very dirty rag). More weapons just means more ways for them to do so, and more chance for accidents. These threats are already real, just not quite as enticingly exotic as nano. Yoda berated Luke for that kind of thinking. And we all know that Yoda Knows His Shit. :-)
On the whole "here are some other examples" thread, IMHO some of the coolest gear-based computational devices are the various orreries that have been built. (And there's more of them to look at than number-calculation devices:-) And for an orrery, virtually every gear-ratio is an approximation of a non-factorable ratio, so I found the article of particular interest because I'm currently working on one at home. (Though it's a desktop sort of thing, I aspire to eventually do something along the lines of Aughra's awesome device <grin>)
The only real link I've got on hand is this one: Brian Greig's Orrery Page (He makes orreries for museums, collectors etc, and some of them are pretty cool:-)
BTW, for those that haven't seen much of these things, an orrery (named after the Earl of Orrery, who commissioned one of the first built) is a device that shows the motion of the planets to scale (but not the size of the planets to scale...). And like the calculation engines, orreries today are done through software. If you know a bit about the complexities of planetary motion (eg non-circular orbits, inclined orbits in which the plane of inclination drifts or rotates), seeing the various means of incorporating these aberrations into a clockwork model is quite fascinating.
One particularly nagging thing about the article was the assumption that the problem is finding the best gear ratio. Ha! The best ratio might be 103:17 but have you ever tried to find a gearcutter? The last one I saw was in a museum (I must have been a pathetic sight - pressed up against the glass like a kid outside the candy store...), which means I have to buy manufactured gears. Which means finding the best gear ratio out of the gears available to me. Sure, it cuts down on the computation, but you need to make a longer gear train to get even remotely close:-(
Ah well. It seems a shame that the skills and tools of so many of these crafts are dying or dead (if only because they could make amazing things that modern manufacturing methods are currently simple incapable of producing).
>What's considered a practical limit on the length of gear trains used for watches, mechanical computers, etc?
>If trains of four, five, six, etc gears are mechanically practical, the computational problem of choosing their ratios still seems interesting.
I might have misunderstood you, but you seem to have overlooked that gear trains are normally driven from the bottom (ie to produce a slower rotation at the far end) and not from the top. Thus trains of even 9, 10, 12, 20 gears are not only mechanically practical, but not very difficult either.
So yeah, there is still some scope for interesting computation, but on reflection, the computation of gear trains is interesting largely because it has solid practical application, but today, any application requiring an accuracy that would take a 20 step train to achieve is going to be done digitially anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
>And artists are, for the most part, a greedy and opportunistic breed....
>no 'gift culture' for them, thank you very much.
Excuse me? I completely disagree, but I would be interested to know why you believe this.
As for a 'gift culture', exactly how many new, free levels and wads were there for Doom again? Half-life?
The man-hours that have gone into the "gift culture" of art quite possibly dwarf that of the entire open source movement. Perhaps you think that these people are different from the people who work commercially? I'll think you'll find a huge proportion of those commercial artists have poured hundreds, even thousands of hours into works they have distributed freely on the internet.
You should also note that there are a few fundamental differences in how (non-code) artistic works are created. I suspect that you have misinterpreted some of the repercussions of these in forming your opinion. For example, open source code often results in something better. Open source art usually results in worthless crap. I could explain why, but it would take a while and this is just an example. Consider that things done differently != things done for inferior motives.
(NB, for the record, I consider fine coding to be an art, however I have maintained a distinction between code and art in this post to avoid confusion).
As a game artist, my perception is that most game artists are fine with work-for-hire - that's what they do, that's what their contracts say. The problem is more to do with the (current?) nature of open-source - the existing revenue models are ill-equiped to pay the rent, and the intensive creative process just doesn't work very well (if at all) via internet communication if you're dealing with people you haven't spent significant time with IRL and don't know inside out. Even then, some get-togethers are going to be needed, or discrepancies in artist vision will either cause problems or limit the degree of collaboration achievable.
>The one thing I don't understand is the major difference between console video game development and PC development (for games).
One big reason would likely be that there is no point in doom-like openness on a console - the gamers still can't make their own mods because they've only got a console, not a computer. (Eg how could they have edited, compiled, and saved new levels?)
>Unlike other desktop applications, games tend to be hybrid organisms
> half software program, half artistic work.
"Unlike" other applications? I would submit (again) that one big reason open-source is having difficulting gaining users other than technicians is because of this misconception that good software consists merely of code. Even the Sorceforge Help Wanted section re-inforces the detrimental (and simply incorrect) notion that non-coders are not developers. As long as open-source developement of software is done by "developers" of the Sourceforge definition, the results will continue to be largely inaccessible to non-coders and non-technicians.
>TO me, there is a huge difference between linking directly to a file and linking to a page. If you link to a web page, the content can
d -because-we-can" tactics has progressed well beyond "sickened".
>change without your knowledge. If you link to a file, it can be assumed you know what is in that file to begin with, and the chances of the
>contents of a file being changed are extremely slim. As long as they keep this lawsuit about linking to files, and not linking to pages, the Internet
>is in no danger.
I disagree. Firstly, you are drawing a distincion that technically does not exist - a page _is_ a file, and the contents of any type of file can (and do) change without the knowledge of the linker (you give pages as an example of this, but it is true of all other types of file, the closest thing to a disctionction that can be drawn is a statistical one - there is usually a higher frequency for html files to have their content changed than other types of files.).
In your analogy, you act as a middleman between Bob and the buyer, when this is not the case in linking - you give exact directions, but you take absolutely no further part in the relationship between the hostsite (bob) and the user(buyer).
The site helps the user (including law enforcement agents) get in contact with the host and _nothing_ more. This is quite different from your analogy.
But as you might have guessed, my opinion stems more from fear of the lawsuit opening the way to massive internet-wide legal abuse by corporations than which side has the moral highground in the linking issue. We could easily see a repeat of the DMCA "if you take it offline as soon as someone complains, you escape liability" disaster. Imagine if this became the case for links to information companies didn't want people to see. That could signle-handedly be almost the end of the internet as a force for good.
And also of course, I'm gunning against the RIAA because my dislike of their "fuck-over-everyone-because-it's-better-for-us-an
>Whatever the precedent is there, the same should apply to linking -- the linker knows something illegal is going to happen as a result
>of his linking, and should be punished appropriately.
I don't think it's that simple. When the Mafiaboys come a lookin' for Bob - and they are fully capible of finding him on their own (they already have a pretty good idea of where he hiding) - some repugnant character figures he can score some brownie points by telling them where to find Bob.
In this example, intense social dislike rather than criminal law is more likely to be applicable.
Besides which, the real problem (as I see it) is how the hell can the judge rule in favour of the RIAA without setting a precedent that is hidiously open to abuse from similarly well-financed bullys?
No matter what restrictions or qualifiers he uses, it would be a powerful blow for might over right.
I'd also like to see that post (#166) moderated up.
A wearable-style portable camera on my bike would be cool - next time some idiot driver fails to indicate then runs into me, it wouldn't matter that I had no witnesses but he's got a mate who's prepared to swear I was at fault, or that he's a (supposedly) respectable middle-age family man while I'm a "youth" and must therefore be a wild and unpredictable danger to "decent" road users.
It doesn't even need a wireless connection - just continuious recording into a 32meg RAM buffer, and when something happens that I want to keep, I just stop recording and it's all in the buffer.
Make surveilance work for _me_ for a damn change. (Not only am I a "youth" (lingo that is locally applied to "young people" but means "thug" in the conservative middle-aged and elderly minds of those who use it), but I have long hair - double mistake. Bigoted "security" people earning a fraction of what I do wonder why they can't put a dent in shoplifting no matter how much they hassle long-haired "youths" who must clearly be the ones responsible...)
Rant ends. Apologies. Yes, I do feel much better now, thank you.
What kind of resolution and picture quality does he get out fo those?
Replying to myself, I found this quote from a CNN article (linked elsewhere in this discussion):
:-)
t /index.html )
"Sure, it looks silly. But so do women in one-inch platform shoes and kids who hike up their underwear. And they're not playing "Quake" at the same time."
Y'know, he's got a point
(Allthough these things really _are_ fads, which would kinda bode ill for wearables).
(The article is at: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/ptech/01/07/xybernau
Regarding the future of wearables, there are a few things from the past that could be noteworthy. The only highly successful wearables to date are personal music players. The transistor radio was portable rather than wearable. I think the first wearable was probably the walkman - the key difference being the private soundspace it created.
:-).
I may have my history muddled here - I imagine that a radio + headphones combination predated the walkman, but I'm under the impression that it took the twin development of earphones and a small unit before it all took off.
So how do people wear these wearables? Typically, the actual unit is stashed out of sight somewhere (in a pocket or bag), while headphones - despite apparently superior sound quality, usually take a back seat to the more discrete earphones.
Why is the unit usually stashed out of sight? I do it for a few reasons: it is more comfortable than clipped on the belt jiggling about, it's more secure (it won't fall off the belt and dash itself into a thousand high-tech pieces), it's padded (only really important with a shock-sensitive device such as CD), it's not going to get in the way, restrict your movement, it's not going to advertise that you feel an insecure need to advertise your toys, and it's not going to slap a big ugly box onto your profile (though the box itself might well be quite pretty).
A lot of these things are going to apply to new types of wearables as well as old.
Have you noticed that most earphones these days seem designed to look a little bit like earrings or jewellery? (eg a curved gold band standing out on the visible part of the earphone). I'm curious about that - they don't seem to incur the fear of appearing effete that is often still precludes guys getting twin earrings, yet it does seem that the tech is trying to incorporate elements of this jewellery, and doing well as a result (once apon a time, all earphone were just black, which perhaps red and blue tags to identify left and right - not merely functional, but functional at the _expense_ of form!).
One of the more recently popular features are remotes on the earphone wires. (These have been around for years, but until the advent of CD players, were fairly rare due it being so much cheaper to have tape-reading mechanisms that required physical force to engage, via the play button). Some people don't use them, some people do, but they are testament to people choosing to sacrifice control of the unit (by stashing it away) rather than wear it on the outside where they can reach it. Unlike the full unit, remotes are more conveniently placed, and much smaller, thus many people prefer them. (Though I actually wear mine out of sight under my shirt collar
Now, what is your opinion of people who wear cop-style underarm cell-phone holsters? I'm guessing you probably snicker behind their backs and hope like hell you'll never be reduced to such transparent (and failing) attempts at appearing important without appearing like you're trying to look important. There will always be people who buy underarm cell-phone holsters, but they're not where we want wearables to end up.
Recently, there was a discussion on brand marks on clothes, shoes etc. Several perceptive people pointed out that (in a gross simplification), there are two streams of wealth - those who can't afford many luxuries, so when they buy them, they buy blatant things that advertise that scream "look at me - I buy expensive things!" (eg a t-shirt with NIKE emblazoned on it), and the second stream of people who have sufficient wealth to almost have style custom-made for them - tailored clothes without logos but with fantastic fit and form, and so on. I think that thinking about this take on consumption in the context of wearables can result in some interesting insights into the future of the tech.
The technology exists to make these things actually wearable, yet the "I'm such a StarTrek weenie I get off on the borg image" still seems the predominant aesthetic. We have www.charmed.com with their equally dubious "cyberchicks with boxes and wires sticking out in all the wrong places that aren't actually very useful for anything, but will really reel in those trekkies with the high-paying jobs" look.
:-) For me, that means extremely discrete is the top priority, with it's aesthetic design acting as a stylistic fallback measure. :-)
Really, wearables that lack style of any substance (or a practical use for that matter) and presumably are intended to sell on wank factor (for whom?) alone are not going tempt very many people. Sure, they mostly just prototypes, but almost universally ignoring important considerations when prototyping is not going to help very much.
On the other hand, if you can browse the web on what could pass on the street for expensive sunglasses - and you can use them as normal sunglasses when not browsing (ie don't need to change headgear whenever you change tasks) then we're starting to get somewhere. And this kind of subtle, miniature heads up system has been built. But it seems the "plaster-junk-to-my-face" look is all the rage with a significant portion of the people involved (there of course some notable exceptions).
Rather than developing better ways to mount a wireless webcam on your head (the last place I'm putting a webcam is on my face! Shoulder, possibly, but face?!?), pour the effort into developing things to wearables more useful as a technology, eg a miniature retina or focus tracking system to incorporate into heads-up sunglasses, thus removing the need for a mouse or control panel larger than one or two buttons. Simply look at the icon and click the button, or whatever.
These systems might be complex and difficult with today's tech - much easier to play with things like webcams, but they offer a hell of a lot more as well.
BTW, I'm not merely spouting here from a position of complete ignorance - I'm working on some miniaturised wearable stuff, but it's in a different direction, and the ultimate goal is stuff that I can actually wear yet still feel stylish
(Ie I'm only spouting from a position of mostly-ignorance
Simple test for wearables: Would you be caught dead wearing that getup in a public place where you might meet people who would recognise you? I have yet to see any wearables that satisfy this extremely basic criteria. You might think this is kinda vain, but we're talking about wearable computers here - they are going to have to attain the same stylistic standards as clothing, sunglasses, shoes etc.
Cell phones had to come a long way before being accepted, and they were greatly aided by the perception that only important people had a genuine need for them. With WAP phones already here, wearable are unlikely to enjoy such a boost.
I'd support that post getting moderated up. Sure, it sounds like a typical anti-govt rant, but it puts the finger on the usually invisible (yet rampant) problem of the massive over-use of classification for things that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with keeping gross incompetence and dirty deeds away from public scrutiney. "risk to lives" is perpetuated by the over-classification, but it's usually others (often innocents), not those who can cover their ass with "National Security" abuses of power, who suffer.
I'd vote to have that post moderated up. /.er who didn't know about emuisc. According to the FAQ, the artists get 50%
I can't be the only
(Hopefully tha means the _actual_ artists, and doesn't include a bunch of middlemen).
>What you find there is a calculated campaign by the Clinton administration, and his little
>buddy Al Gore, to subvert the rights of the American people through the new technology.
You're mistaking the figureheads for the problem. Changing the names of the people who hold these positions will not affect the problem. Changing the name of the party which holds these positions will likewise, not affect the problem (indeed, could conceivably even exacerbate it).
Regarding this crap, it doesn't matter very much who wins the elections, because it's only a two-horse race, and both horses are heavily indebted to the same interest groups. Democracy does not really exist in any useful form when votes decide the name on the desk plaque, while finanical contributors (and others) decide the policies that eventually eminate from the office.
A big asset to maintaining the status quo of this system is that the vast majority of really important policy is either the sort of boring policy that the public is not interested in, or (like DMCA), the sting is in ramifactions that are not obvious to someone not intimately aquainted with it.
Something has to give, and it probably won't give soon. Which means hold on to your privacy, because there is a rough ride ahead.
>Hello. This is Mars. We noticed you've been looking at our water.
>Feel free to visit, but be prepared to pay our very expensive water park entrance fees.
>Also, there will be an airport fee assessed for each passenger landed on our planet.
Additionally, due to above water fees and restrictions, we will pay you to visit the bathroom.
We tried to advertise this aspect of our economy, but our emails were rejected as spam.
Three replies to this post, none of them noticed the real (though perhaps unintentional) joke - a meter is a needle display. Not to be confused with a metre - a unit of measurement.
(I don't mean funny in a haughty pedantic way, but that it reads like "NASA can do this as soon as they work out what a metre is, and to acheive this they are investigating analogue multimeters for clues". Hmmm, they won't get anywhere fast...)
Sorry, but I had to point it out when all three replies appeared to have missed it.
Implement photoshop plug-in compatibility and suddenly GIMP would have ten times as many features availible, from freeware on the net to extremely polished professional printshop stuff.
Don't implement photoshop plug-ins and people who have invested in them (be it money or learning-curve time) will not move to GIMP, and GIMP development will be slowed as people waste their time re-inventing wheels that are freely availible as plug-ins, leaving less time to improve the fundamentals.
It's so rare to get a useful and functioning plug-in standards for graphics. Use it, whatever the difficulty.
Yep, that would go a long way towards fixing it. However we are up against something bigger here. As an artist (specialising in computer work) it is becoming painfully obvious that the entire open source movement is still largely "by techies, for techies". And as long as this remains the case, any software that requires expertise outside that narrow range (such as graphics apps, games, 3d animation, possibly even word processing) is crippled by the nature of the open source movement.
A while back, I had the time to contribute to the movement. I couldn't find any projects that were looking for such help. Perhaps this was because you had to be a techie to know where to look to find such a project, or perhaps it was because many techies simply don't realise how crucial the non-programming parts are if you're trying to make a fully functional product that can compare to normal commercial software.
Hell, remember when /. reported that id Software had fired one of their developers, Paul Steed, allegely out of spite? I saw _multiple_ replies stating "Uh - Paul Steed isn't a developer, he does 3d models and art". What?!?
If this thinking is symptomatic of a significant portion of linux developers, linux ain't going anywhere beyond servers and enthusiest machines anytime soon. Windows shall forever reign supreme.
Programming is only one part of good software, and now that everyone is an artist (because they can operate GIMP or PS), everyone is a designer (because they can write html), everyone is a UI developer (because they can write code), we're going to have to deal with the fact that these beliefs are simply false. Flawless html doesn't make flawless design, flawless programming doesn't make a useful UI, flawless pixel manupulation doesn't ensure flawless communication of a concept. These are different skills, and the sooner this is widely understood and accomodated, the sooner open source becomes a genuine alternative.
>Is that Aughra's orrery for real? It looks like the product of a mad scientist!
:-) / pictures/Aughra.GIF / dc_pictures.html
:)
Yes and no. It's from the film "The Dark Crystal", and depicts a fictional solar system, however, they built the thing full size and motorised it etc. So it's real in the more important sense of "I could have something like that in my bedroom".
(A good defense against burglars
A picture of Aughra:
http://130.126.238.131/Sean/movies/dark_crystal
Lots of Dark Crystal pics:
http://130.126.238.131/Sean/movies/dark_crystal
Dark Crystal has just been re-released on DVD, so if you want to see the orrery in motion, you know what to do. (I also recommend "Labyrinth" - made by many of the same people and is a better film as well).
>I suppose suspension of the bodies would be a problem.
Surperconductors reflect magnetism, so if you could make a superconducting disk (cooled from beneath) several metres wide...
(And you'd get Tacky Mysterious Fog drifting off the device in the Bargain
On the other hand, having the huge brass rods and crescents and stuff has an appeal of its own.
> it won't happen.
>My thinking is this:
My thinking is that this whole "oh no - the terrorists will use this" thinking is based on concepts of terrorism that are more the product of popular culture than actual reality.
We know that many extremist groups have not been put off by the dangers in the technologies you mention, and indeed have sometimes been very sucessful at creating (but refraining from using) weapons built from them. This makes answering the question "why?" a bit more difficult.
Related to the topic, I would suggest that some of the groups that Uncle Sam would like us to believe are terrorists have somewhat more 3 dimensional motives than that magic sleeper word "anti-american" that switches off the minds of all who hear it. It may be that the real answers lie in those extra dimensions - in other words the reasons may be extremely specific to each persons cause, and not able to be easily boxed into a description of the motives of terrorists in general.
So yeah - some questions that should also be asked: Why would a terrorist want to use nano? Why would a terrorist want to kill indiscriminantly? Of all the cases of "terrorism" I can think of, very few actually planned or attempted any form of indiscriminant killing, and most sought not to kill, but were quite prepared to do so should they find it necessary. (A bit like your staunch NRA member? (that was a JOKE)) (BTW, for the slow of wit, I'm not condoning or defending any form of terrorism here, just trying to get past the mythology, despite being in a poor position to do so)
Now, the risks of nano from something like Columbine on the other hand... (actually, lets not go there
As it stands, I'm not too concerned by military or terrorist use of nano - both kinds of group already have sufficient weapon tech to wipe up the planet (with a very dirty rag). More weapons just means more ways for them to do so, and more chance for accidents. These threats are already real, just not quite as enticingly exotic as nano.
Yoda berated Luke for that kind of thinking.
And we all know that Yoda Knows His Shit.
:-)
(And there's more of them to look at than number-calculation devices
And for an orrery, virtually every gear-ratio is an approximation of a non-factorable ratio, so I found the article of particular interest because I'm currently working on one at home. (Though it's a desktop sort of thing, I aspire to eventually do something along the lines of Aughra's awesome device <grin>)
The only real link I've got on hand is this one: Brian Greig's Orrery Page :-)
(He makes orreries for museums, collectors etc, and some of them are pretty cool
BTW, for those that haven't seen much of these things, an orrery (named after the Earl of Orrery, who commissioned one of the first built) is a device that shows the motion of the planets to scale (but not the size of the planets to scale...). And like the calculation engines, orreries today are done through software.
If you know a bit about the complexities of planetary motion (eg non-circular orbits, inclined orbits in which the plane of inclination drifts or rotates), seeing the various means of incorporating these aberrations into a clockwork model is quite fascinating.
One particularly nagging thing about the article was the assumption that the problem is finding the best gear ratio. Ha! The best ratio might be 103:17 but have you ever tried to find a gearcutter? The last one I saw was in a museum (I must have been a pathetic sight - pressed up against the glass like a kid outside the candy store...), which means I have to buy manufactured gears. Which means finding the best gear ratio out of the gears available to me. Sure, it cuts down on the computation, but you need to make a longer gear train to get even remotely close :-(
Ah well.
It seems a shame that the skills and tools of so many of these crafts are dying or dead (if only because they could make amazing things that modern manufacturing methods are currently simple incapable of producing).
>What's considered a practical limit on the length of gear trains used for watches, mechanical computers, etc?
>If trains of four, five, six, etc gears are mechanically practical, the computational problem of choosing their ratios still seems interesting.
I might have misunderstood you, but you seem to have overlooked that gear trains are normally driven from the bottom (ie to produce a slower rotation at the far end) and not from the top. Thus trains of even 9, 10, 12, 20 gears are not only mechanically practical, but not very difficult either.
So yeah, there is still some scope for interesting computation, but on reflection, the computation of gear trains is interesting largely because it has solid practical application, but today, any application requiring an accuracy that would take a 20 step train to achieve is going to be done digitially anyway.
This is actually quite old news. For some more screenshots, check out:
http://www.rivenguild.com/realmyst/
http://cho.cyan.com/arachnid/jpgs/screen.jpg
For various press-releases and info:
http://www.cyan.com/news.html
Or for a stack of info, and the latest developments, just visit:
http://www.rivenguild.com
There is (very recent). :-)
Now I'm hoping to see a fireworks display