you can pour millicuries of tritium all over detectors, be it badges or geigers or whatever.
No, only if you're using a gamma-only geiger tube. Any alpha-capable geiger tube detects tritium fine. My pancake geiger (as well as my beta-gamma scintillation probes) goes nuts from the tritium of those glow capsule (used in compasses and keyrings) though the glass capsule it's sealed in. You're right in that you need to get the sensor so close that it's not going to be an issue on public transport, but it definitely sets off standard sensors.
I can't remember if I ever tried it with a beta-gamma geiger tube, though I imagine the "thin wall" isn't thin enough:-)
The battery uses beta particles, so the problem of having 'lead housing the side of a, um, house' isn't an issue. Your microwave makes beta particles -- which can be stopped by a sheet of paper.
It's alpha particles that can be stopped with paper, beta particles will go right through it. 1mm of metal (or 4mm of plastic) will stop beta though.
(I once made a gamma-beta probe with a moveable beta sheild made of brass. The brass turned out to be too thin, and only halved, rather than stopped the betas. I was annoyed because I could have saved a lot of time if I'd simply tested the metal before using it, but instead I'd just assumed it was enough metal:-)
Any news on whether 1.1 is also supposed to fix the non-standard text input windows that makes Firefox just about the only mainstream app that doesn't work properly in XP tablet edition?
(Most of the time, XP can't detect the text input box because it doesn't comply with the standard, meaning you need to use a keyboard rather than the pen, and on a tablet, you don't always have a keyboard...)
For most tasks, I think the keyboard would be faster than voice - even when using keypresses to instantly tell the computer how to distinguish between edit and dictate. This obviously means that for some tasks, voice will be best, but I think the keyboard will be with us a while yet.
As with all tablet PCs, my tablet already has voice recognition built in. Apparently it works and all that too, but I've never even bothered trying it - I personally have absolutely zero interest in a voice interface. Obviously not everyone is like me though. You for exampe:-)
It sounds like you're not aware that tablet PCs already use none other than wacom's pressure sensitive pen system for their screens. So the price is not as bad as you're thinking. They're already mass-produced, and official (ie optimistic) figures are that the total cost of all specialised hardware additions of a tablet PC (not just the wacom systems) add only a $200 premium to the price. (I call BS, but that's another story)
Often however, even though the wacom digitizer in a tablet PC supports various bells and whistles, the pen supplied is low-end, and you have to buy a better pen from wacom to get some of the things that would come standard in a stand-alone wacom setup, like the pressure-sensitive eraser on other end of the pen.
I'm an artist. Tablet PCs are already great for art, they're just not marketed at artists (plenty of scope for apple to swoop in here - no significant changes needed, just the right advertising campaign, and BAM, much like the ipod), but when it comes to art, a CRT beats LCD any day. Apple can't change that any more than MS can. However, despite the better CRT display on my wacom-equipped desktop, I find myself now prefering to use my tablet for art, because of the ability to draw onto the screen. I didn't think it would make a significant difference, but after a while, I just discovered I do prefer it.
Actually, I do know that there were a very small number of tablet PC models that tried using a non-wacom, non-pressure sensitive digitizer, but I get the impression they died the ignoble death they deserved.
No, it means that like HDD mp3 players, any early adopters who helped find and solve the problems and pave the way for Apple to cash in, will soon be assumed by the fadsters to be poor wannabees who purchased a cheap imitation of apple because they couldn't afford The Real Thing.
(I still use a HDD mp3 player that I bought before the ipod existed, as it's still considerably more powerful than the ipod 3 years later, though bulkier and equally ugly. I'm writing this on a tablet PC. Fortunately, I don't buy toys for attention, so I see these attitute shifts as interesting rather than annoying. Maybe I'll soon be able to use my tablet during the commute to work without having to field a barrage of questions from fascinated people, because people will instead be thinking "oh, how pathetic, a cheap imitation of Apple's invention". Now that's Progress!:-)
No, I have a tablet, and it is indeed great for art, but the reason it's great for art is that it has a pressure-sensitive wacom pen. This Apple thing depicts an onscreen finger pad, which makes it great for... uh... finger painting.
This surprises me. I guess that since it's a design patent, the use of the finger might be a red-herring, since it's the shape, not the function, that the patent covers.
OTOH, a lot of apps (music, video players, etc) would benefit from not needing to have a pen in hand, so it may be that it's aimed at simple tasks, not art.
Note that this patent is for a finger touchscreen tablet like a PDA, and my tablet has a wacom pressure-sensitive pen digitizer in the screen.
This is interesting. A year ago, I was predicting that Apple would get on the tablet bandwagon (and possibly pull off another ipod), because tablets are so suited to art, which is ostensibly one of apples big markets. (I have a normal wacom digitizer on my desktop, but I find I prefer to use the screen digitiser of may tablet for photoshop, etc, - even though the CRT of the desktop beats any LCD on a portable).
Yet their design is for a finger touch screen. This would make for perhaps a better interface than pen for something simple like an ebook or portable video player (a video ipod allowing you rent DRMed movies from apple:-), but not so useful as an art / design machine (my understanding is that to have both pressure-sensitive pen and finger, you would need two seperate, difference hardware systems on the screen, which would be expensive).
I have a convertable tablet (it operates in slate and laptop mode), and my experience is that it is a vast improvement over laptops when in laptop mode, but slate mode, while kind of cool, it typically limited to low-input tasks like watching DVDs, because I type at twice the speed I write.
So I doubt this tablet is going to be marketed as a mac. It may contain a mac, but it's going to take aim at more specialised tasks.
Unless they stick one of those laser keyboards on it that convert any flat surface into a keyboard. It's about time someone built one of those into a slate computer.
And now that epaper is becoming possible, ebook readers that failed to suck might be another ipod waiting to happen.
eople who buy hybrids will be inclined to submit exaggerated mileage claims This is the same phenomenon as people on a diet who under report/underestimate their calorie intake
No, I was under the impression that the prius had mileage readouts among it's zillion other energy usage readouts on the computer screen, so there isnt any estimating being done by the owner, just telling the number on the screen.
I may be wrong, but if it is the case that the prius reports its mileage (and it may only be the later model), then exaggeration seems unlikely, becaause - as you point out - exaggeration would normally takes the form of people rounding up and rounding down when calculating, and other estimation related anomalies, wheras if their car gives them an actual number to report, few people would change the number - as that psychologically crosses the line between exaggeration and lying.
I do know a number of ppl from Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Brazil who would take it as an insult if you called them an American as they view it as the USA
I've accidentally offended Canadians by using "Americans" to refer to USians exclusively.
You can say that some Canadians would be offended to be called Americans, and you'd be right, but by the same token, some Canadians are similarly offended if you reserve the continental name for the USA alone.
I don't think it's cut and dried. Or at least, there is a sufficient sliver of gray to cause the occaisional problem:)
You use that other term or even dignify the use, you get a big ol FU
Can someone explain to me why some Americans/USians/whatever are getting so steamed up about this? I've seen the word used from time to time, and as used it seemed perfectly legitimate. But here on/. there seems to be some boiling resentment about it and veiled references to the reason being mental associations with some kind of derogatory... something?
What is alledgedly derogatory about it? What is the bad thing that it's being associated with? Is it most noticed by these objectors when used by people that the objectors disagree with? Why do some people think it's objectionable?
They must encompass most of your field of view else they can't really deliver VR. Glasses that effectively show a big screen TV a few feet away could be used for VR, but will always be very poor at it - periphiral vision is just too important to "reality", virtual or otherwise.
But they'd be fine for augmented reality if the opaque backing was removed so you could use your real-world periphiral vision.
Back in the days of VR being a buzzword, I, like many others, was most interested in the game potential. The problem of the VR world not being very touchable lead me (like others I assume) to imagine games where the VR word corresponds to real-world walls, but the VR supplies the fantastical element. Eg, Like how a game of laser-tag is played in a building, but key your headset so that a circular wall becomes the base of a kilometre-high tree or something, or other players are sometimes depicted as non-combatants or ghosts or animals, depending on how the game is intended to play.
It seems like running around a solid world with a real-world-aware VR headset is a an easy low-tech way to solve the locomotion and tactile problems of VR.
320x200 pixels, (or even 640x480) might be ok when it's on a monitor - 10% of your field of view, but when it's your entire field of view, as with VR glasses, it's horrible.
There are now VR glasses which are lightweight and even aesthetically discreet, but the resolution remains atrocious. I'm not an engineer, so I don't know why that is, but my guess is that anything commerically viable has to use off-the-shelf LCDs that are physically small, which basically means low resolution.
Hopefully, DLP micromirrors will offer a way to put decent resolution into something that looks not much bigger than eyeglasses, but it may take a while for the price to come down. (Again, just guessing)
Hell, let him convince as many investers as possible that SCO is on to something. The more investors that lose some $$$ by jumping on this doomed bandwagon, the more investors will be wised-up, and communicate that wisdom to others in future, and the more dire the financial risk from fleeing investors preventing mercenary corporations from attempting this kind of stunt against OSS again.
A victory for the legitimacy of Linux will be that much bigger if it's sensationalised by making speculators and commentators, especially movers and shakers that the financial gamers look up to, eat their words and open their walletbooks.
Surely these lawsuits are uber-profitable - not one in a thousand contests, so they all settle, which means they pay the RIAA a four-figure sum, when all the RIAA did was have a guy mail a nasty-gram.
The sue-people wing of the RIAA has got to me turning a profit, and if that's the case, they presumably won't stop suing any time soon.
Crap, it removed my end-tags, now there's no context.
Some of the missing context: I'm not ragging on cops, just having fun with the "renegade cop who doesn't do it byt he book but gets the job done" stereotype that is so popular in movies but so despised when you actually meet him in real life.:-)
Looks like those paper-pushing nancy-boys down at City Hall have finally realised we're fighting the good fight down here. This is the street, man, and it ain't pretty. I don't need no panty-waisted girly-man bleating about "civil rights" and "due process", that's exactly the kind of BS that gets the bad off on "a technicality".
"Technicality" my ass! I bagged that scumbag fair and square. If those assholes think I should have waited until I had evidence, they're living in fairyland./not ragging on cops, just how the "renegade cop who doesn't do things by the book but gets the job done" cliche is so popular in Hollywood while so despised in real life.:-)
I have a tablet, the pen relly is a big improvement to the crappy interface that is known as "the laptop". Ok, I do a lot of graphics and photoshop stuff, which probably doesn't apply to you, but even just normal use, it's better than a normal laptop - you don't have to use the silly fingerpads, and you don't have to carry a mouse around with you and continually plug and unplug the USB. It's also faster to use than a mouse when typing - the pen just rests in your fingers and a quick gesture while typing is all it takes to place the cursor, wheras with a mouse you take your hand further from the keyboard, and then operate the mouse.
For a lot of games, I find I prefer the mouse, ut in the last year, the mouse has gone practically unused, the fingerpad used even less than the mouse.
The rotating screen is also a big improvement - there is not just laptop mode and slate mode, but several useful configurations in-between, that means the laptop configures to the ergonomics what you happen to need right there, rather than the more usual you having to configure yourself to te laptop - which is often quite difficult with a normal laptop when you're in a cramped space (such as while commuting to work)
Yes, I've had one of these for almost 1.5 years (I'm writing this on it now). It's great. Once you get used to a convertible laptop/tablet, you won't go back. It solves most of the interface awkwardness of using a laptop, among other thing.
The purpose of the trailer is to get people who have never seen Firefly to go and see Serenity.
You are not the target audience. A bunch of stuff that makes sense to someone like you is a bunch of random crap that confuses the hell out of someone who only knows "it's some sci-fi flick".
Slashdot Mirror
you can pour millicuries of tritium all over detectors, be it badges or geigers or whatever.
:-)
No, only if you're using a gamma-only geiger tube. Any alpha-capable geiger tube detects tritium fine. My pancake geiger (as well as my beta-gamma scintillation probes) goes nuts from the tritium of those glow capsule (used in compasses and keyrings) though the glass capsule it's sealed in. You're right in that you need to get the sensor so close that it's not going to be an issue on public transport, but it definitely sets off standard sensors.
I can't remember if I ever tried it with a beta-gamma geiger tube, though I imagine the "thin wall" isn't thin enough
The battery uses beta particles, so the problem of having 'lead housing the side of a, um, house' isn't an issue. Your microwave makes beta particles -- which can be stopped by a sheet of paper.
:-)
It's alpha particles that can be stopped with paper, beta particles will go right through it. 1mm of metal (or 4mm of plastic) will stop beta though.
(I once made a gamma-beta probe with a moveable beta sheild made of brass. The brass turned out to be too thin, and only halved, rather than stopped the betas. I was annoyed because I could have saved a lot of time if I'd simply tested the metal before using it, but instead I'd just assumed it was enough metal
Any news on whether 1.1 is also supposed to fix the non-standard text input windows that makes Firefox just about the only mainstream app that doesn't work properly in XP tablet edition?
(Most of the time, XP can't detect the text input box because it doesn't comply with the standard, meaning you need to use a keyboard rather than the pen, and on a tablet, you don't always have a keyboard...)
For most tasks, I think the keyboard would be faster than voice - even when using keypresses to instantly tell the computer how to distinguish between edit and dictate. This obviously means that for some tasks, voice will be best, but I think the keyboard will be with us a while yet.
:-)
As with all tablet PCs, my tablet already has voice recognition built in. Apparently it works and all that too, but I've never even bothered trying it - I personally have absolutely zero interest in a voice interface. Obviously not everyone is like me though. You for exampe
this is where the future is, a plain star-trek pad-like device with a few sockets
If Apple is seen as the way to reaching a Star Trek future, then I'm sorry, that makes Apple the new Cyberdyne Systems busy working on Skynet.
They must be stopped.
It sounds like you're not aware that tablet PCs already use none other than wacom's pressure sensitive pen system for their screens. So the price is not as bad as you're thinking. They're already mass-produced, and official (ie optimistic) figures are that the total cost of all specialised hardware additions of a tablet PC (not just the wacom systems) add only a $200 premium to the price. (I call BS, but that's another story)
Often however, even though the wacom digitizer in a tablet PC supports various bells and whistles, the pen supplied is low-end, and you have to buy a better pen from wacom to get some of the things that would come standard in a stand-alone wacom setup, like the pressure-sensitive eraser on other end of the pen.
I'm an artist. Tablet PCs are already great for art, they're just not marketed at artists (plenty of scope for apple to swoop in here - no significant changes needed, just the right advertising campaign, and BAM, much like the ipod), but when it comes to art, a CRT beats LCD any day. Apple can't change that any more than MS can. However, despite the better CRT display on my wacom-equipped desktop, I find myself now prefering to use my tablet for art, because of the ability to draw onto the screen. I didn't think it would make a significant difference, but after a while, I just discovered I do prefer it.
Actually, I do know that there were a very small number of tablet PC models that tried using a non-wacom, non-pressure sensitive digitizer, but I get the impression they died the ignoble death they deserved.
that tablet PCs are cool now?
:-)
No, it means that like HDD mp3 players, any early adopters who helped find and solve the problems and pave the way for Apple to cash in, will soon be assumed by the fadsters to be poor wannabees who purchased a cheap imitation of apple because they couldn't afford The Real Thing.
(I still use a HDD mp3 player that I bought before the ipod existed, as it's still considerably more powerful than the ipod 3 years later, though bulkier and equally ugly. I'm writing this on a tablet PC. Fortunately, I don't buy toys for attention, so I see these attitute shifts as interesting rather than annoying. Maybe I'll soon be able to use my tablet during the commute to work without having to field a barrage of questions from fascinated people, because people will instead be thinking "oh, how pathetic, a cheap imitation of Apple's invention". Now that's Progress!
No, I have a tablet, and it is indeed great for art, but the reason it's great for art is that it has a pressure-sensitive wacom pen. This Apple thing depicts an onscreen finger pad, which makes it great for... uh... finger painting.
This surprises me. I guess that since it's a design patent, the use of the finger might be a red-herring, since it's the shape, not the function, that the patent covers.
OTOH, a lot of apps (music, video players, etc) would benefit from not needing to have a pen in hand, so it may be that it's aimed at simple tasks, not art.
Note that this patent is for a finger touchscreen tablet like a PDA, and my tablet has a wacom pressure-sensitive pen digitizer in the screen.
:-), but not so useful as an art / design machine (my understanding is that to have both pressure-sensitive pen and finger, you would need two seperate, difference hardware systems on the screen, which would be expensive).
This is interesting. A year ago, I was predicting that Apple would get on the tablet bandwagon (and possibly pull off another ipod), because tablets are so suited to art, which is ostensibly one of apples big markets. (I have a normal wacom digitizer on my desktop, but I find I prefer to use the screen digitiser of may tablet for photoshop, etc, - even though the CRT of the desktop beats any LCD on a portable).
Yet their design is for a finger touch screen. This would make for perhaps a better interface than pen for something simple like an ebook or portable video player (a video ipod allowing you rent DRMed movies from apple
I have a convertable tablet (it operates in slate and laptop mode), and my experience is that it is a vast improvement over laptops when in laptop mode, but slate mode, while kind of cool, it typically limited to low-input tasks like watching DVDs, because I type at twice the speed I write.
So I doubt this tablet is going to be marketed as a mac. It may contain a mac, but it's going to take aim at more specialised tasks.
Unless they stick one of those laser keyboards on it that convert any flat surface into a keyboard. It's about time someone built one of those into a slate computer.
And now that epaper is becoming possible, ebook readers that failed to suck might be another ipod waiting to happen.
eople who buy hybrids will be inclined to submit exaggerated mileage claims
This is the same phenomenon as people on a diet who under report/underestimate their calorie intake
No, I was under the impression that the prius had mileage readouts among it's zillion other energy usage readouts on the computer screen, so there isnt any estimating being done by the owner, just telling the number on the screen.
I may be wrong, but if it is the case that the prius reports its mileage (and it may only be the later model), then exaggeration seems unlikely, becaause - as you point out - exaggeration would normally takes the form of people rounding up and rounding down when calculating, and other estimation related anomalies, wheras if their car gives them an actual number to report, few people would change the number - as that psychologically crosses the line between exaggeration and lying.
I do know a number of ppl from Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Brazil who would take it as an insult if you called them an American as they view it as the USA
:)
I've accidentally offended Canadians by using "Americans" to refer to USians exclusively.
You can say that some Canadians would be offended to be called Americans, and you'd be right, but by the same token, some Canadians are similarly offended if you reserve the continental name for the USA alone.
I don't think it's cut and dried. Or at least, there is a sufficient sliver of gray to cause the occaisional problem
You use that other term or even dignify the use, you get a big ol FU
/. there seems to be some boiling resentment about it and veiled references to the reason being mental associations with some kind of derogatory... something?
Can someone explain to me why some Americans/USians/whatever are getting so steamed up about this? I've seen the word used from time to time, and as used it seemed perfectly legitimate. But here on
What is alledgedly derogatory about it? What is the bad thing that it's being associated with? Is it most noticed by these objectors when used by people that the objectors disagree with? Why do some people think it's objectionable?
VR Glasses don't take over your field of view.
They must encompass most of your field of view else they can't really deliver VR.
Glasses that effectively show a big screen TV a few feet away could be used for VR, but will always be very poor at it - periphiral vision is just too important to "reality", virtual or otherwise.
But they'd be fine for augmented reality if the opaque backing was removed so you could use your real-world periphiral vision.
VR hasn't died, it's evolved. Apparently.
Back in the days of VR being a buzzword, I, like many others, was most interested in the game potential. The problem of the VR world not being very touchable lead me (like others I assume) to imagine games where the VR word corresponds to real-world walls, but the VR supplies the fantastical element. Eg, Like how a game of laser-tag is played in a building, but key your headset so that a circular wall becomes the base of a kilometre-high tree or something, or other players are sometimes depicted as non-combatants or ghosts or animals, depending on how the game is intended to play.
It seems like running around a solid world with a real-world-aware VR headset is a an easy low-tech way to solve the locomotion and tactile problems of VR.
320x200 pixels, (or even 640x480) might be ok when it's on a monitor - 10% of your field of view, but when it's your entire field of view, as with VR glasses, it's horrible.
There are now VR glasses which are lightweight and even aesthetically discreet, but the resolution remains atrocious. I'm not an engineer, so I don't know why that is, but my guess is that anything commerically viable has to use off-the-shelf LCDs that are physically small, which basically means low resolution.
Hopefully, DLP micromirrors will offer a way to put decent resolution into something that looks not much bigger than eyeglasses, but it may take a while for the price to come down. (Again, just guessing)
Hell, let him convince as many investers as possible that SCO is on to something. The more investors that lose some $$$ by jumping on this doomed bandwagon, the more investors will be wised-up, and communicate that wisdom to others in future, and the more dire the financial risk from fleeing investors preventing mercenary corporations from attempting this kind of stunt against OSS again.
A victory for the legitimacy of Linux will be that much bigger if it's sensationalised by making speculators and commentators, especially movers and shakers that the financial gamers look up to, eat their words and open their walletbooks.
Surely these lawsuits are uber-profitable - not one in a thousand contests, so they all settle, which means they pay the RIAA a four-figure sum, when all the RIAA did was have a guy mail a nasty-gram.
The sue-people wing of the RIAA has got to me turning a profit, and if that's the case, they presumably won't stop suing any time soon.
Crap, it removed my end-tags, now there's no context.
:-)
Some of the missing context:
I'm not ragging on cops, just having fun with the "renegade cop who doesn't do it byt he book but gets the job done" stereotype that is so popular in movies but so despised when you actually meet him in real life.
Looks like those paper-pushing nancy-boys down at City Hall have finally realised we're fighting the good fight down here. This is the street, man, and it ain't pretty. I don't need no panty-waisted girly-man bleating about "civil rights" and "due process", that's exactly the kind of BS that gets the bad off on "a technicality".
/not ragging on cops, just how the "renegade cop who doesn't do things by the book but gets the job done" cliche is so popular in Hollywood while so despised in real life. :-)
"Technicality" my ass! I bagged that scumbag fair and square. If those assholes think I should have waited until I had evidence, they're living in fairyland.
Before people jump to the wrong conclusion, the typos are because I'm typing in the dark, not handwriting recognition errors :)
I have a tablet, the pen relly is a big improvement to the crappy interface that is known as "the laptop". Ok, I do a lot of graphics and photoshop stuff, which probably doesn't apply to you, but even just normal use, it's better than a normal laptop - you don't have to use the silly fingerpads, and you don't have to carry a mouse around with you and continually plug and unplug the USB. It's also faster to use than a mouse when typing - the pen just rests in your fingers and a quick gesture while typing is all it takes to place the cursor, wheras with a mouse you take your hand further from the keyboard, and then operate the mouse.
For a lot of games, I find I prefer the mouse, ut in the last year, the mouse has gone practically unused, the fingerpad used even less than the mouse.
The rotating screen is also a big improvement - there is not just laptop mode and slate mode, but several useful configurations in-between, that means the laptop configures to the ergonomics what you happen to need right there, rather than the more usual you having to configure yourself to te laptop - which is often quite difficult with a normal laptop when you're in a cramped space (such as while commuting to work)
Yes, I've had one of these for almost 1.5 years (I'm writing this on it now). It's great. Once you get used to a convertible laptop/tablet, you won't go back. It solves most of the interface awkwardness of using a laptop, among other thing.
Yes, you're right, it's the revolutionary war. I'm not from the US, so my grasp of US history isn't always up to par :)
The purpose of the trailer is to get people who have never seen Firefly to go and see Serenity.
You are not the target audience. A bunch of stuff that makes sense to someone like you is a bunch of random crap that confuses the hell out of someone who only knows "it's some sci-fi flick".
See the series first.