evaluation kits can be had for high end FPGAs too, and since any stuff you put in there is running in hardware, rather then in software using a limited instruction set, i definitely believe this is possible
in fact, in 2006 i did an internship at a company developing HD cameras (1080p movie gear), and i was working on a small FPGA framegrabber. Granted, that device captured a single frame to push it over ethernet, but it did buffer all frames realtime.
the test is uploading the video to youtube, doing the same test but downloading a DVD iso from usenet obviously would draw some unwanted attention from the various groups 'representing artists and movie studios'
besides, they probably made some guesstimate as to what kind of file-size would provide an interesting match-up. pitting a pidgeon with a filled 32 GB flash card against ADSL wouldnt have been interesting
i have no clue about the US plan ecosystem, but here in europe android has trickled down to $99 prepaid phones, i replaced my old nokia (which i was using since the n96 i got with my plan is absolute SHIT), with a vodafone rebranded huawei (the huawei 8120 joy, or vodafone 845 nova), unlocked it for $20 through a chinese website (smart buggers they are, sell the thing to vodafone, which will simlock them, then use your own product knowledge to offer unlocks to the end-user for a fraction of what vodafone wants)
Granted, it only has a 320*240 resistive screen and 128mb of ram, but it is running android 2.1, and works quite nicely, even if it slows down occasionally.
so my advice, look for the low-end android phones, stuff like rebranded generic chinese models (which worked out for me quite well), i know there is an LG out there prepaid as well, and the HTC wildfire is pretty cheap too (for a full featured HTC branded android phone)
HTC actually does provide upgrades, the desire recently got the upgrade to froyo, and for the legend that same update is in the works, the wildfire will get 2.2 as well.
(and as for the iphone updates, ios 4 sucks on 3g generation hardware and doesnt actually add usefull features on that hardware (no multitasking, wallpapers, the only thing i noticed is a threaded mail inbox, which SUCKS compared to how gmail works on android), anything older like a first gen ipod touch or iphone doesnt get the update at all. Arguably only the 3gs actually got anything usefull from the update)
I find it slightly offputting that as the expense of these phones ramps up, so do the contract terms and you can end up with an out dated phone for years.
Here in holland you can get a HTC wildfire on a one year plan for free, for a very modest monthly cost. Sure it isnt a high-end phone, but compared to phones of even two years ago, it is a marvel of technology. (by the way, i can get a desire for free for less cost then the cheapest iphone sub, while on the iphone sub i would pay 170 euros for the iphone still)
but yeah, it is tricky, i am on the lost months of a 2 year plan for which i got a nokia n96 (nokia's then flagship), which absolutely sucked ass. i threw the n96 in a corner within a month to go back to my older nokia. a while back i picked up a huawei 8120 joy android phone on a prepaid dail to try out android, and it is a marvelous device for its cost, $99 without any subscription
which will still have your vehicle suddenly hitting a wall of atmospheric pressure, if you do everything right. At these kind of speeds that is probably like hitting a brick wall
how about having the tube behind the craft pressurized? the pushing force of the air behind the craft should (over)compensate for the air resistance on the front of the vehicle, sort of like a crossbreed between a normal powder-rifle and a gauss-gun...
it would need some rather extreme pressure tanks / explosive / reactant for this trick though
because linux compatible laptops dont come from one single vendor, and dont carry a hefty price premium just because it can run a certain piece of software
(and because even though they share a common technological base, apple and the linux ecosystem couldnt be further from each other in terms of ideology)
i agree with your explanation of pascals thinking, but i dont agree with pascal. Obviously my pork and whiskey were trivial matters (honestly, i could probably do without pork or alcohol if i wanted too), i was sort of avoiding mentioning losing freedom, since that is in essence what most mainstream religions make you do. They take away part of your freedom in exchange for some (potentially false) security in the afterlife.
So yes, i am in disagreement with pascal about what is valuable, i value the ability to think for one self as a human, pascal obviously thought freedom was of minor importance
No, you can progress in any life, even if you were born an earthworm, granted, you wont go from earthworm to person in one step (i think anyway), but it isnt sitting around waiting to become a hindu
As for the hindu thing, this reincarnation thing is also tied in with the old caste system, people who did poorly in life will come back as a lower caste person.
But yeah, in essence your current place in the world would be the result of what you (well, i dont know how much of you, since memories/mind do not persist) did in previous lives..
(if any hindu spots a flaw in my explanation please correct me by the way)
i might just be proving your point here, but from reading the wiki page, it sounds like a bit of an excuse, i.e. "i think we cant know so there, no point in talking further, where is the remote?", thus relinquishing any responsibility for thinking further about it.
which is one of the things i hate about religion, the fact that humans (sometimes) use it as an excuse to not take responsibility, simply by saying "this is gods will"
in essence it sounds to me like believing in the "god" of overpowering stupidity..
(honestly, i dont mean to offend, this is just the impression i get from reading that wiki page, and if that is your belief, i am fine with that, dont change on my account)
i am not sure about buddhism, but hinduism also knows the concept of starting over again on a lower step (like going from human to a dog) if you screw up a life, so if in this life you are a christian, and as such do wrong things, you will simply end up as a lower lifeform, and if you do that right, you go up a step, without having to be the same christian guy again.
Being a christian in a hindu reality merely means having to back a few steps on your path to enlightenment, it doesnt mean being stuck in an endless loop of being wrong, so in that respect a hindu reality is more friendly to christians then a christian reality to hindus
you made me think, if you assume the christian god is the correct one (i dont, atheist and such), then believing in any particular version of christianity might even be more dangerous then being a muslim. If the christian god exists, and for instance, catholicism is the correct interpretation, then a protestant (reformed, whatever), person, will not only have not heeded the right set of rules of the god he believes in, he will have done things in his gods name, which go directly against gods will (which, for the uk/irish region, might include killing/fighting catholics)
If i was a god (and many people seem to assume god is some sort of allmighty benevolent but very strict human-like thinking mind, sort of a king of old), i would be more upset with people claiming to follow me, and in my (explicit) name, cary out misdeeds/crimes, some even against my own correct followers, then the guys who are just following the wrong god to begin with...
anyway, the problem i see with the pascal wager is that it neglects the potential cost of following a religion, it does not take into account any experiences you might lose, or effort you will spend in vain, worshipping a non existant god, a devout muslim will never taste pork, or taste a good whiskey, thus making his life on earth less complete, with a chance to find out that is all you ever get, if there is no afterlife. In essence, if there is no afterlife, this earthly life is all we humans have, devoting that to a non-existant god in that case (possibly) devalues literally all that we have, even if on an absolute scale earthly life earthly life + afterlife
Intel's netburst architecture (of pentium 4 fame) featured the 'Rapid Execution Engine', which consisted of two ALU's running double the clock speed, on 3.8 GHz Pentium 4's, that would be 7.6 GHz
one could argue that ikaruga (on the dreamcast) is basically Radiant silvergun 2, and that has since appeared on XBLA
I agree though that that list is short and not even close to a reasonable selection, you cant simply have a list like this and leave of a couple of dreamcast titles (dont know any of the top of my head, but i am sure there are some forgotten gems in there)
i dont see the rationele behind the touch screen either. From the looks of apple's site it doesnt run iOS with apps and such anyway, so i dont see the point in using a multi-touch interface (i wouldnt even know how to use multi-touch in an ipod only interface)
The nano 1 and 3 looked a bit off to me with the very long body, the 2g nano looks just about right to me, now they have gone back to an 'aspect ratio' that somewhat makes sense to me, but they go and 'revolutionize' the UI so much that i have no clue if this will even work.. touch screen buttons need more area then physical buttons, so i'm not sure they can even cram the same amount of info on the device as with the old split screen/controls setup
just wait untill apple 'patches a safari bug' horribly killing facebook rendering on any idevice, and then a month later, rejects the facebook app from the app store, and uses their remote backdoor to kill it on every idevice.
i agree with most of your arguments, save for these two
- 720p - the iPad is 768p. 720p 768p in terms of vertical lines.
720p means 1280*720, which the ipad can not display, playing a 720p video on the ipad without seriously raping the aspect ratio means scaling the video down to 1024*576
- USB.. It's to weed out the guy who attaches his USB powered nerf gun.
So basically you are saying apple are a bunch of elitist assholes, who no longer support their "think different" creed. (To me thinking different means (among other things) to dont give a fuck about what other people think, and just enjoy your nerf gun, if thats your thing)
as for the memory, 256mb in an ipad is way to little, but that is just my opinion
Windows 3.1 actually ran quite do-able (in my own childhood memories) on a 386sx with 1mb
i think the grand-grand parent means that with todays bloat in applications (compared to win 3.1 days), 512mb of ram combined with the 'multi-tasking' seen in iOS 4.x will deliver a similar experience as the windows 3.1 days
Slashdot Mirror
evaluation kits can be had for high end FPGAs too, and since any stuff you put in there is running in hardware, rather then in software using a limited instruction set, i definitely believe this is possible
in fact, in 2006 i did an internship at a company developing HD cameras (1080p movie gear), and i was working on a small FPGA framegrabber. Granted, that device captured a single frame to push it over ethernet, but it did buffer all frames realtime.
the test is uploading the video to youtube, doing the same test but downloading a DVD iso from usenet obviously would draw some unwanted attention from the various groups 'representing artists and movie studios'
besides, they probably made some guesstimate as to what kind of file-size would provide an interesting match-up. pitting a pidgeon with a filled 32 GB flash card against ADSL wouldnt have been interesting
i have no clue about the US plan ecosystem, but here in europe android has trickled down to $99 prepaid phones, i replaced my old nokia (which i was using since the n96 i got with my plan is absolute SHIT), with a vodafone rebranded huawei (the huawei 8120 joy, or vodafone 845 nova), unlocked it for $20 through a chinese website (smart buggers they are, sell the thing to vodafone, which will simlock them, then use your own product knowledge to offer unlocks to the end-user for a fraction of what vodafone wants)
Granted, it only has a 320*240 resistive screen and 128mb of ram, but it is running android 2.1, and works quite nicely, even if it slows down occasionally.
so my advice, look for the low-end android phones, stuff like rebranded generic chinese models (which worked out for me quite well), i know there is an LG out there prepaid as well, and the HTC wildfire is pretty cheap too (for a full featured HTC branded android phone)
HTC actually does provide upgrades, the desire recently got the upgrade to froyo, and for the legend that same update is in the works, the wildfire will get 2.2 as well.
(and as for the iphone updates, ios 4 sucks on 3g generation hardware and doesnt actually add usefull features on that hardware (no multitasking, wallpapers, the only thing i noticed is a threaded mail inbox, which SUCKS compared to how gmail works on android), anything older like a first gen ipod touch or iphone doesnt get the update at all. Arguably only the 3gs actually got anything usefull from the update)
your contract doesnt allow you to get a new phone?
i think you are able to get a new phone, you just dont get the discount when buying it, which makes sense to me..
I find it slightly offputting that as the expense of these phones ramps up, so do the contract terms and you can end up with an out dated phone for years.
Here in holland you can get a HTC wildfire on a one year plan for free, for a very modest monthly cost. Sure it isnt a high-end phone, but compared to phones of even two years ago, it is a marvel of technology. (by the way, i can get a desire for free for less cost then the cheapest iphone sub, while on the iphone sub i would pay 170 euros for the iphone still)
but yeah, it is tricky, i am on the lost months of a 2 year plan for which i got a nokia n96 (nokia's then flagship), which absolutely sucked ass. i threw the n96 in a corner within a month to go back to my older nokia. a while back i picked up a huawei 8120 joy android phone on a prepaid dail to try out android, and it is a marvelous device for its cost, $99 without any subscription
love your sig!
(just got an android phone a few months back, and even if this is a $100 prepaid chinese hackjob, i prefer it over an iphone)
hmm, true, i hadnt considered the heating effect, merely the braking effect..
which will still have your vehicle suddenly hitting a wall of atmospheric pressure, if you do everything right. At these kind of speeds that is probably like hitting a brick wall
how about having the tube behind the craft pressurized? the pushing force of the air behind the craft should (over)compensate for the air resistance on the front of the vehicle, sort of like a crossbreed between a normal powder-rifle and a gauss-gun...
it would need some rather extreme pressure tanks / explosive / reactant for this trick though
because linux compatible laptops dont come from one single vendor, and dont carry a hefty price premium just because it can run a certain piece of software
(and because even though they share a common technological base, apple and the linux ecosystem couldnt be further from each other in terms of ideology)
i agree with your explanation of pascals thinking, but i dont agree with pascal. Obviously my pork and whiskey were trivial matters (honestly, i could probably do without pork or alcohol if i wanted too), i was sort of avoiding mentioning losing freedom, since that is in essence what most mainstream religions make you do. They take away part of your freedom in exchange for some (potentially false) security in the afterlife.
So yes, i am in disagreement with pascal about what is valuable, i value the ability to think for one self as a human, pascal obviously thought freedom was of minor importance
No, you can progress in any life, even if you were born an earthworm, granted, you wont go from earthworm to person in one step (i think anyway), but it isnt sitting around waiting to become a hindu
As for the hindu thing, this reincarnation thing is also tied in with the old caste system, people who did poorly in life will come back as a lower caste person.
But yeah, in essence your current place in the world would be the result of what you (well, i dont know how much of you, since memories/mind do not persist) did in previous lives..
(if any hindu spots a flaw in my explanation please correct me by the way)
i might just be proving your point here, but from reading the wiki page, it sounds like a bit of an excuse, i.e. "i think we cant know so there, no point in talking further, where is the remote?", thus relinquishing any responsibility for thinking further about it.
which is one of the things i hate about religion, the fact that humans (sometimes) use it as an excuse to not take responsibility, simply by saying "this is gods will"
in essence it sounds to me like believing in the "god" of overpowering stupidity..
(honestly, i dont mean to offend, this is just the impression i get from reading that wiki page, and if that is your belief, i am fine with that, dont change on my account)
i am not sure about buddhism, but hinduism also knows the concept of starting over again on a lower step (like going from human to a dog) if you screw up a life, so if in this life you are a christian, and as such do wrong things, you will simply end up as a lower lifeform, and if you do that right, you go up a step, without having to be the same christian guy again.
Being a christian in a hindu reality merely means having to back a few steps on your path to enlightenment, it doesnt mean being stuck in an endless loop of being wrong, so in that respect a hindu reality is more friendly to christians then a christian reality to hindus
you made me think, if you assume the christian god is the correct one (i dont, atheist and such), then believing in any particular version of christianity might even be more dangerous then being a muslim. If the christian god exists, and for instance, catholicism is the correct interpretation, then a protestant (reformed, whatever), person, will not only have not heeded the right set of rules of the god he believes in, he will have done things in his gods name, which go directly against gods will (which, for the uk/irish region, might include killing/fighting catholics)
If i was a god (and many people seem to assume god is some sort of allmighty benevolent but very strict human-like thinking mind, sort of a king of old), i would be more upset with people claiming to follow me, and in my (explicit) name, cary out misdeeds/crimes, some even against my own correct followers, then the guys who are just following the wrong god to begin with...
anyway, the problem i see with the pascal wager is that it neglects the potential cost of following a religion, it does not take into account any experiences you might lose, or effort you will spend in vain, worshipping a non existant god, a devout muslim will never taste pork, or taste a good whiskey, thus making his life on earth less complete, with a chance to find out that is all you ever get, if there is no afterlife. In essence, if there is no afterlife, this earthly life is all we humans have, devoting that to a non-existant god in that case (possibly) devalues literally all that we have, even if on an absolute scale earthly life earthly life + afterlife
all of the time dude, i just run my pc without any ram and with a 4 gb pagefile!
(seriously, state preservation across a power-cut, what is that guy smoking?)
Intel's netburst architecture (of pentium 4 fame) featured the 'Rapid Execution Engine', which consisted of two ALU's running double the clock speed, on 3.8 GHz Pentium 4's, that would be 7.6 GHz
Granted, that is not the entire cpu, but still..
one could argue that ikaruga (on the dreamcast) is basically Radiant silvergun 2, and that has since appeared on XBLA
I agree though that that list is short and not even close to a reasonable selection, you cant simply have a list like this and leave of a couple of dreamcast titles (dont know any of the top of my head, but i am sure there are some forgotten gems in there)
i dont see the rationele behind the touch screen either. From the looks of apple's site it doesnt run iOS with apps and such anyway, so i dont see the point in using a multi-touch interface (i wouldnt even know how to use multi-touch in an ipod only interface)
The nano 1 and 3 looked a bit off to me with the very long body, the 2g nano looks just about right to me, now they have gone back to an 'aspect ratio' that somewhat makes sense to me, but they go and 'revolutionize' the UI so much that i have no clue if this will even work.. touch screen buttons need more area then physical buttons, so i'm not sure they can even cram the same amount of info on the device as with the old split screen/controls setup
tell that to my cellphone
just having bluetooth turned on (and not even connecting to any device) cuts battery damn near in half
in other words, still not as good as my $100 asus media streamer with full 1080p support, and huge codec support list
never mind the fact that i can watch an episode of show X *for free* time and time again from my very own fileserver
just wait untill apple 'patches a safari bug' horribly killing facebook rendering on any idevice, and then a month later, rejects the facebook app from the app store, and uses their remote backdoor to kill it on every idevice.
i'm only (half) kidding off course...
i agree with most of your arguments, save for these two
- 720p - the iPad is 768p. 720p 768p in terms of vertical lines.
720p means 1280*720, which the ipad can not display, playing a 720p video on the ipad without seriously raping the aspect ratio means scaling the video down to 1024*576
- USB .. It's to weed out the guy who attaches his USB powered nerf gun.
So basically you are saying apple are a bunch of elitist assholes, who no longer support their "think different" creed. (To me thinking different means (among other things) to dont give a fuck about what other people think, and just enjoy your nerf gun, if thats your thing)
as for the memory, 256mb in an ipad is way to little, but that is just my opinion
Windows 3.1 actually ran quite do-able (in my own childhood memories) on a 386sx with 1mb
i think the grand-grand parent means that with todays bloat in applications (compared to win 3.1 days), 512mb of ram combined with the 'multi-tasking' seen in iOS 4.x will deliver a similar experience as the windows 3.1 days