No, not exactly surprising - but it is interesting to see what drawbacks it has to do business in China. There is a slight difference in having to pay more tax and using pounds (UK) to having to filter your information after the governments liking.
When the internet was fresh us kids thought that this is going to be the next best free and democratic thing. Stories like these make you think again. So I think it's a valid point to discuss.
There must be something definitely wrong. From the article:
It runs off small power units placed along the lines every 100 kilometres or so. The signal does not reduce electricity transmission through the cables, and because it uses around 50 watts per 100 kilometres of line it should cost a fraction of what it normally takes to keep the lines clear
So 50 watts per 100 kilometres shall be enough to melt quite a lot of ice? there is a lot of energy needed to transform ice of 0 C to water of 0 C, about 80 kcal = 320 kilojoule, so 320 kilowatts for one second or 88 watts for one hour. 50 watts will melt less than one kilogram of ice per hour, and that should be enough on a length of 100km cable? I doubt it.
In Switzerland, every house has a bomb shelter. They're cold, unconfortable, and mostly used for storage space. They were made law during the cold war, the walls have metal reinforcements (like most concrete walls have), which use up about 50% of the volume, and the concrete itself contains more cement than usual. There's an air pump and an active carbon air filter, bomb-proof valves for suction and outlet of air, and an emergency exit which shouldn't be covered by rubble in case the building above breaks down. The doors are out of concrete too, and you have to push hard to open and close them.
Hobbit holes have to be comfy. Read the last part of the Lord of the Rings... You shouldn't even use concrete, I guess, to be authentic. And forget computers and cables.
Mod parent up. No one else has made that statement in this thread: Open Source will allow you to save the decoded media. So the whole idea of DRM can only live in closed source. The media you buy must be encrypted and that encryption must persist as long as there is a way to tamper with it. The most recent idea I heard of is using decoders in LCD projectors. As soon as there's an Open Source code having access to the unencrypted media you can extract it and remove all DRM from it.
My teachers were always worried that we would poke around in the system too much, or later, that we would use too much network bandwidth. Then, the teachers wanted to configure the system themselves... (knowing less about stuff than we did...)
I was thinking of writing such a piece of code for my company. I haven't got the time yet.
I think it can be solved by using Annealing, which is one of the strongest optimisation methods for multivariate functions (see here for example). Basically you simulate a gas of students which under hot temperature jump from shift to shift, when cooling down the probability for a change is simulated with a bolzmann factor (which includes temperature). By modelling the energy (or money) of persons in a shift this should be a flexible way of optimisation. (shift overlaps with lectures, for example, would raise the energy so when minimizing energy, they should disappear.)
I agree that lots of users are only used to Windows. But there is another approach, see the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines (who also have to convince people that it does not have to look like Windows to be easy to use).
The main point I see there is to have the interface react as close as possible to the real world counterpart, if there is one. That's how Apple (or Xerox in the beginning) invented the GUI. So there's really no point in copying Windows, because then you only make life easier for some. But if we could go back and think about how we would work on a wooden desktop with paper documents and a real, ringing phone... There's lots of nice GUI ideas out there, just stop staring at this computer screen here for a moment.
Ok, so they want to construct a separate Image for each eye. The back LCD is not transparent, the front one is, and mounted probably half a pixel to the right from the underlying plane. This gives you an option to add a certain color (or substract?) for each eye; but the same front pixel modifying the n-th pixel for the right eye would then modify the n+1-th pixel for the left eye. You wouldn't be able to construct two completely separate pictures for the two eyes.
Since the producers claim that you don't need extra software, just a dual head card, I don't think they are actually doing 3D.
Are you sure this works as real 3D? Then I have to admit I don't understand at all how this thing works.
This is not 3 dimensions. It's twice two dimensions, nowhere near a possibility to have 3d accelerator video boards taking advantage. No quake. Must feel like two overheads on top of each other. What exactly do you win with this kind of display? You could probably display the windows on the front layer and the desktop background on the back layer (including a nice shadow, osX style). But that's about it.
Gilmore does nothing wrong himself, I think. Blame the people who send spam first - it's his choice how he wants to use his bandwidth. On the other hand he would certainly do a big favor to the community by using one of the many ways (SMTP auth, for example) of closing down his relay to spam without having to close the relay for friends.
Your personal freedom ends where you harm another person's freedom by living it.
We still have a paradigm from old times which IMHO won't live too long anymore - the distinction between RAM and Harddrives. Already now, the virtual memory abilities or file caching blurs the distinction. Database-driven filesystems will blur it even more. Namespace integration (see Hans Reiser) should allow us to worry about data, and not where is stored - dummy users often refer to programs or services instead of devices anyway (I have this document in Word but I can't find it anymore, or: My browser does not work! When the network or server is down). Java applets are stored on a server, but by starting it I get my local copy... What if we get persistent RAM in huge amounts? Will we use it as RAM disk just to still be able to reboot?
I wish for a machine where installation will be a netboot from somewhere while I'm connected, and it will continue to work when I take it on the move (I may still be connected, who knows?). The concept of saving a file to a HD (or tape) is artificial, invented on the first, slow, restricted computers. Instead of building on old technologies with phony 'distributed computing' ideas I hope the next ten years will allow me to care about contents, not where it is stored.
If I understood the GPL right, one of the basic ideas is to protect the work of someone out there on your code. You can't take it and go making money with it, closed source. So you can only do dual-licencing if you have separable code, say, the client side and the engine or similar. Did I get that right? So you'd need a LGPL to link your free part to your proprietary part, and your proprietary part you have to look after yourself (unless there's someone in the field helping you with something you make money with).
I understand that we are happy to see an open source company doing well but I can imagine how you all would scream out if Microsoft was going to make money with free software.
GPL and OpenSource are A Good Thing (TM) because they take the money issue away from the development of the software. Make money with your knowledge! Make money with your service! But don't sit there and just collect the dough.
As much as I like to see companies providing software to the community and still earning money with it, I am scared that this could be used by stronger companies one day, say IBM, Sun or Microsoft, by inserting one essential component in copyrighted and patented form to gain control. And to make money with it.
What do you teach students when you sell your screen area for ads? To keep an undistracted mind even when everyone tries to distract you?
How do you want schools to be funded in the future? Like this? Come on, if money is needed it's much more than students could pay for, and ads can't cost more than students can pay for. So I think no one wins here.
I don't know if there's a systematic mistake in the article, I would have estimated the GB/cm^3 ratio much higher. Consider this:
A plain DVD stores 5GB on a one-dimensional area. If you look at a hologram, you might get around 100 angles with different information... and that's still a flat hologram! So you could store the information of approximately one DVD just by taking an image of a cm^2 of its surface for each angle allowed by the hologram. So in my opinion the theoretical limit should more be at 10GB per cm^2 than 10GB per cm^3.
If I remember right, I read an article in a local newspaper about this, where they were able to read out one flat area out of a cube (technically, by applying a reference laser beam only in one layer of the crystal). So we could have hundreds of layers in a cube, which would more be like a terabyte in a cm^3.
if the physical limit was around 10GB/cm^3, why would they spend that much money on it? We would just wait until IBM has its Flash-Drives out with a GB, and there's no optical stuff involved.
Ok, Nasa promised things before. But think about it: We face the same quest as Columbus again. We have the chance to visit other areas in space while we're still living, although there won't be people on the space craft. The comments up to now are in my opinion too pessimistic. Columbus' idea didn't make sense to the spanish king, let's not replay history.
Slashdot Mirror
When the internet was fresh us kids thought that this is going to be the next best free and democratic thing. Stories like these make you think again. So I think it's a valid point to discuss.
Or the 7-figure is binary.
Which shatters my fantasy of using it as a beamer replacement at home :-)
So 50 watts per 100 kilometres shall be enough to melt quite a lot of ice? there is a lot of energy needed to transform ice of 0 C to water of 0 C, about 80 kcal = 320 kilojoule, so 320 kilowatts for one second or 88 watts for one hour. 50 watts will melt less than one kilogram of ice per hour, and that should be enough on a length of 100km cable?
I doubt it.
Hobbit holes have to be comfy. Read the last part of the Lord of the Rings... You shouldn't even use concrete, I guess, to be authentic. And forget computers and cables.
sorry for reposting, without the changed subject no one will notice
Mod parent up.
No one else has made that statement in this thread: Open Source will allow you to save the decoded media. So the whole idea of DRM can only live in closed source. The media you buy must be encrypted and that encryption must persist as long as there is a way to tamper with it. The most recent idea I heard of is using decoders in LCD projectors. As soon as there's an Open Source code having access to the unencrypted media you can extract it and remove all DRM from it.
My teachers were always worried that we would poke around in the system too much, or later, that we would use too much network bandwidth. Then, the teachers wanted to configure the system themselves... (knowing less about stuff than we did...)
I was thinking of writing such a piece of code for my company. I haven't got the time yet. I think it can be solved by using Annealing, which is one of the strongest optimisation methods for multivariate functions (see here for example). Basically you simulate a gas of students which under hot temperature jump from shift to shift, when cooling down the probability for a change is simulated with a bolzmann factor (which includes temperature). By modelling the energy (or money) of persons in a shift this should be a flexible way of optimisation. (shift overlaps with lectures, for example, would raise the energy so when minimizing energy, they should disappear.)
at SNO's website.
Aqua Human Interface Guidelines (who also have to convince people that it does not have to look like Windows to be easy to use).
The main point I see there is to have the interface react as close as possible to the real world counterpart, if there is one. That's how Apple (or Xerox in the beginning) invented the GUI. So there's really no point in copying Windows, because then you only make life easier for some. But if we could go back and think about how we would work on a wooden desktop with paper documents and a real, ringing phone... There's lots of nice GUI ideas out there, just stop staring at this computer screen here for a moment.
Ok, so they want to construct a separate Image for each eye. The back LCD is not transparent, the front one is, and mounted probably half a pixel to the right from the underlying plane. This gives you an option to add a certain color (or substract?) for each eye; but the same front pixel modifying the n-th pixel for the right eye would then modify the n+1-th pixel for the left eye. You wouldn't be able to construct two completely separate pictures for the two eyes.
Since the producers claim that you don't need extra software, just a dual head card, I don't think they are actually doing 3D.
Are you sure this works as real 3D? Then I have to admit I don't understand at all how this thing works.
This is not 3 dimensions. It's twice two dimensions, nowhere near a possibility to have 3d accelerator video boards taking advantage. No quake. Must feel like two overheads on top of each other. What exactly do you win with this kind of display? You could probably display the windows on the front layer and the desktop background on the back layer (including a nice shadow, osX style). But that's about it.
Sorry, accidentially modded you down, and can't mod you up anymore. Expert moderators, how can I take back a mod or re-mod?
Gilmore does nothing wrong himself, I think. Blame the people who send spam first - it's his choice how he wants to use his bandwidth. On the other hand he would certainly do a big favor to the community by using one of the many ways (SMTP auth, for example) of closing down his relay to spam without having to close the relay for friends.
Your personal freedom ends where you harm another person's freedom by living it.
We still have a paradigm from old times which IMHO won't live too long anymore - the distinction between RAM and Harddrives. Already now, the virtual memory abilities or file caching blurs the distinction. Database-driven filesystems will blur it even more. Namespace integration (see Hans Reiser) should allow us to worry about data, and not where is stored - dummy users often refer to programs or services instead of devices anyway (I have this document in Word but I can't find it anymore, or: My browser does not work! When the network or server is down). Java applets are stored on a server, but by starting it I get my local copy... What if we get persistent RAM in huge amounts? Will we use it as RAM disk just to still be able to reboot?
I wish for a machine where installation will be a netboot from somewhere while I'm connected, and it will continue to work when I take it on the move (I may still be connected, who knows?). The concept of saving a file to a HD (or tape) is artificial, invented on the first, slow, restricted computers. Instead of building on old technologies with phony 'distributed computing' ideas I hope the next ten years will allow me to care about contents, not where it is stored.
If I understood the GPL right, one of the basic ideas is to protect the work of someone out there on your code. You can't take it and go making money with it, closed source. So you can only do dual-licencing if you have separable code, say, the client side and the engine or similar. Did I get that right? So you'd need a LGPL to link your free part to your proprietary part, and your proprietary part you have to look after yourself (unless there's someone in the field helping you with something you make money with).
I understand that we are happy to see an open source company doing well but I can imagine how you all would scream out if Microsoft was going to make money with free software.
GPL and OpenSource are A Good Thing (TM) because they take the money issue away from the development of the software. Make money with your knowledge! Make money with your service! But don't sit there and just collect the dough.
As much as I like to see companies providing software to the community and still earning money with it, I am scared that this could be used by stronger companies one day, say IBM, Sun or Microsoft, by inserting one essential component in copyrighted and patented form to gain control. And to make money with it.
will deny service after a few iterations on most machines, no?
What do you teach students when you sell your screen area for ads? To keep an undistracted mind even when everyone tries to distract you?
How do you want schools to be funded in the future? Like this? Come on, if money is needed it's much more than students could pay for, and ads can't cost more than students can pay for. So I think no one wins here.
A plain DVD stores 5GB on a one-dimensional area. If you look at a hologram, you might get around 100 angles with different information... and that's still a flat hologram! So you could store the information of approximately one DVD just by taking an image of a cm^2 of its surface for each angle allowed by the hologram. So in my opinion the theoretical limit should more be at 10GB per cm^2 than 10GB per cm^3.
If I remember right, I read an article in a local newspaper about this, where they were able to read out one flat area out of a cube (technically, by applying a reference laser beam only in one layer of the crystal). So we could have hundreds of layers in a cube, which would more be like a terabyte in a cm^3.
if the physical limit was around 10GB/cm^3, why would they spend that much money on it? We would just wait until IBM has its Flash-Drives out with a GB, and there's no optical stuff involved.
Ok, Nasa promised things before. But think about it: We face the same quest as Columbus again. We have the chance to visit other areas in space while we're still living, although there won't be people on the space craft.
The comments up to now are in my opinion too pessimistic. Columbus' idea didn't make sense to the spanish king, let's not replay history.