They are hiring kernel developers far and wide, i think google os is coming. If not sooner then later. So far there has been numerous postings with them. I had interview with them apparently they are looking for user interface people too. Go figure.
The answer is mandate and what most of the public, percieves is pertinent to now. Huge science programs are prone to failure under-runs and government mismanagement. Wars tend to generate proper concensus, and predictable results. We go to war and government buys alot of ammo. Large amounts of cash infused into economy. Everyone goes out and buys an ipod, a playstaiton 3 whatever. Everyone is sort of happy. Remeber, that article about google going "nukular", well that research funding was cut, and redirected to search for solution to roadside bombs. Its a big money funnel for alot of businesses and a very profitable one. Economy would have to reorganized itself around next big spending funnel, and no one has interest in that. Rather they'd keep beating the same horse. Squeezing the blood out of the same rock. It worked for years and generated some good revenue to congressmen and political parties. It is politics and is beyond what is good and what good for the future of the economies.
Joel has capacity to speak his mind
on
You Call This Agile?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
He has capacity to speak his mind, as he took intensive courses on writing and expression in university, but that doesn't detract that his ideas are his and to each idea there is the opposite side that has just as many positives, if presented correclty.
Aglie development works, but only if people can be trained. Training is something that is omitted when it is decided on whatever model you want to adhere to. Remember we are all just animals and the more training we get, the better we are at it.
Agile process is based on feedback, and therefore programmer must be trained to appreciate and nuruture feedback from his practices too. Programmers need candy too, for rewards, and that candy is a feedback from wroking code. Given, if you are writing a disk driver, feedback is limited, compared to game developer, writing graphics or sound enegines. What Agile brings, is that rewards come at a steady pace, therefore propping up motivation of developer from development side of things. Disk driver developer must find his way to recieve rewards from developing driver code, perhaps thats why compensation is higher for the driver developers, because work has no immediately accessible of stimuli and chances to get negative stimuli, like corrupt disk of the user, are quite high.
If you code not for the sake of itself, I pitiy those people. But then they aren't on the slashdot.
So his "under the radar" funding was cut, because they have reallocated research on how to fight road side bombs. Think this is pretty myopic for government. But then there is free oil in iraq... Priorities are all out of place.
They should move myspace servers to russia. Look they can't even stop all out piracy, why do you think they'd care about some teens posting imitations of britney spears? Or elsewhere, where there is no copyright, enforcable one. Get a few of those Sun containers and ship them around the world.
Some people have noticed that dvd have limited life, and are very easily destructible. So to be fair, if one wishes to excersize copyright there should be a provision, whereby owner of a copy can request secondary copies at nominal cost (fraction like 1/10th of the price of the original) of the copy he has purchased, given he/she returns damaged/detiriorated copy. If a business does not provide ways to exchange detiriorated or defective media ( read: not the stores but recording company itself ), then any backing up and/or unlimited replication, can be grated owning entity. Granted, distributors own the media at the time, so they can do as they wish with copies of the dvds, in fair ways. Like backing up customer's media onto their device, prior to purchase. Copyright, is right to copy, not to backup the works. Copy and distribute works as individual. Say if someone purchases a copy and make 10 and sells them. So far that I view situation, is very unfair and retarted. It is only robbing movie industry of cash will rob it of the interest wealthy people pay to it, and open industry to creative ways they can do business, rather then hiring big shot lawyers to subjugate the lowly gentiles that we are. See, money hurts creativity, because accountants get in the business of telling people what do, in matters of art it is bad. Money hurts creativity and health of the industry, just like it did in the internet bubble. Burger flippers were coming to jobs which they have despised and only wielded computers to minimal extend, for means of cash. Miserable those days were.
So I attend movie viewings of small run movies only , and theaters that are unaffiliated with large recording studios. Rather tired of being treated like an idiot.
At this time it is advantageous to influential group of people to have intellectual property rights. If we would create replicator that replicates things out of nothing, real made things it would be a revolution. It would marginalize people's egos, but as many people would tell you , you should not get tangled up in being tied to the product, but rather work for the business side of things. Look past it. Say if we have real life replicators, suddenly industrial complex, that generates food, for example, will be unnecessary. All you'd need is a description of a food, or the original. I imagine it would make some people pretty mad, those who have investments in capital infrastructure. But it will also open up millions of markets for other interested people. So the argument here is , don't regulate car to save the carridge whip business. Regulation is harmful and useless at best. And it is useful only when it protects people's money, from being stolen, like with various kinds of fraud and crime. Regulation for maintenance of revenue streams is dumb nearsighted and bound to put implementors way behind the rest of the quick paced world.
Intellectual property is that sort of regulation. It is trying to bind and restrict brave new world with assumptions and ways that world operated in pre-informational era. The way it works now, at least is. Intellectual property is like religion, something made up in their own head. It really has no traction with real world and therefore is bound to collapse. Why? Because only wealthy can afford intellectual property. Intellectual property isn't, unless you can defend it, unlike my car. If its jacked , i can go to police and retrieve it, and they will help me. Intellectual property is opposite of this. My purchases and perusal of some technology for generation of revenue, if conviced by seller that it is his own, can be turned otherwise and I stand a chance of being accused of being a criminal. If I buy a tractor and get rich from using to plant peppers, I will not be sued for profits. With intellectual property, say things like compilers and libraries, it is not so clear cut. Which is why it is a myth. 2c
CCD has better range and colors, then that of CMOS. Though top end of Canon's offering matches Nikon's.
1. Quality of images. 2. Better control of parameters 3. Choice of lenses for the variety of situations. 4. Speed - often point and shoots take a while to recylce the flash. 5. Ability to use professional flash. 6. Women like to pose for DSLR then to teensy point and shoot. 7. Batteries last longer, usually. 8. Speed of focus, at least on nikons it is excellent, so you don't loose the moment. 9.... 10....
"I have the misfortune to work with someone who insists on using Gentoo on his work machine. He's a lazy sod, but even if he wasn't he would still be unable to do much work because usually his machine is either grinding through another rebuild or awaiting a reinstall because a half-baked update has rendered it unbootable."
Difference between BSD and Gentoo, which strode towards BSD, is that it has meaningful error messages, instead of just failing, or ignoring input altogether. As well because of install base, cut and paste into google usually yields fruitful results and if not forums.gentoo.org. Whats more if you keep it up to date, weekly builds, then you shouldn't have any more trouble then any other distro. I'd choose ubuntu not to waste time, unless i really need source packages. Which is nice to cherry pick features and compile them in.
BSD has its niche, but it came from big iron, where people are suppose to just know stuff. Gentoo, if flakey, comes from people who aren't afrait to toss a log message or two , to let the user know what's going on. That is all.. of course IMO.
I thought most industries have been moved offshore to likes of India, China etc. When Greenpeace has no chance. Beside industry is more or less steady in United states, it is the "developing countries" that we have to worry about. Annual increase of say (pull number out of my head), 20000 motorists every year in North america, isn't anything compared to nation of 1.6 billion + whatever huge number india is... as in growing numbers. Plus pollution controls in such countries are corrupt and/or non-existent. In the end what is this kufuffle about white collar jobs moving offshore? I thought, thats the reason people are worried, that once you pull the air out of the economy , which is "white collar jobs" at this time, economy will suffer. At this time no one can control china, and no one wants prices to rise, because china would implement some sort of environmental control.(but i think you have to look from enterprenuer's side, where he won't get contracts if he will be green, because it might cost more). I know there are some businesses that are prone performance improvements , but that would be a fraction, not a large one of the industrial sector.
Thought if we do that, there must be a concensus worldwide, including most populated country in the world, should be in the ranks, because before you blink there will be some 1 billion internal combustion engines on the street, and whatever you do to improve the situation, it won't help.
We're sinking and we got to plan ahead on which holes will be bigger. 2c.
Those have been around forever since around 2000 - 2001, and they keep reappearing as the next thing to be "the new gadget" but seems never to do. Maybe ipod v5 will make them sort of relevant. But I doubt it. People don't want to be caught with nerd helments like that. I don't know if I want one, since the rez on them is so low. if they'd get a bit higher resolution it would be alirght.
it seems google embraced that aspect of design well. no flash, no gifs. Even no clashing colours. People come to the site for information, give it to them and then with respect upsell them on extras. Those kind of customers are more loyal and less likely to look with dismay on their experience, and not come back.
Radio used to be ok, to drive with, but since it has been consolidated, there is no more 'local' flavour to the radio I find. Every area has virtualy identical set of 80's Rock, Talk, News some of which are even rebroadcasted. There is too much commercial time, very little entertainment/informational content. I hope radio in its form dies a horrible death and something new would spring up. I don't think it would happen though. I think the future is behind digital radios that can make for availibility of local as well as global content, so there is more competition then just 14 stations.
A company that generates so much ill will, karama etc, is bound to get things like that. Reading some of the horror stories, about dealings with paypal I'd say this was coming to them, and some more will come again, if they don't change their ways. Fact of the matter, paypal really does bring alot of reasons why internet cannot be used for wholesale commerce. Imagine CEO of walmart buying a baby carrige on ebay then his bank account gets cleared out, account frozen and him getting obtuse responses, "your account under investiation", "it may be resolved in near future". Also eBay, something leads me to think there is as much legitimacy to each, as currency exchanger that walks around stalls in the "hot" goods(stolen stuff) market. Whatever comes to them, is what they asked for. Working for eBay of Paypal, is like working for racketeering gangs that govern such illegal markets. You have to expect that some day you will get your face smashed in or worse be killed. I wouldn't work for a place like this after reading up on it. And no this is not funny, it is retribution. This is when ill will is so great, that it has to come to this, and more possibly later.
The only long term way to solve this is to regulate paypal to be a bank, with strict controls to protect its customers.
"
By ZmaxDP on 10/31/2006 10:53:19 PM , Rating: 5 I love the rampant speculation on this particular topic. Just so everyone knows, Alex Jones is the conspiracy theorist to put all others to shame. If a gnat farted in India he would assume that the New World Order had orchestrated it to cause global climate changes and re-shape the power structures of the entire universe. Pretty much anyone he asks on his show is of a similar ilk. So, unless you are also of a similar ilk, you can pretty much disregard everything that was said. Seriously. Everything.
That being said, even if it was true (that google had some involvement with the CIA) we have no clue from the "report" what that involvement is. The CIA might be asking Google to develop a search engine to help them hunt down terrorists, or track child pornographers, etc.. Or, they might be letting the CIA filter all their data searching for terrorists and child pornographers. The former would be perfectly fine with me. Who better to do it. The latter would be highly illegal and disturbing. Do we know? No. So what's with the jumping to conclusions and Google bashing? At least admit that the article is highly inconclusive and amazingly vague.
There are two worlds, PC and Console gaming. Two have distinct and very different crowds. PC gamers demand richness and complexity of the game. Console gamers rather deterred by complexity. Reason, is mouse&keyboard, that consolers will never have by default, which PC will have. And thus the rift. Wii's gravity stick or whatever you wanna callit, is step away from PC crowd. It is entertainment, in a different sense. Entertainments in karaokeish sense, then 'escapist' type where you go on complex adventures. WoW is one of many examples.
I agree though, that graphics rift won't be as bad as in years of PS2 and N64
>I disagree with you about the US screwing up good ideas. I think it's more like that the US comes up with a good idea, and then smart folks in other places take it to places that we haven't thought of. Still, the example of the auto, chip, and other manufacturing industries is not as simple as all of that. The US has higher manufacturing costs than other countries do; namely in the form of higher wages and benefits for their employees.
I agree, Japan has been on this path for sometime now, as well. They keep only high value stuff at home, everything else is done elsewhere. Many other countries will be looking elsewhere to make things, once standard of living goes up. [China. India]
Mouse was successful because it was cheap. It did cost alot less then system's value. Such display will only be successful in changing the way people interact with computers, if chinese can crank out a millon of these in say less then 500-1000 range. And the researcher is excited about joes and janes using multipointer display.
On other note, pressure sensitive displays are prone to wear, since one has to flex material in places. So displays have to be cheap to warrant replacing them now and then for low cost. There can be sensor overlays of course, that would speed up the revolution. Something you can mount on your existing LCD... 2c
Greed is a good thing, except when it runs over any other sense, like it did this time. Looks like they bracketed costs of trinkets to other sort of similar costs of online items. Except these have *NO* in game value, as per sysem of points, experience.
I don't play WoW, but what a way to get burnt... maybe they can have trinkets rented with micropayments, like 0.01$ for each use? [I shouldn't give them ideas eh ?]
As the guy notes that they should have this in google lobby. More or less it is good for 'removed' visual data manipulation. Nothing serious, like office work. What is missing, something that was learned ago, is safety brackets data removal or change. This interface will allow less technical people to use the computer. What is missing for the demonstration, is critical data alteration. You won't see this being used in the office for spreadsheets, word processing, etc etc - real meat of the computer industry. Tactile feedback of a flat screen, for typing is absent as well.
So to define what it can be used for is this: displaying and sorting data, not alteration, modification and/or creation of data, except non-critical visual data. Uses for this don't run along with what computer traditionally for. These people will need to open new markets... failing that technology will fade into the past.
Singular economic numbers, are useless, the whole picture is alot more complex. For example some take stock market as health indicator of investment market, which is false one. Few overblown stocks, minus the cumilitive inflation. Etc etc. You get the idea. GDP is amount of stuff is produced. So there are alot more GM cars go on credit. Whoppee. Some numbers said that savings in US is at lowest point in time to total debt(forgive my unsavvy knowlege), whichever it is. That the balance of the economy is at the tipping point. War makes economy go, though so onesided investment generation from the war, that effect is alot smaller then it should be. Granted arms sales into middle east will keep putting food for people on the table for a long time, and putting kids through school.
Slashdot Mirror
They are hiring kernel developers far and wide, i think google os is coming. If not sooner then later. So far there has been numerous postings with them. I had interview with them apparently they are looking for user interface people too. Go figure.
The answer is mandate and what most of the public, percieves is pertinent to now. Huge science programs are prone to failure under-runs and government mismanagement. Wars tend to generate proper concensus, and predictable results. We go to war and government buys alot of ammo. Large amounts of cash infused into economy. Everyone goes out and buys an ipod, a playstaiton 3 whatever. Everyone is sort of happy. Remeber, that article about google going "nukular", well that research funding was cut, and redirected to search for solution to roadside bombs. Its a big money funnel for alot of businesses and a very profitable one. Economy would have to reorganized itself around next big spending funnel, and no one has interest in that. Rather they'd keep beating the same horse. Squeezing the blood out of the same rock. It worked for years and generated some good revenue to congressmen and political parties.
It is politics and is beyond what is good and what good for the future of the economies.
He has capacity to speak his mind, as he took intensive courses on writing and expression in university, but that doesn't detract that his ideas are his and to each idea there is the opposite side that has just as many positives, if presented correclty.
Aglie development works, but only if people can be trained. Training is something that is omitted when it is decided on whatever model you want to adhere to. Remember we are all just animals and the more training we get, the better we are at it.
Agile process is based on feedback, and therefore programmer must be trained to appreciate and nuruture feedback from his practices too. Programmers need candy too, for rewards, and that candy is a feedback from wroking code. Given, if you are writing a disk driver, feedback is limited, compared to game developer, writing graphics or sound enegines. What Agile brings, is that rewards come at a steady pace, therefore propping up motivation of developer from development side of things. Disk driver developer must find his way to recieve rewards from developing driver code, perhaps thats why compensation is higher for the driver developers, because work has no immediately accessible of stimuli and chances to get negative stimuli, like corrupt disk of the user, are quite high.
If you code not for the sake of itself, I pitiy those people. But then they aren't on the slashdot.
So his "under the radar" funding was cut, because they have reallocated research on how to fight road side bombs. Think this is pretty myopic for government. But then there is free oil in iraq... Priorities are all out of place.
... everything looks like a nail, so nerds went on with such vice, causing their plan to fail.
Got to bring home bacon somehow....
They should move myspace servers to russia. Look they can't even stop all out piracy, why do you think they'd care about some teens posting imitations of britney spears?
Or elsewhere, where there is no copyright, enforcable one. Get a few of those Sun containers and ship them around the world.
Some people have noticed that dvd have limited life, and are very easily destructible. So to be fair, if one wishes to excersize copyright there should be a provision, whereby owner of a copy can request secondary copies at nominal cost (fraction like 1/10th of the price of the original) of the copy he has purchased, given he/she returns damaged/detiriorated copy. If a business does not provide ways to exchange detiriorated or defective media ( read: not the stores but recording company itself ), then any backing up and/or unlimited replication, can be grated owning entity. Granted, distributors own the media at the time, so they can do as they wish with copies of the dvds, in fair ways. Like backing up customer's media onto their device, prior to purchase. Copyright, is right to copy, not to backup the works. Copy and distribute works as individual. Say if someone purchases a copy and make 10 and sells them. So far that I view situation, is very unfair and retarted.
It is only robbing movie industry of cash will rob it of the interest wealthy people pay to it, and open industry to creative ways they can do business, rather then hiring big shot lawyers to subjugate the lowly gentiles that we are. See, money hurts creativity, because accountants get in the business of telling people what do, in matters of art it is bad. Money hurts creativity and health of the industry, just like it did in the internet bubble. Burger flippers were coming to jobs which they have despised and only wielded computers to minimal extend, for means of cash. Miserable those days were.
So I attend movie viewings of small run movies only , and theaters that are unaffiliated with large recording studios. Rather tired of being treated like an idiot.
At this time it is advantageous to influential group of people to have intellectual property rights. If we would create replicator that replicates things out of nothing, real made things it would be a revolution. It would marginalize people's egos, but as many people would tell you , you should not get tangled up in being tied to the product, but rather work for the business side of things. Look past it. Say if we have real life replicators, suddenly industrial complex, that generates food, for example, will be unnecessary. All you'd need is a description of a food, or the original. I imagine it would make some people pretty mad, those who have investments in capital infrastructure. But it will also open up millions of markets for other interested people. So the argument here is , don't regulate car to save the carridge whip business.
Regulation is harmful and useless at best. And it is useful only when it protects people's money, from being stolen, like with various kinds of fraud and crime. Regulation for maintenance of revenue streams is dumb nearsighted and bound to put implementors way behind the rest of the quick paced world.
Intellectual property is that sort of regulation. It is trying to bind and restrict brave new world with assumptions and ways that world operated in pre-informational era. The way it works now, at least is. Intellectual property is like religion, something made up in their own head. It really has no traction with real world and therefore is bound to collapse. Why? Because only wealthy can afford intellectual property. Intellectual property isn't, unless you can defend it, unlike my car. If its jacked , i can go to police and retrieve it, and they will help me. Intellectual property is opposite of this. My purchases and perusal of some technology for generation of revenue, if conviced by seller that it is his own, can be turned otherwise and I stand a chance of being accused of being a criminal. If I buy a tractor and get rich from using to plant peppers, I will not be sued for profits. With intellectual property, say things like compilers and libraries, it is not so clear cut. Which is why it is a myth.
2c
CCD has better range and colors, then that of CMOS. Though top end of Canon's offering matches Nikon's.
... ...
1. Quality of images.
2. Better control of parameters
3. Choice of lenses for the variety of situations.
4. Speed - often point and shoots take a while to recylce the flash.
5. Ability to use professional flash.
6. Women like to pose for DSLR then to teensy point and shoot.
7. Batteries last longer, usually.
8. Speed of focus, at least on nikons it is excellent, so you don't loose the moment.
9.
10.
"I have the misfortune to work with someone who insists on using Gentoo on his work machine. He's a lazy sod, but even if he wasn't he would still be unable to do much work because usually his machine is either grinding through another rebuild or awaiting a reinstall because a half-baked update has rendered it unbootable."
Difference between BSD and Gentoo, which strode towards BSD, is that it has meaningful error messages, instead of just failing, or ignoring input altogether. As well because of install base, cut and paste into google usually yields fruitful results and if not forums.gentoo.org. Whats more if you keep it up to date, weekly builds, then
you shouldn't have any more trouble then any other distro. I'd choose ubuntu not to waste time, unless i really need source packages. Which is nice to cherry pick features and compile them in.
BSD has its niche, but it came from big iron, where people are suppose to just know stuff. Gentoo, if flakey, comes from people who aren't afrait to toss a log message or two , to let the user know what's going on. That is all..
of course IMO.
Here where Steve Jobs can jump in, and say Ta Da!
Seriously, if apple doesn't snag this moment, for the sake of software relicencing...
2c.
I thought most industries have been moved offshore to likes of India, China etc. When Greenpeace has no chance. Beside industry is more or less steady in United states, it is the "developing countries" that we have to worry about. Annual increase of say (pull number out of my head), 20000 motorists every year in North america, isn't anything compared to nation of 1.6 billion + whatever huge number india is... as in growing numbers. Plus pollution controls in such countries are corrupt and/or non-existent.
In the end what is this kufuffle about white collar jobs moving offshore? I thought, thats the reason people are worried, that once you pull the air out of the economy , which is "white collar jobs" at this time, economy will suffer. At this time no one can control china, and no one wants prices to rise, because china would implement some sort of environmental control.(but i think you have to look from enterprenuer's side, where he won't get contracts if he will be green, because it might cost more).
I know there are some businesses that are prone performance improvements , but that would be a fraction, not a large one of the industrial sector.
Thought if we do that, there must be a concensus worldwide, including most populated country in the world, should be in the ranks, because before you blink there will be some 1 billion internal combustion engines on the street, and whatever you do to improve the situation, it won't help.
We're sinking and we got to plan ahead on which holes will be bigger.
2c.
Those have been around forever since around 2000 - 2001, and they keep reappearing as the next thing to be "the new gadget" but seems never to do. Maybe ipod v5 will make them sort of relevant. But I doubt it. People don't want to be caught with nerd helments like that. I don't know if I want one, since the rez on them is so low.
t /products/trivisio/ar_vision.htm
if they'd get a bit higher resolution it would be alirght.
These ones alot cooler, look like you are from spliter cell, sort of:
http://www.mikimoto-japan.com/beans/beans_hmd/nex
Maybe can do terminator thing as well, if there is an input on it.
it seems google embraced that aspect of design well. no flash, no gifs. Even no clashing colours. People come to the site for information, give it to them and then with respect upsell them on extras. Those kind of customers are more loyal and less likely to look with dismay on their experience, and not come back.
Radio used to be ok, to drive with, but since it has been consolidated, there is no more 'local' flavour to the radio I find. Every area has virtualy identical set of 80's Rock, Talk, News some of which are even rebroadcasted. There is too much commercial time, very little entertainment/informational content. I hope radio in its form dies a horrible death and something new would spring up. I don't think it would happen though. I think the future is behind digital radios that can make for availibility of local as well as global content, so there is more competition then just 14 stations.
A company that generates so much ill will, karama etc, is bound to get things like that. Reading some of the horror stories, about dealings with paypal I'd say this was coming to them, and some more will come again, if they don't change their ways. Fact of the matter, paypal really does bring alot of reasons why internet cannot be used for wholesale commerce. Imagine CEO of walmart buying a baby carrige on ebay then his bank account gets cleared out, account frozen and him getting obtuse responses, "your account under investiation", "it may be resolved in near future".
Also eBay, something leads me to think there is as much legitimacy to each, as currency exchanger that walks around stalls in the "hot" goods(stolen stuff) market.
Whatever comes to them, is what they asked for. Working for eBay of Paypal, is like working for racketeering gangs that govern such illegal markets. You have to expect that some day you will get your face smashed in or worse be killed. I wouldn't work for a place like this after reading up on it.
And no this is not funny, it is retribution. This is when ill will is so great, that it has to come to this, and more possibly later.
The only long term way to solve this is to regulate paypal to be a bank, with strict controls to protect its customers.
"
By ZmaxDP on 10/31/2006 10:53:19 PM , Rating: 5
I love the rampant speculation on this particular topic. Just so everyone knows, Alex Jones is the conspiracy theorist to put all others to shame. If a gnat farted in India he would assume that the New World Order had orchestrated it to cause global climate changes and re-shape the power structures of the entire universe. Pretty much anyone he asks on his show is of a similar ilk. So, unless you are also of a similar ilk, you can pretty much disregard everything that was said. Seriously. Everything.
That being said, even if it was true (that google had some involvement with the CIA) we have no clue from the "report" what that involvement is. The CIA might be asking Google to develop a search engine to help them hunt down terrorists, or track child pornographers, etc.. Or, they might be letting the CIA filter all their data searching for terrorists and child pornographers. The former would be perfectly fine with me. Who better to do it. The latter would be highly illegal and disturbing. Do we know? No. So what's with the jumping to conclusions and Google bashing? At least admit that the article is highly inconclusive and amazingly vague.
"
I wonder...
There are two worlds, PC and Console gaming. Two have distinct and very different crowds. PC gamers demand richness and complexity of the game. Console gamers rather deterred by complexity. Reason, is mouse&keyboard, that consolers will never have by default, which PC will have. And thus the rift. Wii's gravity stick or whatever you wanna callit, is step away from PC crowd. It is entertainment, in a different sense. Entertainments in karaokeish sense, then 'escapist' type where you go on complex adventures. WoW is one of many examples.
I agree though, that graphics rift won't be as bad as in years of PS2 and N64
>I disagree with you about the US screwing up good ideas. I think it's more like that the US comes up with a good idea, and then smart folks in other places take it to places that we haven't thought of. Still, the example of the auto, chip, and other manufacturing industries is not as simple as all of that. The US has higher manufacturing costs than other countries do; namely in the form of higher wages and benefits for their employees.
I agree, Japan has been on this path for sometime now, as well. They keep only high value stuff at home, everything else is done elsewhere. Many other countries will be looking elsewhere to make things, once standard of living goes up. [China. India]
Mouse was successful because it was cheap. It did cost alot less then system's value. Such display will only be successful in changing the way people interact with computers, if chinese can crank out a millon of these in say less then 500-1000 range. And the researcher is excited about joes and janes using multipointer display.
On other note, pressure sensitive displays are prone to wear, since one has to flex material in places. So displays have to be cheap to warrant replacing them now and then for low cost. There can be sensor overlays of course, that would speed up the revolution. Something you can mount on your existing LCD...
2c
This should be a scratch copy, so many things just don't make sense. And flow is all broken up :)
Greed is a good thing, except when it runs over any other sense, like it did this time. Looks like they bracketed costs of trinkets to other sort of similar costs of online items. Except these have *NO* in game value, as per sysem of points, experience.
I don't play WoW, but what a way to get burnt... maybe they can have trinkets rented with micropayments, like 0.01$ for each use? [I shouldn't give them ideas eh ?]
As the guy notes that they should have this in google lobby. More or less it is good for 'removed' visual data manipulation. Nothing serious, like office work. What is missing, something that was learned ago, is safety brackets data removal or change. This interface will allow less technical people to use the computer. What is missing for the demonstration, is critical data alteration. You won't see this being used in the office for spreadsheets, word processing, etc etc - real meat of the computer industry. Tactile feedback of a flat screen, for typing is absent as well.
So to define what it can be used for is this: displaying and sorting data, not alteration, modification and/or creation of data, except non-critical visual data. Uses for this don't run along with what computer traditionally for. These people will need to open new markets... failing that technology will fade into the past.
Anyway how much is one of those screens?
2c.
Singular economic numbers, are useless, the whole picture is alot more complex. For example some take stock market as health indicator of investment market, which is false one. Few overblown stocks, minus the cumilitive inflation. Etc etc. You get the idea. GDP is amount of stuff is produced. So there are alot more GM cars go on credit. Whoppee. Some numbers said that savings in US is at lowest point in time to total debt(forgive my unsavvy knowlege), whichever it is. That the balance of the economy is at the tipping point. War makes economy go, though so onesided investment generation from the war, that effect is alot smaller then it should be.
Granted arms sales into middle east will keep putting food for people on the table for a long time, and putting kids through school.