Re:Firefox is yet another OSS victory!
on
Firefox Usage Climbing
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, what make Firefox pretty good is that the vast majority of web sites render correctly under this browser, which was not true of many previous non-IE web browsers. That plus the fact the basic download is only around 4.5 MB helps, too.
The iPod is a) simple, b) reliable, c) user-friendly, d) cool, e) well designed and f) ties in well with iTunes.
Except for a couple of things:
1. Simple and user-friendly it's not as it seems. The controls on an non-Shuffle iPod can confuse some users, and the learning curve for the iTunes software is steeper than it should be. Also, there needs to be an easier way to "drag and drop" files in and out of an iPod under iTunes.
2. There are hardware issues that could turn off users--notably the easily-scratched display screen (small wonder why many iPod retailers a throwing in protective holders free) and the issue of the non-replaceable rechargeable battery, which means you have to buy a separate charger to recharge the battery if you don't use the power from the USB port connection to recharge the battery.
I think Burt Rutan should seriously lobby both Paul Allen and Bill Gates to get the Delta Clipper concepts turned into a real orbiting spacecraft. Given how much money Allen and Gates have, they could easily part with the approximately US$4 billion development costs of developing this.
Fortunately, Rutan's company would be the perfect company to pull this off, since they did much of the development work of the original Delta Clipper test vehicle and the shelved Lockheed Martin X-33 Venture Star project.
If you saw my posting, I think the prospect of the arrival of low-cost holographic versatile disc with storage capacities 10 to 20 times what is available on the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats is good reason why customers may sit on the sidelines for now. Imagine instead of needing a big stack of discs to store a whole season of TV shows you get it on one disc! Or using H.264 video compression store the entire Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings movies on a single disc. That quantam leap forward in storage capacity is something that many consumers actually want.
I think another thing that is scaring off potential HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sales is the fact that there exists right now another technology that could make both formats obselete: the so-called holographic versatile disc (HVD).
Unlike HD-DVD (which can store 30 GB maximum) or Blu-Ray (which can store 50 GB maximum), HVD's can store hundreds of gigabytes using current technology, and improvements could push an HVD disc that using the same physical format of the DVD to around one terabyte. That's 20 times the storage capacity of a double-layer Blu-Ray disc, which means you could fit the entire Extended Edition editions of all three Lord of the Rings movies with H.264 compression on a single 1 TB HVD, including the four-track commentaries, Dolby Digital EX track and DTS-ES 7.1 track! And you can put on a second HVD all the supplementary materials from the current Extended Edition releases plus all three documentaries from the upcoming special release of the trilogy coming in September 2006.
Also, because of HVD's enormous storage capacity, this could drastically cut the cost of theater digital projection units. Instead of having to install a big bank of hard drives for each projector, you can reduce that to a small console-sized HVD player, which means for each theatrical-quality copy of a movie the total shipping weight will be just over 0.5 kilogram, vastly less than the weight of six heavy reels of 35 mm film for a two-hour movie. This right there could make true worldwide simultaneous release of major movies much less costly due to substantially reduced duplication and shipping costs.
If you really want better fuel mileage with decent carrying space, the best way to go is something akin to a Toyota Prius.
You need to do the following:
1. Replace the current NiMH battery packs used on most hybrids with a similar-sized next-generation Li-On battery pack. This will allow electric-only operation for longer periods of time, reducing the need to run the gasoline engine.
2. Improve the gasoline engine with better variable valve timing and direct fuel injection so the engine uses less fuel due to more precise control of the combustion process.
3. Improve the aerodynamics of the car to 0.25 Cd or less. At speeds above 50 km/h, that could make a big difference.
4. Replace power-robbing and heavy hydraulic systems for power steering and braking with electrical-based systems.
5. Redesign the air conditioning for more fuel-efficient usage.
6. Go to lighter weight materials for the entire structure of the car. This means carbon fiber, epoxy resins and possibly titanium alloys (fortunately, scientists may have come up with a breakthrough that could drastically reduce the refining cost of titanium, which could make it price competitive with steel and aluminum alloys).
I can also guess this size sensor has another use: military reconnaissance satellites. Such a sensor would be perfect for the potential resolution of the latest KH-12 derivative satellites.
Because of this reason: there is a huge potential market for such devices.
Right now, if you buy a non-Apple portable music player, it can usually play both.MP3 audio files and.WMA music files in both normal and DRM-protected formats. With the upcoming Windows Media Player 11, Microsoft will have an iTunes-like interface that can organize and copy music to any portable media player that supports the PlayForSure specification, not to mention a huge amount of music available from MTV Network's Urge online music service built into WMP 11. Also, PlayForSure-compatible devices can also play DRM-protected.WMA music downloaded from Wal-Mart's own download service and Yahoo! Music Unlimited download service also.
Only one thing though: I just checked Microsoft Update right now (0654 hours PDT on 13 June 2006) and I don't see any Critical updates to be downloaded. I did get a.NET Framework 1.1 update last Tuesday but I didn't see anything else. (scratching head)
This new capacitor design could be the long-awaited breakthrough that could suddenly make pure electric cars very practical.
Being able to charge the "battery" of the car in only 5 to 10 minutes after going maybe 300-400 miles range means for most drivers the vehicle could replace gasoline/diesel-powered cars quite easily. If you include regenerative braking, you'll need to recharge the "battery" very little on a per week driving basis.
If they can cut the production cost of titanium to US$3 per pound, one place where the metal could be VERY useful is the automobile industry.
Titanium alloy body structure parts combined with lightweight steel alloy parts that make it possible to have "crush zones" to protect the passengers in an accident could mean much lighter vehicles, even at minivan/SUV size. Imagine a US-market Honda Accord four-door saloon going from circa 3,000 pounds to below 2,600 pounds kerb weight, which will do wonders for better fuel economy.
Here's the big problem with the Itanium CPU: it was too hard to write programs literally "from scratch" to take advantage of the CPU Also, Itaniums used lots of power, which means it was difficult to adapt them for blade servers initially.
In contrast, AMD's Opteron/Athlon 64 CPU's could run current x86 code with no performance losses, and it was relatively easy to adapt current x86 code to run in x86-64 mode. And AMD designed Opteron so it could so into blade servers fairly quickly.
It's not as big a problem as people think. After all, here in the USA we have services like MLB.TV, which (for a subscription fee) streams over broadband live Major League Baseball broadcasts; that hasn't taxed the load of most ISP's that deal with broadband Internet access.
In short, what you're saying is that at least for home users who get their broadband through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), this should not be a problem. After all, ISP's have to deal with huge amounts of data travelling back and forth, and the biggest ISP's usually have lots of server farms to deal with the load.
With more and more home users editing videos downloaded from MiniDV/MicroDV camcorders and digital still cameras, multimedia editing programs need serious amounts of CPU processing power to do things quickly. For example, if you're running Paint Shop Pro some of the more complex image editing functions can really suck up CPU time processing a full-scale image; with the new Athlons they could modify Paint Shop Pro to properly take advantage of multiple CPU cores, which will drastically reduce processing times.
In short, I think the monopoly issues will likely ditch the idea of eBay being purchased by Microsoft. Especially since Google and Yahoo! doesn't have anything near the scale of eBay when it comes to online auction sites.
DLP makes me want to claw out my eyes and run shrieking from the room. I can point out exactly which sets are DLP from a hundred feet away. If you are at all sensitive to CRT refresh, you MUST go see DLPs in person, and you absolutely must make sure you have an ironclad return policy. The saturation and color on DLPs is a little better than LCDs, and they tend to be cheaper, but a display that gives you motion sickness is no good, no matter how cheap it is.
Here's the big problem with DLP sets up till now: because they use a single-source light bulb shining on a spinnig color wheel to get the color, you have an issue where very fast motion can "outrun" the spin rate of the color wheel and you get the annoying rainbow effect blurring in very fast motion video. They're reduced that problem dramatically by going to 14,400 rpm speed spinning color wheels, but you can still see it occasionally.
A number of companies--including Samsung--finally eliminated the problem this year by ditching the single-source light bulb and color wheel altogether and going with three-color LED light sources, which allow for extremely fast on-off switching of light source far faster than what could be done even with a 14,400 rpm color wheel. If you're seen the new Samsung HL-S5679W, the picture quality is outstanding even in fast motion, with virtually no rainbow effect blurring. (big thumbs up)
The rainbow effect you see in fast moving motion is caused by the spinning color wheel on older DLP rear-projection TV's that can't keep up with the fast motion.
Fortunately, that problem will soon be a thing of the past. Thanks to switching from a light bulb to very fast-switching LED light sources (a good example is Samsung's new HL-S5679W), we don't need the spinning color wheel anymore, which results in even very fast motion being displayed smoothly.
If you replace haphazard processes with specially selected (maybe genetically engineered) strains of algae kept in controlled conditions, with concentrated feed of nutrients and sunlight, the production capacity could be immense. So yeah, I think it can be done.
In fact, that is what a company called GreenFuel Technologies wants to do. Put up a couple of hundred acres of special vertical tanks (maybe derived from metal tanks used by large commercial breweries) and feed the tanks full of oil-laden algae with the exhaust gases from a coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant. This results in VERY fast growth of the algae and also absorbs 40% of the CO2 gas and 86% of the NOx gases, with the final exhaust gases having way below the Kyoto Protocol mandates for coal-fired powerplant emissions. Just a single 200-acre setup could produce an astonishing 15 million gallons of biodiesel fuel/heating oil per year, and the "waste" from the processing of the algae could be used to make animal feed, plant fertilizer or even make ethanol!:-)
If we set up such "farms" of algae tanks next to every large coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant in the USA we could make enough biodiesel fuel/heating oil to drastically reduce the need for refining diesel fuel or heating oil from crude oil. Given modern catalytic "cracker" technology at most US refineries this means more of the crude oil can be used to make gasoline and/or kerosene motor fuels.
Especially now with the potential of extracting ethanol from any form of plant cellulose (they've just about reached pilot plant point for this process). Because plant cellulose is VASTLY more common than a high-sugar source such as sugar cane/sugar beets or corn, this could tremendously increase the production of ethanol for fuel, since agricultural waste can be used for this purpose.
By the way, due to the low BTU density of ethanol, I don't think E85 fuel is the best solution even if the engine is optimized for E85 fuel, because you will need to fill up much more often. The better solution is E40 fuel, which strikes a better balance between less need for imported oil and better motor vehicle fuel economy.
Given that a few adult video companies have already shot video using 1080i hi-def cameras, these companies are ready to roll out videos in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray formats. The big stumbling block here is which format will offer the lowest-cost mastering solution, one that can be run on a high-end PC.
When you first install Firefox, the default search provider is Google, and in fact Google even kindly provides their own startup page for Firefox users!
The fact you can easily change the configuration of Internet Explorer 7.0 to default to Google instead of MSN Search shows that (IMO) Microsoft hasn't really done anything wrong.
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Actually, what make Firefox pretty good is that the vast majority of web sites render correctly under this browser, which was not true of many previous non-IE web browsers. That plus the fact the basic download is only around 4.5 MB helps, too.
I think Microsoft will pay that US$357 million given their massive cash reserves and settle this thing out of court.
The iPod is a) simple, b) reliable, c) user-friendly, d) cool, e) well designed and f) ties in well with iTunes.
Except for a couple of things:
1. Simple and user-friendly it's not as it seems. The controls on an non-Shuffle iPod can confuse some users, and the learning curve for the iTunes software is steeper than it should be. Also, there needs to be an easier way to "drag and drop" files in and out of an iPod under iTunes.
2. There are hardware issues that could turn off users--notably the easily-scratched display screen (small wonder why many iPod retailers a throwing in protective holders free) and the issue of the non-replaceable rechargeable battery, which means you have to buy a separate charger to recharge the battery if you don't use the power from the USB port connection to recharge the battery.
I think Burt Rutan should seriously lobby both Paul Allen and Bill Gates to get the Delta Clipper concepts turned into a real orbiting spacecraft. Given how much money Allen and Gates have, they could easily part with the approximately US$4 billion development costs of developing this.
Fortunately, Rutan's company would be the perfect company to pull this off, since they did much of the development work of the original Delta Clipper test vehicle and the shelved Lockheed Martin X-33 Venture Star project.
If you saw my posting, I think the prospect of the arrival of low-cost holographic versatile disc with storage capacities 10 to 20 times what is available on the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats is good reason why customers may sit on the sidelines for now. Imagine instead of needing a big stack of discs to store a whole season of TV shows you get it on one disc! Or using H.264 video compression store the entire Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings movies on a single disc. That quantam leap forward in storage capacity is something that many consumers actually want.
I think another thing that is scaring off potential HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sales is the fact that there exists right now another technology that could make both formats obselete: the so-called holographic versatile disc (HVD).
Unlike HD-DVD (which can store 30 GB maximum) or Blu-Ray (which can store 50 GB maximum), HVD's can store hundreds of gigabytes using current technology, and improvements could push an HVD disc that using the same physical format of the DVD to around one terabyte. That's 20 times the storage capacity of a double-layer Blu-Ray disc, which means you could fit the entire Extended Edition editions of all three Lord of the Rings movies with H.264 compression on a single 1 TB HVD, including the four-track commentaries, Dolby Digital EX track and DTS-ES 7.1 track! And you can put on a second HVD all the supplementary materials from the current Extended Edition releases plus all three documentaries from the upcoming special release of the trilogy coming in September 2006.
Also, because of HVD's enormous storage capacity, this could drastically cut the cost of theater digital projection units. Instead of having to install a big bank of hard drives for each projector, you can reduce that to a small console-sized HVD player, which means for each theatrical-quality copy of a movie the total shipping weight will be just over 0.5 kilogram, vastly less than the weight of six heavy reels of 35 mm film for a two-hour movie. This right there could make true worldwide simultaneous release of major movies much less costly due to substantially reduced duplication and shipping costs.
If you really want better fuel mileage with decent carrying space, the best way to go is something akin to a Toyota Prius.
You need to do the following:
1. Replace the current NiMH battery packs used on most hybrids with a similar-sized next-generation Li-On battery pack. This will allow electric-only operation for longer periods of time, reducing the need to run the gasoline engine.
2. Improve the gasoline engine with better variable valve timing and direct fuel injection so the engine uses less fuel due to more precise control of the combustion process.
3. Improve the aerodynamics of the car to 0.25 Cd or less. At speeds above 50 km/h, that could make a big difference.
4. Replace power-robbing and heavy hydraulic systems for power steering and braking with electrical-based systems.
5. Redesign the air conditioning for more fuel-efficient usage.
6. Go to lighter weight materials for the entire structure of the car. This means carbon fiber, epoxy resins and possibly titanium alloys (fortunately, scientists may have come up with a breakthrough that could drastically reduce the refining cost of titanium, which could make it price competitive with steel and aluminum alloys).
I can also guess this size sensor has another use: military reconnaissance satellites. Such a sensor would be perfect for the potential resolution of the latest KH-12 derivative satellites.
Because of this reason: there is a huge potential market for such devices.
.MP3 audio files and .WMA music files in both normal and DRM-protected formats. With the upcoming Windows Media Player 11, Microsoft will have an iTunes-like interface that can organize and copy music to any portable media player that supports the PlayForSure specification, not to mention a huge amount of music available from MTV Network's Urge online music service built into WMP 11. Also, PlayForSure-compatible devices can also play DRM-protected .WMA music downloaded from Wal-Mart's own download service and Yahoo! Music Unlimited download service also.
Right now, if you buy a non-Apple portable music player, it can usually play both
What I see is that the old bombs will be dismantled and the new bomb will be designed as a single modular bomb design that can be used in three ways:
1. A single yield 200 kT warhead that will replace the W80 used on our air-launched cruise missiles.
2. A single yield 200 kT warhead that is integrated into re-entry vehicles used on our Minuteman III and Trident II missiles.
3. A variable-yield (5-200 kT) warhead encased in a stealthy bomb casing that will replace our B61 and possibly B83 gravity bombs.
Only one thing though: I just checked Microsoft Update right now (0654 hours PDT on 13 June 2006) and I don't see any Critical updates to be downloaded. I did get a .NET Framework 1.1 update last Tuesday but I didn't see anything else. (scratching head)
This new capacitor design could be the long-awaited breakthrough that could suddenly make pure electric cars very practical.
Being able to charge the "battery" of the car in only 5 to 10 minutes after going maybe 300-400 miles range means for most drivers the vehicle could replace gasoline/diesel-powered cars quite easily. If you include regenerative braking, you'll need to recharge the "battery" very little on a per week driving basis.
If they can cut the production cost of titanium to US$3 per pound, one place where the metal could be VERY useful is the automobile industry.
Titanium alloy body structure parts combined with lightweight steel alloy parts that make it possible to have "crush zones" to protect the passengers in an accident could mean much lighter vehicles, even at minivan/SUV size. Imagine a US-market Honda Accord four-door saloon going from circa 3,000 pounds to below 2,600 pounds kerb weight, which will do wonders for better fuel economy.
Here's the big problem with the Itanium CPU: it was too hard to write programs literally "from scratch" to take advantage of the CPU Also, Itaniums used lots of power, which means it was difficult to adapt them for blade servers initially.
In contrast, AMD's Opteron/Athlon 64 CPU's could run current x86 code with no performance losses, and it was relatively easy to adapt current x86 code to run in x86-64 mode. And AMD designed Opteron so it could so into blade servers fairly quickly.
It's not as big a problem as people think. After all, here in the USA we have services like MLB.TV, which (for a subscription fee) streams over broadband live Major League Baseball broadcasts; that hasn't taxed the load of most ISP's that deal with broadband Internet access.
In short, what you're saying is that at least for home users who get their broadband through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), this should not be a problem. After all, ISP's have to deal with huge amounts of data travelling back and forth, and the biggest ISP's usually have lots of server farms to deal with the load.
It's more than just games.
With more and more home users editing videos downloaded from MiniDV/MicroDV camcorders and digital still cameras, multimedia editing programs need serious amounts of CPU processing power to do things quickly. For example, if you're running Paint Shop Pro some of the more complex image editing functions can really suck up CPU time processing a full-scale image; with the new Athlons they could modify Paint Shop Pro to properly take advantage of multiple CPU cores, which will drastically reduce processing times.
In short, I think the monopoly issues will likely ditch the idea of eBay being purchased by Microsoft. Especially since Google and Yahoo! doesn't have anything near the scale of eBay when it comes to online auction sites.
DLP makes me want to claw out my eyes and run shrieking from the room. I can point out exactly which sets are DLP from a hundred feet away. If you are at all sensitive to CRT refresh, you MUST go see DLPs in person, and you absolutely must make sure you have an ironclad return policy. The saturation and color on DLPs is a little better than LCDs, and they tend to be cheaper, but a display that gives you motion sickness is no good, no matter how cheap it is.
Here's the big problem with DLP sets up till now: because they use a single-source light bulb shining on a spinnig color wheel to get the color, you have an issue where very fast motion can "outrun" the spin rate of the color wheel and you get the annoying rainbow effect blurring in very fast motion video. They're reduced that problem dramatically by going to 14,400 rpm speed spinning color wheels, but you can still see it occasionally.
A number of companies--including Samsung--finally eliminated the problem this year by ditching the single-source light bulb and color wheel altogether and going with three-color LED light sources, which allow for extremely fast on-off switching of light source far faster than what could be done even with a 14,400 rpm color wheel. If you're seen the new Samsung HL-S5679W, the picture quality is outstanding even in fast motion, with virtually no rainbow effect blurring. (big thumbs up)
The rainbow effect you see in fast moving motion is caused by the spinning color wheel on older DLP rear-projection TV's that can't keep up with the fast motion.
Fortunately, that problem will soon be a thing of the past. Thanks to switching from a light bulb to very fast-switching LED light sources (a good example is Samsung's new HL-S5679W), we don't need the spinning color wheel anymore, which results in even very fast motion being displayed smoothly.
If you replace haphazard processes with specially selected (maybe genetically engineered) strains of algae kept in controlled conditions, with concentrated feed of nutrients and sunlight, the production capacity could be immense. So yeah, I think it can be done.
:-)
In fact, that is what a company called GreenFuel Technologies wants to do. Put up a couple of hundred acres of special vertical tanks (maybe derived from metal tanks used by large commercial breweries) and feed the tanks full of oil-laden algae with the exhaust gases from a coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant. This results in VERY fast growth of the algae and also absorbs 40% of the CO2 gas and 86% of the NOx gases, with the final exhaust gases having way below the Kyoto Protocol mandates for coal-fired powerplant emissions. Just a single 200-acre setup could produce an astonishing 15 million gallons of biodiesel fuel/heating oil per year, and the "waste" from the processing of the algae could be used to make animal feed, plant fertilizer or even make ethanol!
If we set up such "farms" of algae tanks next to every large coal-fired or natural gas-fired plant in the USA we could make enough biodiesel fuel/heating oil to drastically reduce the need for refining diesel fuel or heating oil from crude oil. Given modern catalytic "cracker" technology at most US refineries this means more of the crude oil can be used to make gasoline and/or kerosene motor fuels.
Hemp? Forget it!!
Especially now with the potential of extracting ethanol from any form of plant cellulose (they've just about reached pilot plant point for this process). Because plant cellulose is VASTLY more common than a high-sugar source such as sugar cane/sugar beets or corn, this could tremendously increase the production of ethanol for fuel, since agricultural waste can be used for this purpose.
By the way, due to the low BTU density of ethanol, I don't think E85 fuel is the best solution even if the engine is optimized for E85 fuel, because you will need to fill up much more often. The better solution is E40 fuel, which strikes a better balance between less need for imported oil and better motor vehicle fuel economy.
I can cite a few reasons why SGI has fallen on hard times:
1. Current Linux distributions can run workstation level hardware/software.
2. x86-compatible machines now have powerful enough CPU's to run workstation level hardware/software.
3. High-end graphics cards using the nVidia Quadro GPU chipset can do most of what SGI machines can do in terms of graphics but at much lower cost.
Why do you think Dreamworks Animation is using AMD CPU boxes with high-end graphics cards running Linux?
Given that a few adult video companies have already shot video using 1080i hi-def cameras, these companies are ready to roll out videos in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray formats. The big stumbling block here is which format will offer the lowest-cost mastering solution, one that can be run on a high-end PC.
Talk about sour grapes.
When you first install Firefox, the default search provider is Google, and in fact Google even kindly provides their own startup page for Firefox users!
The fact you can easily change the configuration of Internet Explorer 7.0 to default to Google instead of MSN Search shows that (IMO) Microsoft hasn't really done anything wrong.