Just a question.
If it were just some kind of disguised advertising ?
People spoke more about the Cube because of this stupid story than if they have had to wait until some announcement, no ?
Ok, there's a suit but then ?
Put a camera on a guy's desk, then ask a journalist to harass him and you'll have
all the leaks you officially didn't want. --
I work as a sysadmin for the Swiss Post and there are dozen of thousands of workstations (NT, Linux, BSD, MacOSXYZ, etc.) connected together on a damn' fast network.
When I have to install some software I just mount a remote disk (could be 300km far) and launch the exec from there.
One day I also made a test of burning a CD during the work hours. The data to be burnt were something like 50km far.
Believe it or not it worked.
All our machines (in this office) have 100Mb Ethernet and, whenever I download some stuff, I am sure the bottleneck is the harddisc.
So, when I read about XGb/second I just wonder how much I'll have to spend on hardware (optical connection to disks, faster than light BUSes, etc.) to benefit from this powerup.
BTW, NO : I don't want Internet 2 to be the fastest ever just because Internet 1 happens to be fast enough, I just want it to be free as in Free Speech and Free Software. (I don't mind about Free Beer but I would about Free Guinness) --
Just before the article there is a weird story about some Oracle guy that likes lambs but what the Hell has this got to do witht the main subject.
And, BTW, Did we learn something in this story ?
We all know they use BSD servers for Hotmail, I can also tell that they internally use Perl to do their tests.
So, the interviewed guy told they wouldn't use Win2000 when it cam out as it was too unstable ?
Who would use Linux 2.4 for his server *now* ?
Probably nobody until it is declared as stable.
But it IS available on kernel.org...
--
BeOS' soft realtime should not be confused with QNX' hard realtime:
Soft realtime means that the OS will launch the process/thread/program with no guarantee that it accomplishes its task at time.
Hard realtime means that if the OS estimates the task won't finish in time, it won't launch it at all.
[...]QNX's DVD player[...] : Many commercial "salon"-DVD players are using Neutrino+Photon+XingDVD in ROM, we can then be sure this works.
Engineers "played" with such DVD players and managed to get their output on several (different) displays at once, due to the extraordinaire versatility of Photon.
Imagine that! You save -$1200, get to buy a tangerine-coloured laptop, and all you have to give up for this privilege is ownership of anything. Well, I guess you get to keep the powerbook.
Just one thing : iBooks can't read DVDs.
BTW, it seems there'll soon be some boycotted dentists (the ones who'll caution such a system).
Don't mistake my word but the American are usually known for the cost of their need of engeeners closely related to their studies cost.
Don't you think that accepting such methods could be considered as anti-democratic/patriotic as this means that there'll be fewer and fewer students who'll afford such prices ? --
Now it seems that even knowledge is becoming ISO9xx-ied.
Have these guys actually found somebody to share their pretentions with them ?
Let's take a look to their partners list...
Jeeesus... They don't need partners, they construct theirs !
It is also strange to see Mac Powerbooks on all of their Vital Book-related pages though I am sure this will rather run on MS platforms.
Grrr... PS: When will the toilet paper also be subject to non-disclosure-agreements ?
Maybe when electronic noses will be there to check who did uses one another's. --
They just explain us this is
about Cddb'ing songs (auto identification), however bad their resolution might be.
I agree this could be cool though I have not seen many un-tagged MP3 files.
But now, if we consider (in this context) that a song is a bit of WAV data of any duration that will be hashed on some way with this system in order to be identified, there could then be another use for this system:
Couldn't some copyright organism use it automatically in order to recognize any sample they would contain and finally claim some royalties in the name of their orignal creator ?
After all, this is not quite different from what the ear actually does while hearing a song, especially when it happens to "recognize" a sample.
If this is the case, then I believe that sample scramblers might become quite frequent in the future.
After your advice, I just visited AllTheWeb (funny joke:-) and launched a query on Google (891000 docs found, 0.13 seconds).
This therefore lacks a functionality (that Google also lacks BTW):
av.com usually gave a last checked/changed date for each URLs, I just loved this.
BTW, I am now back from av.com and it seems they also got rid of it...
What a pity.
Is this an implicit way to explain it was too much data to handle?:-(
Could somebody tell me how to display dates in Google ?
--
I recently switched to Google, not because somebody said they had indexed Zillions pages but simply because it happened more and more often to me that my Altavista queries got biaised by these search-engines-registration-freaks
(IE, guys that put tons of META in the headers + twenty lines of blank, hidden text, preferable off-topic words at the end of the welcome pages)
I tried Metacrawler but I wasn't that satisfied.
What I love in Google is:
Its light entry page : one picture, one light form and you get it. Compare with the hell that pours your modem whenever reloading av.com's index page.
It is damn quick.
It thinks like me : I mean it really returns me the web pages I want.
It supports the same syntax as Altavista, at least the + and the - that make my life soooooo much easier...
Now, seeing ads on Google pages wouldn't disturb me provided they are light enough. But until then, I am just the happiest guy ever with their current engine. --
I am not surprise to read about this subject shortly after we spoke about this one, anyway, we have to look towards the first computers to check what guided their data streams and when it could decently be called an operating system.
In operating system, there is the world system and, IMHO, a system is supposed to be extendable.
Now here is my first attempt to answer your question:
From this site:
Babbage's greatest achievement was his detailed plans for Calculating Engines, both the table-making Difference Engines
and the far more ambitious Analytical Engines, which were flexible and powerful, punched-card controlled general purpose
calculaters, embodying many features which later reappeared in the modern stored program computer. These features
included: punched card control; separate store and mill; a set of internal registers (the table axes); fast multiplier/divider; a
range of peripherals; even array processing.
Sounds like we got it.
Now, we could reformulate your question one of the following ways:
By assuming you expected one that would be stored distinct from the main processing unit: "What was the First Computer software Operating System ?"
By assuming you expected one that would be publicly available: "What was the First Computer commercial Operating System ?"
By assuming you expected one that would fit both previous conditions: "What was the First Computer software commercial Operating System ?"
Finally, I can't wait to imagine now somebody that might ask in some years about the first microprocessor ever, because as our vision of a microprocessor will have evolved (compare Transmeta's thing -or its equivalent, in ten years from now- to the i4004) thus making this question even more difficult to answer.:-) --
Am I the first guy to speak about Forth here ?
It is IMHO one of the most elegant languages ever, even though you first have to declare many words in order to code efficiently.
(Depending on the interpreter used) a Forth program can be faster than the same optimized program coded in Assembly !
I indeed saw some that were reoptimizing the generated low-level code according to specific contexts.
I just wish some competitor could just validate my admiration for this language upon the others. --
I can't imagine a home computer with such a huge data capacity.
In fact, I think this can store more information than the human brain.
You speak about storing all of your books in this but I even think you could store much more, like all the uncompressed music records, DVDs, software, etc...
But why the Hell would somebody want to have ALL THE KNOWLEDGE EVER at home in such a small thing ?
Knowledge is made for being shared so I just thing that using a few of these "disks" and simultaneously accessing these from remote computer would be just fine...
Also, a small remark: the more powerful computers become, the stricter the ISO standard become.
I guess so big a capacity would lead us to unthinkable levels of data certifications and historization...
Imagine to which level somebody could be tracked:
Keystroke strength or whatever leading to graphology-like studies aiming at demonstrating that most people are too stressed at work...
Video records (remember, the.Net and its AI sequel that we discussed some weeks ago ?) of workers, etc.
Finally, because of stellar exploration I only see one good usage of bigger storage capacity: Storing dates according to universal time (GMT, relativity, Doppler, cosmic coordinates, etc.).
There are many interesting points here, but first we have to see what potential problems we could have exploiting this discovery.
"There could be life on Europa" doesn't mean there is.
We would have to get there (long, expensive).
Bringing alien beings to Earth:
Could be dangerous for us (epidemies, invasion, etc. - just watch both Alien and Outbreak again - )
could also be dangerous for these beings (the shuttle would need whatever to keep it alive)
Would be long and expensive (several years)
Would require sophisticated hibernation technologies
If there appears to be no life on Europa, we could anyway settle some terrestrial life forms there, like micro-organisms aimed at bio-chemical experiments or whatever.
We are still far from settling there but it may be easier for our Martian-born descendents. --
Soon ago, we were debating about Using the Sky as a huge advertising screen.
Motorola doesn't seem they have understood this concept as nobody would by a product which advertising campaign would be such [expensive|catastrophic].:-) --
It's the free market economy for goodness sake, try to block it in the name of keeping space clean / scientific progress / human values and some corporate will claim that you're blocking their right under the first amendment to free speech or something like it. Maybe they 'll even sue and make the environmental groups pay for it...
First amendment is American.
The sky isn't (only).
Let the American do whatever they want with the stars they put on their banner.
If they touch the ones that shin in the sky, I am not sure the UNO or whoever else will agree.
Don't forget that there are much more Americanophobic muslims than American guys over there.
Would they accept to read some American brand while sleeping outside ?
There are far cheaper ways to be impopular.
--
Lotus Notes Client is excellent to convince managers to let people use an alternative to Windows (I had this problem 2 years ago with a Fortune100 company).
This and StarOffice confirm that Linux slowly gain acceptance as a desktop OS.
LGPL is not bad in this case as IBM is a serious brand.
Choosing Gnome is not a bad point though I hope WDE will be uasable under other environments, though.
Now, I just want to see how clean the generated code is but until then: Two Thumbs Up, IBM!
If somebody starts "tagging" the sky, it's sure we might soon see advertisings, religious or political propaganda, an maybe even tags.
Whatever one finds in a mail-bin, could appear in the sky.
But, if the pollution rises, nobody will be able to see it through the smog.
My bet is that it will be considered as pollution and thus forbidden, like the noise.
And if it's ever accepted and performed, then I bet that if Nike sells caps, it will be to people willing not to see their ads in the sky.
Until then, a solution would be to declare the Sky as part of the UNESCO's Patrimony so that it will virtually become impossible to soil it. --
SCO was on sale.
Caldera was insterested.
SCO is old and lacks the image of an innovative company that it therefore is rather than an old companyosaur (IMHO their products SCO*Unix and UnixWare were reliable enough for server use).
So, it sounds like that before getting bought SCO wants to refresh its identity with a new name.
SCO doesn't rhyme with Caldera...
Hence Tarantella ?
It is funny/frightening how to see that *all* the companies that previously worked with Amiga faced serious problems (Commodore, Gateway, etc.).
Will RedHat confirm this obervation ?
For what I see there is nothing that spectacular in their SDK, except Amiga's name.
I hope RedHat investors will trust them, though it's only sounding like a superstition. --
OK, sorry for the bad joke.
But he was the first: "What we're saying [to software
developers] is that all these kids
[worldwide] have Play-Stations," Heckler
said. "So don't fight it. Join it."
I think this "VP" should be aware of the following:
I am not a kid (anymore) since I am 30.
I use Gnutella for PD-progs downloads (but If you want music for free I can give you some of mine which is Free).
This guy sees a money stream instead of an artistic flow. Napster proposed me to publish my music for free on their web site. Why would he close them ? Does he want money for what I give or does he want to be the only authorized music publisher in the world ? We already have such a disease in France, this is called SACEM and they don't only help artists but make a profit from their music.
I don't have a television, hence I don't have a Playstation.
I wouldn't buy a PSX2 since its DVD player is hard-region-locked. (just move as often as me and you'll understand this does't make me a gangster)
Sony is a Japanese Corporation. M. Heckler's name doesn't sound like he is. He is quite violent in this interview, unlike his employers from the Zen country. This is bad for Sony's reputation. I then suspect such a speech (errors, lack of accuracy) should not be considered as reflecting Sony's spirit but only denotes its author's lack of self-control.
Sony's advertisings are usually smarter ("I dreamed of it, Sony did it") who actually dreamed of being sued or of keep paying for Art ?
OK, I wrote lots of things here but this is a normal reaction to this bullshit.
This actually reminds me of my former company:
Something happened.
Somebody sends a mail about it toall the employees (at least in the building).
An executive about to be evaluated just adds one detail and resends the mail.
Evaluators who never read mails just see that he wrote about the event and consider him as a [Negociator|Leader|Communicator] and give him a good note.
Other employees do the same
And this way, a forgotten laptop that was found behind an open door one month later was declared stolen and the company's Lotus Notes system almost melted under the mail load (and the guy who finally told the laptop was found almost got fired for political uncorrectness)
Here, we have the event (Napster), all the american VP want to be involved in the suit (in case they get known or even money), we are flooded by these news though we are not even sure that the artists lose money because of Napster.
It might be an advertising. --
by plugging our computer into an office
desk, its top becomes a gigantic computer screen--an interactive photonic display. You won't
need a keyboard because files can be opened and closed simply by touching and dragging with
your finger
Sounds like Dilinger's computer in the cult-movie "Tron".
Is SF the first inspiration source for engineers?
(No answer needed)
Anyway, something really scares me: They still have this need for mono-processor machines with one harddisc, etc.
I think it would be cooler to just design Lego-like components, each of which would be a tiny computer that could interact with one another like in the good old times of Atari ATW.
So, instead of paying a huge amount of money to change computer every 6 months (however quick they are you know people will still pay to upgrade them, a friend pertinently compared computers to cars : you want them to work properly but to amaze your neighbours) why wouldn't we pay a few bucks for some more GIPS to fit ? With wireless communication, this would then be tomorrow's computer and I bet my vision is far realistic than ASAP's nice-looking box.
--
There is a typical job requiring a big computer history knowledge : Technological surveyor (From the French . Veilleur technologique).
This job consists o being aware of the latest relevant technologies in order to advise corporate buyers about potential updates.
Computer History knowledge is used here to help evaluate the products' advance and estimates the actual possibilities its use may bring to the company.
Choosen products are then extensively tested and compared to currently used ones before they can be deployed in a production environment.
Of course, I used the word product but this could also be whatever which could have an effect on the workers productivity (method, etc.). --
Till then, it looks like a cool approach
to the problem of identifying smells electronically for all kinds of other
purposes.
I am not sure we might soon have some Stinkometer tomorrow as, if I understand that a device using this technology could detect some smell, and maybe recognize some that stink, there will still be issues about mixes, for example, if you take a flower perfume and some food smell, they could independantly smell good but their mix could smell awful (Roquefort cheese + flowers, for example).
Except in few cases when mixing odorous gas will induce molecular changes (that could reasonably make a sensor react properly), these smells will consist of sets of smell clouds which could independantly be analyzed but may probably not (yet) be classified as a unique smell type.
So, I accept the idea of an electronic nose though we may all agree that we need (1) enough sensors to detect all these subtilities (2) a brain in order to analyze the resulting smell by confronting all the sensor results simultaneously.
I don't even mention cultural facts that'll make (for example) alcohol, smell better for non-Muslims than for Muslims and thus will require different classification schemes.
A typical application of this study (IMHO) would be to detect gas (c3h8, c4h10) leaks in houses in order to avoid explosions.
Cheers
PS: BTW, it is funny not to have a single occurrence of the word smell in the PDF file...
--
Slashdot Mirror
Just a question.
If it were just some kind of disguised advertising ?
People spoke more about the Cube because of this stupid story than if they have had to wait until some announcement, no ?
Ok, there's a suit but then ?
Put a camera on a guy's desk, then ask a journalist to harass him and you'll have all the leaks you officially didn't want.
--
I work as a sysadmin for the Swiss Post and there are dozen of thousands of workstations (NT, Linux, BSD, MacOSXYZ, etc.) connected together on a damn' fast network.
When I have to install some software I just mount a remote disk (could be 300km far) and launch the exec from there.
One day I also made a test of burning a CD during the work hours. The data to be burnt were something like 50km far.
Believe it or not it worked. All our machines (in this office) have 100Mb Ethernet and, whenever I download some stuff, I am sure the bottleneck is the harddisc.
So, when I read about XGb/second I just wonder how much I'll have to spend on hardware (optical connection to disks, faster than light BUSes, etc.) to benefit from this powerup.
BTW, NO : I don't want Internet 2 to be the fastest ever just because Internet 1 happens to be fast enough, I just want it to be free as in Free Speech and Free Software.
(I don't mind about Free Beer but I would about Free Guinness)
--
Just before the article there is a weird story about some Oracle guy that likes lambs but what the Hell has this got to do witht the main subject.
And, BTW, Did we learn something in this story ?
We all know they use BSD servers for Hotmail, I can also tell that they internally use Perl to do their tests.
So, the interviewed guy told they wouldn't use Win2000 when it cam out as it was too unstable ?
Who would use Linux 2.4 for his server *now* ?
Probably nobody until it is declared as stable.
But it IS available on kernel.org...
--
Engineers "played" with such DVD players and managed to get their output on several (different) displays at once, due to the extraordinaire versatility of Photon.
--
This story ?
--
Imagine that! You save -$1200, get to buy a tangerine-coloured laptop, and all you have to give up for this privilege is ownership of anything. Well, I guess you get to keep the powerbook.
Just one thing : iBooks can't read DVDs.
BTW, it seems there'll soon be some boycotted dentists (the ones who'll caution such a system).
Don't mistake my word but the American are usually known for the cost of their need of engeeners closely related to their studies cost.
Don't you think that accepting such methods could be considered as anti-democratic/patriotic as this means that there'll be fewer and fewer students who'll afford such prices ?
--
Now it seems that even knowledge is becoming ISO9xx-ied.
Have these guys actually found somebody to share their pretentions with them ?
Let's take a look to their partners list...
Jeeesus... They don't need partners, they construct theirs !
It is also strange to see Mac Powerbooks on all of their Vital Book-related pages though I am sure this will rather run on MS platforms.
Grrr...
PS: When will the toilet paper also be subject to non-disclosure-agreements ?
Maybe when electronic noses will be there to check who did uses one another's.
--
They just explain us this is about Cddb'ing songs (auto identification), however bad their resolution might be.
I agree this could be cool though I have not seen many un-tagged MP3 files.
But now, if we consider (in this context) that a song is a bit of WAV data of any duration that will be hashed on some way with this system in order to be identified, there could then be another use for this system:
Couldn't some copyright organism use it automatically in order to recognize any sample they would contain and finally claim some royalties in the name of their orignal creator ?
After all, this is not quite different from what the ear actually does while hearing a song, especially when it happens to "recognize" a sample.
If this is the case, then I believe that sample scramblers might become quite frequent in the future.
--
After your advice, I just visited AllTheWeb (funny joke :-) and launched a query on Google (891000 docs found, 0.13 seconds). :-(
This therefore lacks a functionality (that Google also lacks BTW):
av.com usually gave a last checked/changed date for each URLs, I just loved this.
BTW, I am now back from av.com and it seems they also got rid of it...
What a pity.
Is this an implicit way to explain it was too much data to handle?
Could somebody tell me how to display dates in Google ?
--
I tried Metacrawler but I wasn't that satisfied.
What I love in Google is
- Its light entry page : one picture, one light form and you get it. Compare with the hell that pours your modem whenever reloading av.com's index page.
- It is damn quick.
- It thinks like me : I mean it really returns me the web pages I want.
- It supports the same syntax as Altavista, at least the + and the - that make my life soooooo much easier...
Now, seeing ads on Google pages wouldn't disturb me provided they are light enough. But until then, I am just the happiest guy ever with their current engine.--
Errrmmm...
Done..
BTW it was damn fast with a 202MHz SA on a RiscPC, even despite its lack of FPU.
--
In operating system, there is the world system and, IMHO, a system is supposed to be extendable.
Now here is my first attempt to answer your question
From this site: Babbage's greatest achievement was his detailed plans for Calculating Engines, both the table-making Difference Engines and the far more ambitious Analytical Engines, which were flexible and powerful, punched-card controlled general purpose calculaters, embodying many features which later reappeared in the modern stored program computer. These features included: punched card control; separate store and mill; a set of internal registers (the table axes); fast multiplier/divider; a range of peripherals; even array processing.
Sounds like we got it.
Now, we could reformulate your question one of the following ways:
- By assuming you expected one that would be stored distinct from the main processing unit:
- By assuming you expected one that would be publicly available:
- By assuming you expected one that would fit both previous conditions:
Finally, I can't wait to imagine now somebody that might ask in some years about the first microprocessor ever, because as our vision of a microprocessor will have evolved (compare Transmeta's thing -or its equivalent, in ten years from now- to the i4004) thus making this question even more difficult to answer."What was the First Computer software Operating System ?"
"What was the First Computer commercial Operating System ?"
"What was the First Computer software commercial Operating System ?"
--
Am I the first guy to speak about Forth here ?
It is IMHO one of the most elegant languages ever, even though you first have to declare many words in order to code efficiently.
(Depending on the interpreter used) a Forth program can be faster than the same optimized program coded in Assembly !
I indeed saw some that were reoptimizing the generated low-level code according to specific contexts.
I just wish some competitor could just validate my admiration for this language upon the others.
--
I can't imagine a home computer with such a huge data capacity.
: .Net and its AI sequel that we discussed some weeks ago ?) of workers, etc.
In fact, I think this can store more information than the human brain.
You speak about storing all of your books in this but I even think you could store much more, like all the uncompressed music records, DVDs, software, etc...
But why the Hell would somebody want to have ALL THE KNOWLEDGE EVER at home in such a small thing ?
Knowledge is made for being shared so I just thing that using a few of these "disks" and simultaneously accessing these from remote computer would be just fine...
Also, a small remark: the more powerful computers become, the stricter the ISO standard become. I guess so big a capacity would lead us to unthinkable levels of data certifications and historization... Imagine to which level somebody could be tracked
Keystroke strength or whatever leading to graphology-like studies aiming at demonstrating that most people are too stressed at work...
Video records (remember, the
Finally, because of stellar exploration I only see one good usage of bigger storage capacity: Storing dates according to universal time (GMT, relativity, Doppler, cosmic coordinates, etc.).
--
- "There could be life on Europa" doesn't mean there is.
- We would have to get there (long, expensive).
- Bringing alien beings to Earth:
- Could be dangerous for us (epidemies, invasion, etc. - just watch both Alien and Outbreak again - )
- could also be dangerous for these beings (the shuttle would need whatever to keep it alive)
- Would be long and expensive (several years)
- Would require sophisticated hibernation technologies
If there appears to be no life on Europa, we could anyway settle some terrestrial life forms there, like micro-organisms aimed at bio-chemical experiments or whatever. We are still far from settling there but it may be easier for our Martian-born descendents.--
Soon ago, we were debating about Using the Sky as a huge advertising screen. :-)
Motorola doesn't seem they have understood this concept as nobody would by a product which advertising campaign would be such [expensive|catastrophic].
--
It's the free market economy for goodness sake, try to block it in the name of keeping space clean / scientific progress / human values and some corporate will claim that you're blocking their right under the first amendment to free speech or something like it. Maybe they 'll even sue and make the environmental groups pay for it...
First amendment is American.
The sky isn't (only).
Let the American do whatever they want with the stars they put on their banner.
If they touch the ones that shin in the sky, I am not sure the UNO or whoever else will agree.
Don't forget that there are much more Americanophobic muslims than American guys over there.
Would they accept to read some American brand while sleeping outside ?
There are far cheaper ways to be impopular.
--
--
If somebody starts "tagging" the sky, it's sure we might soon see advertisings, religious or political propaganda, an maybe even tags.
Whatever one finds in a mail-bin, could appear in the sky.
But, if the pollution rises, nobody will be able to see it through the smog.
My bet is that it will be considered as pollution and thus forbidden, like the noise.
And if it's ever accepted and performed, then I bet that if Nike sells caps, it will be to people willing not to see their ads in the sky.
Until then, a solution would be to declare the Sky as part of the UNESCO's Patrimony so that it will virtually become impossible to soil it.
--
SCO was on sale.
Caldera was insterested.
SCO is old and lacks the image of an innovative company that it therefore is rather than an old companyosaur (IMHO their products SCO*Unix and UnixWare were reliable enough for server use).
So, it sounds like that before getting bought SCO wants to refresh its identity with a new name.
SCO doesn't rhyme with Caldera...
Hence Tarantella ?
--
It is funny/frightening how to see that *all* the companies that previously worked with Amiga faced serious problems (Commodore, Gateway, etc.).
Will RedHat confirm this obervation ?
For what I see there is nothing that spectacular in their SDK, except Amiga's name.
I hope RedHat investors will trust them, though it's only sounding like a superstition.
--
But he was the first
"What we're saying [to software developers] is that all these kids [worldwide] have Play-Stations," Heckler said. "So don't fight it. Join it."
I think this "VP" should be aware of the following:
- I am not a kid (anymore) since I am 30.
- I use Gnutella for PD-progs downloads (but If you want music for free I can give you some of mine which is Free).
- This guy sees a money stream instead of an artistic flow. Napster proposed me to publish my music for free on their web site. Why would he close them ? Does he want money for what I give or does he want to be the only authorized music publisher in the world ? We already have such a disease in France, this is called SACEM and they don't only help artists but make a profit from their music.
- I don't have a television, hence I don't have a Playstation.
- I wouldn't buy a PSX2 since its DVD player is hard-region-locked. (just move as often as me and you'll understand this does't make me a gangster)
- Sony is a Japanese Corporation. M. Heckler's name doesn't sound like he is. He is quite violent in this interview, unlike his employers from the Zen country. This is bad for Sony's reputation. I then suspect such a speech (errors, lack of accuracy) should not be considered as reflecting Sony's spirit but only denotes its author's lack of self-control.
- Sony's advertisings are usually smarter ("I dreamed of it, Sony did it") who actually dreamed of being sued or of keep paying for Art ?
OK, I wrote lots of things here but this is a normal reaction to this bullshit.This actually reminds me of my former company:
- Something happened.
- Somebody sends a mail about it toall the employees (at least in the building).
- An executive about to be evaluated just adds one detail and resends the mail.
- Evaluators who never read mails just see that he wrote about the event and consider him as a [Negociator|Leader|Communicator] and give him a good note.
- Other employees do the same
- And this way, a forgotten laptop that was found behind an open door one month later was declared stolen and the company's Lotus Notes system almost melted under the mail load (and the guy who finally told the laptop was found almost got fired for political uncorrectness)
Here, we have the event (Napster), all the american VP want to be involved in the suit (in case they get known or even money), we are flooded by these news though we are not even sure that the artists lose money because of Napster.It might be an advertising.
--
by plugging our computer into an office desk, its top becomes a gigantic computer screen--an interactive photonic display. You won't need a keyboard because files can be opened and closed simply by touching and dragging with your finger
Sounds like Dilinger's computer in the cult-movie "Tron".
Is SF the first inspiration source for engineers?
(No answer needed)
Anyway, something really scares me: They still have this need for mono-processor machines with one harddisc, etc.
I think it would be cooler to just design Lego-like components, each of which would be a tiny computer that could interact with one another like in the good old times of Atari ATW.
So, instead of paying a huge amount of money to change computer every 6 months (however quick they are you know people will still pay to upgrade them, a friend pertinently compared computers to cars : you want them to work properly but to amaze your neighbours) why wouldn't we pay a few bucks for some more GIPS to fit ? With wireless communication, this would then be tomorrow's computer and I bet my vision is far realistic than ASAP's nice-looking box.
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There is a typical job requiring a big computer history knowledge : Technological surveyor (From the French . Veilleur technologique).
This job consists o being aware of the latest relevant technologies in order to advise corporate buyers about potential updates.
Computer History knowledge is used here to help evaluate the products' advance and estimates the actual possibilities its use may bring to the company.
Choosen products are then extensively tested and compared to currently used ones before they can be deployed in a production environment.
Of course, I used the word product but this could also be whatever which could have an effect on the workers productivity (method, etc.).
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Till then, it looks like a cool approach to the problem of identifying smells electronically for all kinds of other purposes.
I am not sure we might soon have some Stinkometer tomorrow as, if I understand that a device using this technology could detect some smell, and maybe recognize some that stink, there will still be issues about mixes, for example, if you take a flower perfume and some food smell, they could independantly smell good but their mix could smell awful (Roquefort cheese + flowers, for example).
Except in few cases when mixing odorous gas will induce molecular changes (that could reasonably make a sensor react properly), these smells will consist of sets of smell clouds which could independantly be analyzed but may probably not (yet) be classified as a unique smell type.
So, I accept the idea of an electronic nose though we may all agree that we need (1) enough sensors to detect all these subtilities (2) a brain in order to analyze the resulting smell by confronting all the sensor results simultaneously.
I don't even mention cultural facts that'll make (for example) alcohol, smell better for non-Muslims than for Muslims and thus will require different classification schemes.
A typical application of this study (IMHO) would be to detect gas (c3h8, c4h10) leaks in houses in order to avoid explosions. Cheers
PS: BTW, it is funny not to have a single occurrence of the word smell in the PDF file...
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