I believe fellow data center tape loaders (particularly those who were employed at Acxiom) are familiar with this concept already. A user in a far away land requests information from a database via a mainframe which sends a print job to a networked printer in another room where tapes are housed and a minimum wage employee fetches the tape and loads it onto a tape reader that the mainframe reads and sends the information back to the user. Rather ridiculous. I even remember telling my coworkers they'd all be replaced by hard drives in less than a decade. I was right.
My first DVD player refused to play The Matrix properly when it was released (quite common at the time). IIRC this was due to an interactive feature (follow the White Rabbit?) not being compatible with the firmware version of the player, looks like a similar story here. That sounds familiar. But the good news here is that, theoretically, the XBox should be firmware upgradeable via the internet.
This is a perfect example of how using Microsoft's official list of exploits is a mostly meaningless metric to determine how secure the OS really is. It gives no indication of security holes being secretly exploited for years. That goes for the UNIXes as well.
2) Lack of backing of HD-DVD can be seen as implying a lack of confidence in the medium. I think this is the single most important element of the post. If Microsoft aren't giving a thumbs up to HD-DVD that means they think Blu-Ray is going to be the big format. They're saying, whether intentionally or not, that Sony's technology is going to be the 'standard', and Sony's PS3 is the cheapest way to get a Blu-Ray player. By not including an HD-DVD reader Microsoft might have seriously screwed up an otherwise shiny console generation for themselves.
It's nearly ten years later. There are so many more people on the planet than there were ten years ago. Blu-Ray reached the same whole number in ~82% of the time DVD did, but nine years later, so I figure that makes up the difference. Looks like it's about on par with DVD to me. I wonder how VHS did back in its day.
It costs significantly more money, has significantly less storage space, and inherits the messiness and unpleasantness of cellphone contracts. This doesn't appeal to people who just want to play their mp3s. Or M4As, lets not prejudge.
I tend to agree, except for the storage capacity. Sales of the lower capacity iPods are insane, going back to the cost factor.
Intel > AMD at high end, Intel >= AMD at low end, Core 2 > A64, Intel finally has a lead in both architecture design and process (65nm). There were ads on those pages? News to me. Firefox + Adblock. It will set you free.
As far as the data is concerned, it's good information but somehow unsurprising. Maybe Apple partnered with the right people after all.
Since when does being 'the best employer' mean you have to let your employees walk all over you? Pay them what they're worth, send them away when they're done.
File Sharing -- Harmful to Children and a Threat to National Security
[snip]... Homeland Security report that government workers had installed file-sharing programs that accessed classified information without their knowledge. File sharing? Sounds like ignorance about security is the real threat. And they're in charge of security? We are so fucked.
I think a lot of customers are going to be disappointed when their purchase doesn't play in their dvd player. Perhaps, but I bet that number is going to be smaller than you might be thinking. If it were the HD-DVD version of a movie hitting that high of sales I'd guess a lot more customers were buying the wrong product - the term "BluRay" has to at least invoke hesitance before purchase.
Is there a phone that is just a phone? Designed to have a respectable life span for the phone itself and the battery? A phone that isn't also a camera, PDA, and now web surfing device. Just a phone.
I'm excited about cool mobile hand held devices, but sometimes people just need a reliable phone.
Oh, but are there any phone currently that synchronize with gmail and the Google calendar?
it's a sad state of affairs when going outside, reading, having family time, etc, are considered alternatives to what is found on tv. your post makes it sound as tho tv is the default setting of how to spend time at home. of course, asking my family what they're doing when i speak to them on the phone usually has the same result. I suppose it could be read that way. But the things you mentioned we already do. Television was just in the list. Now it's lower on the list and everything else is accented a bit more.
Broadcast television can be entertaining... informative... emotional... what-have-you. It can also be beyond a waste of time, to the point of destructive. TiVo, for us, has improved our television experiences by allowing us to watch what we want when we want to, and without the irritations of exceedingly bad advertisements (we actually still watch the good ones).
There have been friends of mine who's lives effectively revolved around a particular show. They scheduled their time to be available for its airing, and it so impacted their life they fell out of long lasting relationships. Freaky!
It's not "unwanted", people just don't want to pay the price. I'm more than half the people out there who have decided not to get it have decided such because of price and not one of the other reasons listed in TFA. I'm willing to pay the price - it just better be worth it. Currently it's not because of the other items listed in TFA. More games, more features, online online online capabilities!
I control the "OFF" switch. TV is less and less important to me with each passing day. Is that because you are downloading content (legally or illegally) that is usually viewed as broadcast television or because you have found an alternative source for entertainment to fill the void usually provided by things that are found originally on broadcast television?
My wife and I spend more time away from broadcast television content (no matter how we receive it) now than we used to. But there are still plenty of things found in the broadcast television library that we both enjoy, which I do not believe will be replaced by non-DRMed material in the foreseeable future.
In 20 years from now, when hard drive capacity is measured in yottabytes, will you really be carrying around a 512MB thumbdrive you bought for $20 back before the Great War of 2010? How do you know it's going to happen in 2010? Are you SURE it's going to happen in 2010? That only gives me 3 years to prepare the shelter...
one of the later steps in fixing technical glitches in mac systems is to zap the pram..
imagine the confusion between 2 friends when one says "i zapped my pram".. one fixes your computer, the other breaks your flash device.. How about the eMacs / Emacs confusion? I can't think of any other good ones off the top of my head.
Just try to do freelance for a news agency and watch how quickly they ask you for TIFF files, which only the high-end cameras can generate. What's hysterical about this is I just resave my JPEGs as TIFFs and no one ever says anything.
I think that a lot of the comparisons that other commenters are making are invalid. They're comparing different file types that include massive feature additions like alpha channel or multiple frames. Simply "better compression" is not a feature upgrade, and better compression is damn near worthless these days since a 500GB drive is less than $150 and internet connections are common over 5mbit.
Using their example image...
The clone stamp detection tool highlights areas of the image where there is improbable sameness, revealing the cloned section and its origin. The very small area highlighted in the clouds are the sameness/pattern created by nature. You'll only get "sameness" if you're using the clone stamp at or near 100% opacity. I use about 20% opacity and clone stamp from multiple locations to avoid visible "sameness". This technique overlaps multiple patterns at various strengths to create a new unique pattern. Anyone who's any good at photo-manipulation would do at least the same thing.
The real power of such an application would be finding where elements have been added to the photograph. And unfortunately Adobe has made such a great product in Photoshop that blending edges of cropped in objects is pretty darn easy too. I do it all the time adding in blue skies to my pictures. The difficulty would be in getting shadows to line up the same and have the same intensity. Or detecting color balance inconsistencies where two images were mapped together starting with different levels of blue, for instance. Or maybe finding different JPG blockiness levels in different areas of a photograph.
But pretty much anything that software can attempt to detect, other software and careful editor diligence could defeat.
Remember when people designed cars for driving? All this in-car entertainment etc cannot be really contributing to good driving. Instead of rolling entertainment I'd like to see accident avoidance technology become more common place. I think it's Mercedes Benz that has all kinds of road sensors for keeping the car between the lines and at safe distances from the vehicle in front. Makes more sense to me than hands free telephone in the car.
Driving a hybrid I'd like to see GPS data used to improve efficiency of hybrids and other efficient vehicles. Knowing what's coming up, as far as hills and such, could allow the car to better handle cruise control to make better use of the electric motor / batteries. All the technology is in the car already, it just doesn't talk to each other yet.
Microsoft employs thousands of people as well - I wonder what their standing is on upgrading to Vista and associated products. Sure they get the software for free and the hardware for cheap, but it's still thousands of computers I bet they're replacing too.
And what's happening to all of these displaced PCs? Someone should build a cluster!
Sometimes the cost of new technology is letting go of old technology. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Take a look at Apple's leap from OS 9 to OS X. Cut loose the shit and move on to something worth having. Problem is, in my opinion, Windows XP is pretty good to begin with. I'm not really willing to turn loose of a fully functioning OS and hardware for a few system enhancements and several hundred dollars in new unnecessary hardware. I can't imagine what it'd be like for an enterprise installment of thousands of Vista workstations. Microsoft themselves have even got to be hurting from that upgrade.
I'm sure this questions is answered somewhere in TFA but I'm going to confess to being too damn lazy to read it.
Are the ocean waves consistent enough that fixed-length tubes will be efficient in all conditions, or are they adjustable for higher and lower frequency waves?
Where I find this technology to be very cool, it seems to me that simple tidal generators would be simpler and more consistent.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe fellow data center tape loaders (particularly those who were employed at Acxiom) are familiar with this concept already. A user in a far away land requests information from a database via a mainframe which sends a print job to a networked printer in another room where tapes are housed and a minimum wage employee fetches the tape and loads it onto a tape reader that the mainframe reads and sends the information back to the user. Rather ridiculous. I even remember telling my coworkers they'd all be replaced by hard drives in less than a decade. I was right.
It's nearly ten years later. There are so many more people on the planet than there were ten years ago. Blu-Ray reached the same whole number in ~82% of the time DVD did, but nine years later, so I figure that makes up the difference. Looks like it's about on par with DVD to me. I wonder how VHS did back in its day.
I tend to agree, except for the storage capacity. Sales of the lower capacity iPods are insane, going back to the cost factor.
Intel > AMD at high end, Intel >= AMD at low end, Core 2 > A64, Intel finally has a lead in both architecture design and process (65nm). There were ads on those pages? News to me. Firefox + Adblock. It will set you free.
As far as the data is concerned, it's good information but somehow unsurprising. Maybe Apple partnered with the right people after all.
Since when does being 'the best employer' mean you have to let your employees walk all over you? Pay them what they're worth, send them away when they're done.
[snip]
Is there a phone that is just a phone? Designed to have a respectable life span for the phone itself and the battery? A phone that isn't also a camera, PDA, and now web surfing device. Just a phone.
I'm excited about cool mobile hand held devices, but sometimes people just need a reliable phone.
Oh, but are there any phone currently that synchronize with gmail and the Google calendar?
Broadcast television can be entertaining
There have been friends of mine who's lives effectively revolved around a particular show. They scheduled their time to be available for its airing, and it so impacted their life they fell out of long lasting relationships. Freaky!
My wife and I spend more time away from broadcast television content (no matter how we receive it) now than we used to. But there are still plenty of things found in the broadcast television library that we both enjoy, which I do not believe will be replaced by non-DRMed material in the foreseeable future.
imagine the confusion between 2 friends when one says "i zapped my pram"
I think that a lot of the comparisons that other commenters are making are invalid. They're comparing different file types that include massive feature additions like alpha channel or multiple frames. Simply "better compression" is not a feature upgrade, and better compression is damn near worthless these days since a 500GB drive is less than $150 and internet connections are common over 5mbit.
The real power of such an application would be finding where elements have been added to the photograph. And unfortunately Adobe has made such a great product in Photoshop that blending edges of cropped in objects is pretty darn easy too. I do it all the time adding in blue skies to my pictures. The difficulty would be in getting shadows to line up the same and have the same intensity. Or detecting color balance inconsistencies where two images were mapped together starting with different levels of blue, for instance. Or maybe finding different JPG blockiness levels in different areas of a photograph.
But pretty much anything that software can attempt to detect, other software and careful editor diligence could defeat.
Driving a hybrid I'd like to see GPS data used to improve efficiency of hybrids and other efficient vehicles. Knowing what's coming up, as far as hills and such, could allow the car to better handle cruise control to make better use of the electric motor / batteries. All the technology is in the car already, it just doesn't talk to each other yet.
Microsoft employs thousands of people as well - I wonder what their standing is on upgrading to Vista and associated products. Sure they get the software for free and the hardware for cheap, but it's still thousands of computers I bet they're replacing too.
And what's happening to all of these displaced PCs? Someone should build a cluster!
Sometimes the cost of new technology is letting go of old technology. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Take a look at Apple's leap from OS 9 to OS X. Cut loose the shit and move on to something worth having. Problem is, in my opinion, Windows XP is pretty good to begin with. I'm not really willing to turn loose of a fully functioning OS and hardware for a few system enhancements and several hundred dollars in new unnecessary hardware. I can't imagine what it'd be like for an enterprise installment of thousands of Vista workstations. Microsoft themselves have even got to be hurting from that upgrade.
I'm sure this questions is answered somewhere in TFA but I'm going to confess to being too damn lazy to read it.
Are the ocean waves consistent enough that fixed-length tubes will be efficient in all conditions, or are they adjustable for higher and lower frequency waves?
Where I find this technology to be very cool, it seems to me that simple tidal generators would be simpler and more consistent.
Like, duh, everything is faster with freaking laser beams.