What makes you think these are intended for photo cameras? I'd want a 32GB card to stick into a special digital camcorder, since that's about 3 hours of DV-quality video footage in random-access format. Being able to put hi-res photos and video on the same card is just a bonus.
What they should consentrate on is making it scratch proof, I can't stand so many scratches. Cases do not work so well, they still scratch and add lots of bulk.
Small, rugged, scratchproof: pick any two?
Tell you what: if you buy an itty-bitty iPod nano and still think it's too bulky after adding a sleeve around it, I will personally come to your house and sew bigger pockets onto all your clothes.
In accordance with one aspect, the present invention provides a system and method for allowing consumers to obtain information associated with a particular item, e.g., price, availability, reviews, etc., by the use of a portable imaging device, such as a digital camera, mobile telephone, portable computing device (e.g., PDA), etc., having a component capable of capturing an image. In one exemplary embodiment, a consumer may use the camera of a mobile telephone to capture an image of a desired item.
In other words, what's being patented here is a method allowing users to photograph a UPC code using a camera-phone at Store A, send the photo to a central server, and get back an SMS with price comparisons at Stores B, C and D... as well as online store AMZN.
And yeah, it's exactly like ScoutPal, except for the camera aspect. ScoutPal requires you to key in the ISBN or UPC code on a web-enabled phone or PDA, which is similar but very different approach.
In accordance with one aspect, the present invention provides a system and method for allowing consumers to obtain information associated with a particular item, e.g., price, availability, reviews, etc., by the use of a portable imaging device, such as a digital camera, mobile telephone, portable computing device (e.g., PDA), etc., having a component capable of capturing an image. In one exemplary embodiment, a consumer may use the camera of a mobile telephone to capture an image of a desired item.
In other words, what's being patented here is a method allowing users to photograph a UPC code using a camera-phone at Store A, send the photo to a central server, and get back an SMS with price comparisons at Stores B, C and D... as well as online store AMZN.
Are you suggesting that he is being compensated in some way for writing good reviews of Apple products?
I never suggested anything of the sort. But I've been hard-pressed to read a Mossberg review of Apple anything that had even a single criticism. He's an Apple fanboy to the bone.
If there's any downside to the iPod nano, he'd be the last person to write about it. Which makes any and all of his reviews less than credible, IMO.
I've actually found it hard to get a good idea of how big iPod nano is from the photos, because my brain wants that color screen to be larger than it really is. I finally stumbled onto Apple's iTunes sync webpage which overlaps iPod nano with a regular iPod to put its size into perspective a bit.
The director of FEMA should resign immediately, since he's proven himself unable to do his job.
It's been pointed out that ever since FEMA was reoganized under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security (FEMA used to sit on the President's Cabinet), it's been harder for them to do their job independently. See a news article here, among others.
Since when is making a movie out of a lame 70's sitcom a great thing?
Since the box-office returns for Charlie's Angels. What's wrong with lame 70s shows? Battlestar Galactica turned out to be a pretty good thing to recreate, don't you think?
Give a lazy man a job and he finds the easiest way to do it.
That's not even as bad as it sounds. After all, every invention mankind has produced, all the way back to the thigh-bone club, was invented to make some job easier.
For many people, the easiest way to do something is, in fact, to eschew the tried-and-true brute-force method and develop an easier technique, even if it does take longer in the short term.
Of course, those people were doing something toward their intended goal. "Lazy" means not doing anything toward it, innovative or otherwise.
Now, don't you think it's possible, just possible, that genetic differences between individuals or the same race can cause variance in intelligence that no amount "nuture" could ever compensate for?
Obviously. A small mutation in anyone's DNA can give them Down Syndrome and severely impair their intelligence for life. I'm not denying that.
But genetic differences that affect brain development are not what I'm talking about. What I am talking about is genetic differences in a human's racial or sexual makeup, which no one (to my knowledge) has ever demonstrated can affect intelligence.
You've completely missed my point. If this test indicates that men are provably more intelligent (whatever that means) than women, we should accept the conclusions, however uncomfortable they make us.
And you've completely missed mine. Saying that "men are provably more intelligent than women", regardless of what it means, is inflammatory and sexist UNLESS it's coupled with a statement that (1) education and culture plays a big part and (2) perhaps we ought to be doing something about this.
Calling someone unintelligent, whether it's factually correct or not, is still a rude thing to do. Surrounding it with words like "logic", "science" and "statistics" doesn't change that.
These people get huge salaries and bonuses to be creative. Endless nonsense remakes of stupid television shows and moldy old classic movies is not being creative.
You haven't been paying much attention to movies over the last several decades, have you?
Gone With the Wind was based on an existing novel. The Ten Commandments was almost literally derived from another well-known best-seller. Walt Disney's animated movies are almost completly unoriginal in their original premises. And the vast majority of the now-classic musicals from the old days -- Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story, The Sound of Music -- are all just big-stage adaptations of existing small-stage musicals from Broadway. This is just a guess, but Shakespeare has probably earned as much money on screen in just the last century as he ever did over the centuries on stage.
Hollywood has made a big career ever since Day 1 of taking existing stories and telling them on screen -- but bigger, more elaborately, more lavishly and colorfully and musically than they could ever be done in a book or on a stage.
Now, whether or not these adaptations are better than the originals is a matter of opinion. But don't delude yourself into thinking that the current rage in making movies from older TV shows and films is anything new.
Besides, plenty of the biggest successes over recent years have been original stories -- Star Wars, Titanic, E.T., and Jaws are all in the top ten moneymakers when adjusted for inflation, and each one was 100% original writing.
...but does anyone else find it interesting that businessmen are talking about vigorously protecting THEIR intellectual property in reference to a remake of a B&W film classic and a screenplay based on J.K. Rowling's blockbuster novel?
Seems like the most valuable "intellectual property" in Hollywood is usually licensed from other people.
Hypothetically, in our enlightened modern climate of equality and fairness, even if were proven beyond doubt that men are more intelligent than women, would we accept it or merely reject it out of hand?
We would reject it, and quite sensibly, because this fact (like his conclusion that whites are more intelligent than blacks) tends to lead people to the illogical conclusion that intelligence is genetically determined.
Intelligence is a funny thing; no one can prove exactly how much of it is tied to genes and how much of it is tied to upbringing. Assuming this data is true, would women be more intelligent than men if they were raised as completely equal to men? Anecdotal evidence suggests yes. After all, the "smartest human in the world" judging solely by IQ is a woman, not a man.
So if men are more intelligent, this might only demonstrate that women aren't yet being treated as full equals by our parents and teachers. Same for non-whites. Yet when most people hear "men are smarter than women" or "whites are smarter than blacks", they hear a sexist or racist slur.
And how could you expect them not to? No matter how often you add the phrase "statistically speaking", it SOUNDS like a stereotype. Even when you say "MOST men are smarter than MOST women," what people hear is "ALL men are smarter than ALL women."
If I were to point out the simple and obvious fact that "Most of your schoolteachers were smarter than you", what it inevitably sounds like I'm saying is "You were a stupid student."
Some things don't sound nice no matter how you say them. This is one of them. Saying that men are smarter than women, STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, is only a helpful fact if you IMMEDIATELY couple it to the statement "This shows that women aren't yet treated as equals in our schools."
Because the statistical data does nothing to prove that women MUST REMAIN less intelligent than men. It can't. But since this is what must be inferred, it is better for the statement to remain unspoken.
It is NOT, however, the sum total of all that the brain is needed for. "Knowledge", of course, is the data stored in our brains or otherwise available to it. Then there's "intuition", a genuinely valuable skill which is completely independent of logic and intelligence. And the skill of absorbing information through the senses is another mental ability that some wield better than others.
In short, there is an accepted definition of intelligence. But intelligence is not the only function of the human brain, or even the most important one. It is merely the function which primarily allows us to adapt to change.
I don't think Adium is any better than, say, iChat. It's not much better than Yahoo Messenger or AIM, either.
What it does do, of course, is provide connectivity to all those and a few more besides in a single app. Not a big deal to me, but my daughter has a few dozen people she chats with online, and some of them have MSN, some have YM, and some have AIM. I got tired of the Mac being cluttered with so many IM apps, so I forced everyone to use Adium now instead. Didn't even take long for them to get used to it, and I think they're happier, too.
I understand that (a) Jabber is XML and open protocol and all that, and (b) anyone can install a Jabber server, and (c) Jabber provides secure connections to said server, in Google's case by default.
Granted all this. But speaking as someone who's just running a client, why should I care? Aside from the secure connection, will chatting on Jabber be much different for me than chatting on Yahoo or AOL or ICQ?
With GMail, there's a web-based client which has a lot of whiz-bang features that clearly distinguish it from AOL Webmail or Yahoo Mail. But I need a chat client to connect anyway, and it's the client's features that impress me, not the protocol.
We really wouldnt need this type of thing if the manufacturers didn't go out of their way to completely confuse the issue to the point where there are no definitive answers to the question.
Yeah, why should all these capitalist commercial corporations be so insensitive as to confuse the question of whether their competitors make a better product?
Didn't we already slashdot this server once today?
more J-pop and anime soundtracks in US store
on
iTMS Launches in Japan
·
· Score: 3, Informative
According to AnimeNN, Apple's US iTunes Music Store has expanded their collection of Japanese J-pop and anime soundtrack downloads at the same time the Japanese store was opened. I'm hard-pressed to find any additions, but then again, I'm not much of a fan.
On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I'm standing and what I'm looking at.
How, exactly, is this anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide? I mean, it's cool to have a device that will give you interesting information about whatever's near where you're standing now, as long as you're within a certain area. But that's not even close to what Douglas Adams described in his books, or even to what's in the movie.
Slashdot Mirror
No one shoots 3K worth of photos. It's insane.
What makes you think these are intended for photo cameras? I'd want a 32GB card to stick into a special digital camcorder, since that's about 3 hours of DV-quality video footage in random-access format. Being able to put hi-res photos and video on the same card is just a bonus.
What they should consentrate on is making it scratch proof, I can't stand so many scratches. Cases do not work so well, they still scratch and add lots of bulk.
Small, rugged, scratchproof: pick any two?
Tell you what: if you buy an itty-bitty iPod nano and still think it's too bulky after adding a sleeve around it, I will personally come to your house and sew bigger pockets onto all your clothes.
And yeah, it's exactly like ScoutPal, except for the camera aspect. ScoutPal requires you to key in the ISBN or UPC code on a web-enabled phone or PDA, which is similar but very different approach.
And yeah, it's exactly like , except for the camera aspect. ScoutPal requires you to key in the ISBN or UPC code on a web-enabled phone or PDA, which is similar but very different approach.
What kind of a company would spend millions on BeOs, and then stop selling the technology?
A company that realizes nobody's buying that technology anyway.
Are you suggesting that he is being compensated in some way for writing good reviews of Apple products?
I never suggested anything of the sort. But I've been hard-pressed to read a Mossberg review of Apple anything that had even a single criticism. He's an Apple fanboy to the bone.
If there's any downside to the iPod nano, he'd be the last person to write about it. Which makes any and all of his reviews less than credible, IMO.
I've actually found it hard to get a good idea of how big iPod nano is from the photos, because my brain wants that color screen to be larger than it really is. I finally stumbled onto Apple's iTunes sync webpage which overlaps iPod nano with a regular iPod to put its size into perspective a bit.
I like Apple products unfailingly myself. But then, I'm not a newspaper columnist.
Seriously, has anyone ever read anything by Mossberg about Apple products that wasn't either glowing, stellar, or outright raving?
The director of FEMA should resign immediately, since he's proven himself unable to do his job.
It's been pointed out that ever since FEMA was reoganized under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security (FEMA used to sit on the President's Cabinet), it's been harder for them to do their job independently. See a news article here, among others.
Since when is making a movie out of a lame 70's sitcom a great thing?
Since the box-office returns for Charlie's Angels. What's wrong with lame 70s shows? Battlestar Galactica turned out to be a pretty good thing to recreate, don't you think?
Give a lazy man a job and he finds the easiest way to do it.
That's not even as bad as it sounds. After all, every invention mankind has produced, all the way back to the thigh-bone club, was invented to make some job easier.
For many people, the easiest way to do something is, in fact, to eschew the tried-and-true brute-force method and develop an easier technique, even if it does take longer in the short term.
Of course, those people were doing something toward their intended goal. "Lazy" means not doing anything toward it, innovative or otherwise.
The excerpt is taken from the bottom of this Reuters article from Sept. 2, 2005.
Now, don't you think it's possible, just possible, that genetic differences between individuals or the same race can cause variance in intelligence that no amount "nuture" could ever compensate for?
Obviously. A small mutation in anyone's DNA can give them Down Syndrome and severely impair their intelligence for life. I'm not denying that.
But genetic differences that affect brain development are not what I'm talking about. What I am talking about is genetic differences in a human's racial or sexual makeup, which no one (to my knowledge) has ever demonstrated can affect intelligence.
You've completely missed my point. If this test indicates that men are provably more intelligent (whatever that means) than women, we should accept the conclusions, however uncomfortable they make us.
And you've completely missed mine. Saying that "men are provably more intelligent than women", regardless of what it means, is inflammatory and sexist UNLESS it's coupled with a statement that (1) education and culture plays a big part and (2) perhaps we ought to be doing something about this.
Calling someone unintelligent, whether it's factually correct or not, is still a rude thing to do. Surrounding it with words like "logic", "science" and "statistics" doesn't change that.
These people get huge salaries and bonuses to be creative. Endless nonsense remakes of stupid television shows and moldy old classic movies is not being creative.
You haven't been paying much attention to movies over the last several decades, have you?
Gone With the Wind was based on an existing novel. The Ten Commandments was almost literally derived from another well-known best-seller. Walt Disney's animated movies are almost completly unoriginal in their original premises. And the vast majority of the now-classic musicals from the old days -- Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story, The Sound of Music -- are all just big-stage adaptations of existing small-stage musicals from Broadway. This is just a guess, but Shakespeare has probably earned as much money on screen in just the last century as he ever did over the centuries on stage.
Hollywood has made a big career ever since Day 1 of taking existing stories and telling them on screen -- but bigger, more elaborately, more lavishly and colorfully and musically than they could ever be done in a book or on a stage.
Now, whether or not these adaptations are better than the originals is a matter of opinion. But don't delude yourself into thinking that the current rage in making movies from older TV shows and films is anything new.
Besides, plenty of the biggest successes over recent years have been original stories -- Star Wars, Titanic, E.T., and Jaws are all in the top ten moneymakers when adjusted for inflation, and each one was 100% original writing.
...but does anyone else find it interesting that businessmen are talking about vigorously protecting THEIR intellectual property in reference to a remake of a B&W film classic and a screenplay based on J.K. Rowling's blockbuster novel?
Seems like the most valuable "intellectual property" in Hollywood is usually licensed from other people.
Hypothetically, in our enlightened modern climate of equality and fairness, even if were proven beyond doubt that men are more intelligent than women, would we accept it or merely reject it out of hand?
We would reject it, and quite sensibly, because this fact (like his conclusion that whites are more intelligent than blacks) tends to lead people to the illogical conclusion that intelligence is genetically determined.
Intelligence is a funny thing; no one can prove exactly how much of it is tied to genes and how much of it is tied to upbringing. Assuming this data is true, would women be more intelligent than men if they were raised as completely equal to men? Anecdotal evidence suggests yes. After all, the "smartest human in the world" judging solely by IQ is a woman, not a man.
So if men are more intelligent, this might only demonstrate that women aren't yet being treated as full equals by our parents and teachers. Same for non-whites. Yet when most people hear "men are smarter than women" or "whites are smarter than blacks", they hear a sexist or racist slur.
And how could you expect them not to? No matter how often you add the phrase "statistically speaking", it SOUNDS like a stereotype. Even when you say "MOST men are smarter than MOST women," what people hear is "ALL men are smarter than ALL women."
If I were to point out the simple and obvious fact that "Most of your schoolteachers were smarter than you", what it inevitably sounds like I'm saying is "You were a stupid student."
Some things don't sound nice no matter how you say them. This is one of them. Saying that men are smarter than women, STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, is only a helpful fact if you IMMEDIATELY couple it to the statement "This shows that women aren't yet treated as equals in our schools."
Because the statistical data does nothing to prove that women MUST REMAIN less intelligent than men. It can't. But since this is what must be inferred, it is better for the statement to remain unspoken.
Until there is a concrete and accepted definition of human intelligence there can be no study about who is more intelligent than whom.
There is: "The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, especially toward a purposeful goal." Basically, "intelligence" is the ability to solve problems using knowledge.
It is NOT, however, the sum total of all that the brain is needed for. "Knowledge", of course, is the data stored in our brains or otherwise available to it. Then there's "intuition", a genuinely valuable skill which is completely independent of logic and intelligence. And the skill of absorbing information through the senses is another mental ability that some wield better than others.
In short, there is an accepted definition of intelligence. But intelligence is not the only function of the human brain, or even the most important one. It is merely the function which primarily allows us to adapt to change.
I don't think Adium is any better than, say, iChat. It's not much better than Yahoo Messenger or AIM, either.
What it does do, of course, is provide connectivity to all those and a few more besides in a single app. Not a big deal to me, but my daughter has a few dozen people she chats with online, and some of them have MSN, some have YM, and some have AIM. I got tired of the Mac being cluttered with so many IM apps, so I forced everyone to use Adium now instead. Didn't even take long for them to get used to it, and I think they're happier, too.
I understand that (a) Jabber is XML and open protocol and all that, and (b) anyone can install a Jabber server, and (c) Jabber provides secure connections to said server, in Google's case by default.
Granted all this. But speaking as someone who's just running a client, why should I care? Aside from the secure connection, will chatting on Jabber be much different for me than chatting on Yahoo or AOL or ICQ?
With GMail, there's a web-based client which has a lot of whiz-bang features that clearly distinguish it from AOL Webmail or Yahoo Mail. But I need a chat client to connect anyway, and it's the client's features that impress me, not the protocol.
Hmm, perhaps I just answered my own question.
We really wouldnt need this type of thing if the manufacturers didn't go out of their way to completely confuse the issue to the point where there are no definitive answers to the question.
Yeah, why should all these capitalist commercial corporations be so insensitive as to confuse the question of whether their competitors make a better product?
Didn't we already slashdot this server once today?
According to AnimeNN, Apple's US iTunes Music Store has expanded their collection of Japanese J-pop and anime soundtrack downloads at the same time the Japanese store was opened. I'm hard-pressed to find any additions, but then again, I'm not much of a fan.
On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I'm standing and what I'm looking at.
How, exactly, is this anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide? I mean, it's cool to have a device that will give you interesting information about whatever's near where you're standing now, as long as you're within a certain area. But that's not even close to what Douglas Adams described in his books, or even to what's in the movie.
It's still nowhere near as tiny as the iPod Flea!