They have even done some studies with major cities and provided a complete system that integrates into the existing infrastructure.
Additionally the vehicles are capable of off-track operation via electric drive systems. I think that most americans, bred on the car culture we have created here would be more open to this type of system.
Personally I think this is a better system because it still allows users the freedom of having thier "own" vehicle, but also has the benefits of being an efficient mass transit system.
I got HL2 via steam the day it came out....infact...I forgot that it was coming out and didn't notice until I saw it available on steam.
Now, I don't know what the big deal is but I personally applaud Valve for going this route. They have created an efficient, effective and protected method for digital content delivery. I think Valve is one of the few game studios out there that deserve my money and it really annoys me to to see complaint after complaint about a company taking steps to ensure its success.
Steam has worked flawlessly for me since installing it in april when I got the HL2 coupon with my videocard. In fact I feel that valve is so deserving of my money that I purchased the collectors edition even though I had the game for free. They put alot of work into producing what I feel is one of the best games ever produced if not THE best. If they want to track the pirates, so be it. If they want to mangle the stolen copies so that all the weapons turn into fuzzy bunnies, who cares. Honestly, anyone who has ever downloaded warez(you know who you are) knows that its illegal...PERIOD. Any judge that would allow a lawsuit from a scorned pirate should be disbarred. *whine* I stole the game and they broke it. Whatever....cry me a river.
As for the whining about a slow connection, thats what the retail outlets are for. I may not be able to play a multiplayer game via a 33.6, but I can sure as heck log onto steam long enough to validate my copy.
Complaining about Steam is like complaining about HD content providers that aren't providing an SD equivalent. Steam isn't for everyone. This is the future and as broadband becomes more ubiquitous in the world, Steam and steamlike distribution channels will be more common.
GOOO! Crossbows and catapults was awesome! I loved playing with those although I always "upgraded" mine with extra rubber bands to the point where 1 of two things would happen....either I would imbed the little plastic discs in the wall...or the catapult/crossbow would break from the stress.
It seems the predominant argument in both linked "articles" is "I wrote my old stuff on an amstrad and can't get the info off the disks".....hmmm they look like normal 3.5" floppies.
Googling for amstrad emulator brings up several thousand links. Sounds like another perfectly viable reason to release obsolete OS'es and CMOS designs to the public domain. Aside from wholly altruistic reasons, there might be some good money in it.
Of course, I am not an Amstrad expert and for all I know they could have winchester drives in them..
A little off topic but Slashdotters that live in Seattle can check out what I think is one of the best implimentations of this type of display tech at the Sci-Fi museum.
The exhibit is the spacedock which features a couple of these displays in a touchscreen configuration. It allows you to look at several popular sci-fi spaceships like an imperial star destroyer and the reddwarf.
I have seen some of the earlier "3D" displays at stores and have typically been dissapointed with the performance. The screens they use at the museum are definitely a better representation of what this type of tech can do.
I used to buy the cheapest gas around (ARCO) Always the high octane stuff.
I recently switched to either chevron or shell(anything but arco) and I am regularly getting 50 more miles out of a 14 gallon tank.
My light comes on with about 2 gals in reserve.(I have never put much more than 12 gals in when I fillup)
Before the switch I got on average of 280-300 miles out of a tank. I switched away from arco 3 tanks ago. The first tank didn't matter much.....the second tank however topped 320 and my gas light hadn't come on yet....I got nervous and filled up.
The last tank cleared 340...the light came on at 347.
So simply changing gas brands took me from 20mpg to close to 30 with mixed Seattle city/hwy driving.(if you live in Seattle you know why this is important....traffic SUCKS!)
I have heard stories of people going to jail for kiddie porn that was found on harddrives that were purchased from third parties.
The case in point that I heard about involved an individual who got raided for other reasons, when the authorities seized his equipment they didn't find what they expected to find, however they did find this other drive with kiddie porn on it and they put him in jail because of it.
Its not just privacy issues that I would be worried about....once you buy the disk you are legally responsible for its contents.
I wonder if the technology can be retrofitted to existing Neon signs. One of the main drawbacks to wifi is its relatively limited range and the cost of a decent antenna(cantennas excluded as these really aren't viable from an enterprise or business standpoint....think permenant installation)
If every neon sign could be used as an antenna...think of all the coverage we could have. Vegas could work with Intel(centrino) to become the first unwired city. Get all the hotels/casinos to chip in and boom. free wifi.
What about stations in multi-spot lots? These have been around for years and are capable of taking several forms of payment including ATM cards and Cash. As of yet there hasn't been a deluge of idiocy from the unwashed masses paying for the wrong spot etc.
This is nothing new. As a matter of fact its a more efficient way to handle it. Instead of one meter to every spot there is one meter per block or so. I don't know what the going rate is on a traditional parking meter but I guarantee one more expensive unit is cheaper than 20 lesser units......when you figure the maintenance costs and the costs involved in emptying said units. It takes less time for the metermaid to check, therefore more time they have to be checking the other units. It makes more efficient use of thier time. With the addition of roadbed sensors the parking meters could alert the metermaids to violators whose time has run out but the vehicle hasn't moved, resulting increased revenue from parking offenders.(not likely but an option)
There is the additional benefit where people can use alternative methods for payment. Having to put a quarter in a machine sucks....but if I can pay 2 dollars for an hour with my creditcard...it doesn't seem like that much. Its the same psycology behind pokerchips at a casino. Separate the value from the currency and people are more likely to spend more. Its on the card....I can pay for it later.
P)
Not saying I like the idea, but your basis for calling it a bad one is kind of unfounded. Look at it from the view of the City. Politics aside...the goal is to make money from parking.
Its a great place to start and an almost bottomless supply of links to vendors and parts sources.
There are about a dozen or more arcade cabinet plans out there on the net and at least as many companies offering a far better product than the X-Arcade stuff.
I was just poking around the infinium labs site and ended up over at robrady designs.
Lo and behold I found this!
http://www.robrady.com/infl.html
It looks like actual hardware......not a computer rendering.
I think there may be some crow to be eaten in the future.....at least in small quantities:-)
The Antelope product is actually a licensed/rebranded IBM product called MCC(Mobile Computing Core)
There have been a few slashdot stories about it in the past and google search on IBM MMC turns up a couple thousand hits for it. Glad to see this finally "made it":-)
The article in NYtimes made claims that this would produce sub 1000 dollar RPTVs by Christmas 04' I think this is a bit optimistic however it does bode well for us avgeeks.
LCoS is Liquid Crystal on Silicon. The best way to describe it would be a cross between DLP and LCD without the colorwheel and micromirrors of a DLP system.
I would also like to note that this technology has nothing to do with flat panel displays(LCD/Plasma)
More Links
Yahoo Article CNET Article
Hi,
My Name is Sir_Dill.......and....I...........uh.......I, am a Karma Whore.
I skimmed the article looking for Tims name and a an actual link to the site. My OCR software must have glitched and in my excitement to truely post what I thought was a golden nugget of information.... I was sooo close....one degree of separation from a./ story! I soo badly wanted to post it that I didn't take the due dilligence to actually READ the whole article.
As punishment I shall become the posterboy for RTFA Activists everywhere.
Tim has some interesting things to say....a little scary sometimes but I think its all on the level. This is nothing new as other posters have pointed out.
Again....I am miserably and humbly embarassed. So lookit the monkey and forget about it already.
Several companies are already doing this.
As one poster stated before, Lucent is doing this, however the leader in this type of RDBMS is a company called TimesTen.
http://www.timesten.com/
It was originally part of HP and it was spun off into its own company.
Its a rather brilliant product. It only uses the disks for logging and disaster recovery. The unfortunate thing about the whole deal is the volatility of the ram and the fact that it is still cheaper to have 1TB of disk space for a huge database then it is to have half as much ram.
Personally, I don't throw out any of the junk snailmail that I get.
You know all those business reply envelopes...heh if it doesn't have my name on it, the junkmail goes into one of those envelopes and back to some random company.
I sure hope Providian likes that history book of the month club and perhaps Columbia Music Club can send a donation to that charity....oh wait...I couldn't possibly belong to a music club...I forgot...I download all my music.
Who needs to sue these guys anymore....just post the intent to sue on Slashdot and watch the server crash. They can't infringe if thier server is a smoking pile of slag on the floor.
A common theme I am seeing in the posts about this is that if the students produce the work on university computers then the univerisity has some right to claim ownership. I don't see how people can be okay with this. Can Kinko's claim ownership of any images I manipulate on thier machines because they own the hardware? The university isn't an employer, and therefore does not have the right, in my mind, to claim ownership on any work done as part of the requirements for a class. Research work is different because you are performing work on behalf of the university. It is expected for the university to claim this work because in a way they are your employer.
The last argument against this has to do with other classes and not just computer classes. What if a music major compses a symphony...does the university have rights to it because the student used school materials to produce it? Something to think about.
My Jr High sued me for damages because I sold a program I wrote in the computer lab to M$.....
The reason nobody is posting anti-M$ is because M$ screwed up and had to layout some big cash to fix the problem...I wonder if the person that came up with the "brilliant" idea for the name Xbox is still employed..now if we can just find someone to port linux and a PS2 emulator to the Xbox it would be the icing on the be F-U cake.
Actually Swamp coolers are not reserved for *poor* people. Growing up in the southwest we had a swampcooler because of it's inherent effectiveness in arid climates. For those/.'ers that aren't familiar, a swamp cooler works through a process of evaporation, however once the relative humidity reaches a certain point the swamp cooler fails to be efficient. My point is that swamp coolers are not a "ghetto cooling solution" but rather an inexpensive and effective method to cool things. If saving money designates somone as whitetrash....then hell...I guess I have no teeth and watch WWF.
Just for the record. This isn't anything new. The Bus speed has been the bottle neck since the 486 days although not to the same degree as it is currently. Lets also not forget that bigger faster better isn't always the case. A bus that has twice the data bandwidth is faster than a bus that has half the bandwidth at twice the speed. Nobody looks at a Sun as being a slow machine even though by current pc standards they are low on the core speed scale. The average Sparc clocks in about 500 MHZ. But they are running a 64 bit architechture and 64 bit bus so they don't have to have the GHz at the core. I know that I am WAY over simplifying things here but the point is, the bus being the bottleneck is nothing new. I think the big chip manufacturers are worried that by releasing a new chipset that is incompatible with older hardware(at least on an I/O standpoint) that consumers won't fork over the bucks for it. Look at RDram...people bought it. If you build it consumers will buy it. Esp. us dumb americans*smirk*
Slashdot Mirror
They have even done some studies with major cities and provided a complete system that integrates into the existing infrastructure.
Additionally the vehicles are capable of off-track operation via electric drive systems. I think that most americans, bred on the car culture we have created here would be more open to this type of system.
Personally I think this is a better system because it still allows users the freedom of having thier "own" vehicle, but also has the benefits of being an efficient mass transit system.
Now, I don't know what the big deal is but I personally applaud Valve for going this route. They have created an efficient, effective and protected method for digital content delivery. I think Valve is one of the few game studios out there that deserve my money and it really annoys me to to see complaint after complaint about a company taking steps to ensure its success.
Steam has worked flawlessly for me since installing it in april when I got the HL2 coupon with my videocard. In fact I feel that valve is so deserving of my money that I purchased the collectors edition even though I had the game for free. They put alot of work into producing what I feel is one of the best games ever produced if not THE best. If they want to track the pirates, so be it. If they want to mangle the stolen copies so that all the weapons turn into fuzzy bunnies, who cares. Honestly, anyone who has ever downloaded warez(you know who you are) knows that its illegal...PERIOD. Any judge that would allow a lawsuit from a scorned pirate should be disbarred. *whine* I stole the game and they broke it. Whatever....cry me a river.
As for the whining about a slow connection, thats what the retail outlets are for. I may not be able to play a multiplayer game via a 33.6, but I can sure as heck log onto steam long enough to validate my copy.
Complaining about Steam is like complaining about HD content providers that aren't providing an SD equivalent. Steam isn't for everyone. This is the future and as broadband becomes more ubiquitous in the world, Steam and steamlike distribution channels will be more common.
GOOO! Crossbows and catapults was awesome! I loved playing with those although I always "upgraded" mine with extra rubber bands to the point where 1 of two things would happen....either I would imbed the little plastic discs in the wall...or the catapult/crossbow would break from the stress.
Googling for amstrad emulator brings up several thousand links. Sounds like another perfectly viable reason to release obsolete OS'es and CMOS designs to the public domain. Aside from wholly altruistic reasons, there might be some good money in it.
Of course, I am not an Amstrad expert and for all I know they could have winchester drives in them..
Five pages with 5 inch letters written in crayon so he can understand it.
The exhibit is the spacedock which features a couple of these displays in a touchscreen configuration. It allows you to look at several popular sci-fi spaceships like an imperial star destroyer and the reddwarf.
Obligatory link http://www.sfhomeworld.org/exhibits/fantastic_voya ges/index.asp
I have seen some of the earlier "3D" displays at stores and have typically been dissapointed with the performance. The screens they use at the museum are definitely a better representation of what this type of tech can do.
And would we take the time to figure out which?
SEARCH TIPS
1) Check your spelling. Are the words in your query spelled correctly?
2) Try using synonyms. Maybe the site you're looking for uses slightly different words, like "film" instead of "movie".
3) Make your search more general. For example, instead of using specific product names, try using the generic product category.
I drive an 2002 golf 2.0L 5 spd manual.
I used to buy the cheapest gas around (ARCO) Always the high octane stuff.
I recently switched to either chevron or shell(anything but arco) and I am regularly getting 50 more miles out of a 14 gallon tank. My light comes on with about 2 gals in reserve.(I have never put much more than 12 gals in when I fillup)
Before the switch I got on average of 280-300 miles out of a tank. I switched away from arco 3 tanks ago. The first tank didn't matter much.....the second tank however topped 320 and my gas light hadn't come on yet....I got nervous and filled up.
The last tank cleared 340...the light came on at 347.
So simply changing gas brands took me from 20mpg to close to 30 with mixed Seattle city/hwy driving.(if you live in Seattle you know why this is important....traffic SUCKS!)
Just remember you get what you pay for.
The case in point that I heard about involved an individual who got raided for other reasons, when the authorities seized his equipment they didn't find what they expected to find, however they did find this other drive with kiddie porn on it and they put him in jail because of it.
Its not just privacy issues that I would be worried about....once you buy the disk you are legally responsible for its contents.
Gives a whole new meaning to buyer beware.
I wonder if the technology can be retrofitted to existing Neon signs. One of the main drawbacks to wifi is its relatively limited range and the cost of a decent antenna(cantennas excluded as these really aren't viable from an enterprise or business standpoint....think permenant installation)
If every neon sign could be used as an antenna...think of all the coverage we could have. Vegas could work with Intel(centrino) to become the first unwired city. Get all the hotels/casinos to chip in and boom. free wifi.
This is nothing new. As a matter of fact its a more efficient way to handle it. Instead of one meter to every spot there is one meter per block or so. I don't know what the going rate is on a traditional parking meter but I guarantee one more expensive unit is cheaper than 20 lesser units......when you figure the maintenance costs and the costs involved in emptying said units. It takes less time for the metermaid to check, therefore more time they have to be checking the other units. It makes more efficient use of thier time. With the addition of roadbed sensors the parking meters could alert the metermaids to violators whose time has run out but the vehicle hasn't moved, resulting increased revenue from parking offenders.(not likely but an option)
There is the additional benefit where people can use alternative methods for payment. Having to put a quarter in a machine sucks....but if I can pay 2 dollars for an hour with my creditcard...it doesn't seem like that much. Its the same psycology behind pokerchips at a casino. Separate the value from the currency and people are more likely to spend more. Its on the card....I can pay for it later. P) Not saying I like the idea, but your basis for calling it a bad one is kind of unfounded. Look at it from the view of the City. Politics aside...the goal is to make money from parking.
Its a great place to start and an almost bottomless supply of links to vendors and parts sources. There are about a dozen or more arcade cabinet plans out there on the net and at least as many companies offering a far better product than the X-Arcade stuff.
Gratuitous links:
Lusid's arcade flashback
Cocktail Cab Plans
Happy Slashdotting!
I was just poking around the infinium labs site and ended up over at robrady designs. Lo and behold I found this! http://www.robrady.com/infl.html It looks like actual hardware......not a computer rendering. I think there may be some crow to be eaten in the future.....at least in small quantities :-)
The Antelope product is actually a licensed/rebranded IBM product called MCC(Mobile Computing Core)
:-)
There have been a few slashdot stories about it in the past and google search on IBM MMC turns up a couple thousand hits for it. Glad to see this finally "made it"
here is intels official site: Intel LCoS
The article in NYtimes made claims that this would produce sub 1000 dollar RPTVs by Christmas 04' I think this is a bit optimistic however it does bode well for us avgeeks.
LCoS is Liquid Crystal on Silicon. The best way to describe it would be a cross between DLP and LCD without the colorwheel and micromirrors of a DLP system.
I would also like to note that this technology has nothing to do with flat panel displays(LCD/Plasma)
More Links
Yahoo Article
CNET Article
Hi,
./ story! I soo badly wanted to post it that I didn't take the due dilligence to actually READ the whole article.
My Name is Sir_Dill.......and....I...........uh.......I, am a Karma Whore.
I skimmed the article looking for Tims name and a an actual link to the site.
My OCR software must have glitched and in my excitement to truely post what I thought was a golden nugget of information....
I was sooo close....one degree of separation from a
As punishment I shall become the posterboy for RTFA Activists everywhere.
Tim has some interesting things to say....a little scary sometimes but I think its all on the level. This is nothing new as other posters have pointed out.
Again....I am miserably and humbly embarassed. So lookit the monkey and forget about it already.
check out americanantigravity.com
This is a site run by this guy I used to work with...pretty interesting stuff.
I think it messed with his head a little though.
Several companies are already doing this. As one poster stated before, Lucent is doing this, however the leader in this type of RDBMS is a company called TimesTen. http://www.timesten.com/ It was originally part of HP and it was spun off into its own company. Its a rather brilliant product. It only uses the disks for logging and disaster recovery. The unfortunate thing about the whole deal is the volatility of the ram and the fact that it is still cheaper to have 1TB of disk space for a huge database then it is to have half as much ram.
Personally, I don't throw out any of the junk snailmail that I get.
You know all those business reply envelopes...heh if it doesn't have my name on it, the junkmail goes into one of those envelopes and back to some random company.
I sure hope Providian likes that history book of the month club and perhaps Columbia Music Club can send a donation to that charity....oh wait...I couldn't possibly belong to a music club...I forgot...I download all my music.
Who needs to sue these guys anymore....just post the intent to sue on Slashdot and watch the server crash. They can't infringe if thier server is a smoking pile of slag on the floor.
A common theme I am seeing in the posts about this is that if the students produce the work on university computers then the univerisity has some right to claim ownership. I don't see how people can be okay with this. Can Kinko's claim ownership of any images I manipulate on thier machines because they own the hardware? The university isn't an employer, and therefore does not have the right, in my mind, to claim ownership on any work done as part of the requirements for a class. Research work is different because you are performing work on behalf of the university. It is expected for the university to claim this work because in a way they are your employer.
The last argument against this has to do with other classes and not just computer classes. What if a music major compses a symphony...does the university have rights to it because the student used school materials to produce it? Something to think about.
My Jr High sued me for damages because I sold a program I wrote in the computer lab to M$.....
The reason nobody is posting anti-M$ is because M$ screwed up and had to layout some big cash to fix the problem...I wonder if the person that came up with the "brilliant" idea for the name Xbox is still employed..now if we can just find someone to port linux and a PS2 emulator to the Xbox it would be the icing on the be F-U cake.
Actually Swamp coolers are not reserved for *poor* people. Growing up in the southwest we had a swampcooler because of it's inherent effectiveness in arid climates. For those /.'ers that aren't familiar, a swamp cooler works through a process of evaporation, however once the relative humidity reaches a certain point the swamp cooler fails to be efficient. My point is that swamp coolers are not a "ghetto cooling solution" but rather an inexpensive and effective method to cool things. If saving money designates somone as whitetrash....then hell...I guess I have no teeth and watch WWF.
Just for the record. This isn't anything new. The Bus speed has been the bottle neck since the 486 days although not to the same degree as it is currently. Lets also not forget that bigger faster better isn't always the case. A bus that has twice the data bandwidth is faster than a bus that has half the bandwidth at twice the speed. Nobody looks at a Sun as being a slow machine even though by current pc standards they are low on the core speed scale. The average Sparc clocks in about 500 MHZ. But they are running a 64 bit architechture and 64 bit bus so they don't have to have the GHz at the core. I know that I am WAY over simplifying things here but the point is, the bus being the bottleneck is nothing new. I think the big chip manufacturers are worried that by releasing a new chipset that is incompatible with older hardware(at least on an I/O standpoint) that consumers won't fork over the bucks for it. Look at RDram...people bought it. If you build it consumers will buy it. Esp. us dumb americans*smirk*