What would be great is if we grounded all the shuttles and canceled all the shoddy projects and put all of Nasa's money into making a shuttle that doesn't cost so much to launch.
Your point about CISC and RISC cores brings up a very interesting question.
If we're getting ready to put even 4 cores on desktops then isn't the chance for computer companies to finally drop x86? I don't know what kind of tradeoffs were made in creating x86-64 but I'd think at least some were made. With everyone popping out chips with multiple cores though then perhaps at some point in the future one of those cores could be dedicated to x86 for legacy support?
Other interesting things I'd like to see happen too like maybe an IBM cell processor and an x86 processor on the same chip. Unlikely but it wouldn't be imposible for Intel or AMD to make something like the cell and put it on one of their future chips.
Im constantly amazed how optimistic some people get about a space elevator. The main post and a lot of things other people are saying make it seem like they think technology is the deciding factor in whether or not one will get built. The only reason nobody has really spoken out against the idea is the average person thinks the scientists are smoking some good crack on this one.
This isn't a harmless piece of cable we're talking about. The real barrier is going to be whether or not it'd be dangerous if it breaks or if it's cut. If it'll burn up and IF the burnt nanotubes aren't dangerous then maybe there will be a snowballs chance in *$#@ that the public will ok such a project. You can be guaranteed that if it's dangerous though that everyone will just assume that it will break or be broken intentionally.
Theres nothing WRONG with Microsoft bundling in it's Media Player or Web Browser or whatever. Doing that is no different than them including Notepad.
The problem is when they use their monopoly of the operating system to pretty much require you to use their version of the software or when they use the monopoly to make their product inheirently better.
For example in windows if you go into the control panel and open up internet options will it configure your Mozilla browser? Can you setup your help file system to use a different default renderer for it's html files? Or my favorite your pretty much required to keep IE installed so you can use Windows Update to get the almost daily CRITICAL updates for their buggy software.
The media player isn't going to be quite the versatile system component that an HTML renderer is but there are still going to be a lot of applications that end up using it and they won't have much choice thanks to tie-ins like properitary windows media formats.
The sad thing is that Gates isn't lying when he says he's making this stuff a central part of the operating system. Clearly linux is following suit with it's own html renderers. The problem is that with Microsoft they never give the user any options to say "hey thanks for making html such an intergal part of my computing expierence now let me use X product instead of your sucky component please".
Mod me as flamebait I'm sure but those of you who think Slashdot is a news site need to get some wires uncrossed. It's no different than any other blog out there.
Why is it that we're always seeing people expect quality editing and other journalistic qualities like lack of bias? Even worse who are these idiots who mod such comments up?
It's just a bunch of guys posting links to other news sites! This is a community FOR NERDS not a replacement for your newspaper.
Onto the actual news this is great. You could say it's the final proof that intel can no longer really dictate things completely in the x86 market. The trend was fairly obvious for a while but this has a nice way of finalizing that fact.
I guess for once I can understand how the reporter got confused. The earths rotational speed has nothing to do with how long a year is. It has to do with how long a DAY is.
So why do we gain a second every YEAR? If we were to continue such a trend it would imply that the earth would take twice as long to orbit the sun in approx 3.5 million years. Last I checked that's an alarming rate of change for a planetary object.
We're talking about dangerous materials trucks people not your hillbilly cousin Jonny in his pickup. It's not exactly like we have to protect the privacy of people carrying what are essentially large bombs on wheels roaming across the country.
The people who expect some sort of editorial integrity from Slashdot really piss me off admittedly. Slashdot is not a news service it's just a blog. That being said though the blatant cut-and-paste-dont-even-read-it policy has got to go. Don't post stuff thats blatant sensationalism right out of someones email to you. You think the links cool then fine post it with your own blurb.
Notice how he quotes Microsoft Trustworthy Computing(palidum) like it's some kind of great feature? Im personally a little scared that this is deffinetly slated for release in longhorn. We need to start warning our relatives and friends about this kind of crap or it's going to make it in for sure. If that crap gets put into the hardware too we're done for and we can kiss our freely configurable computers and software goodbye.
Reading the blurb for this article you'd think consoles are somehow raising the bar of entry into the gaming market. Maybe that's true for console games but the bar of entry for computer games is nearly non existant when it comes to hardware and coding materials.
The real barrier of entry is paying all the people that are required to make a game. Sure maybe coders who love to play games are willing to take a cut for a long while and try and start a stuido. But what about artists , 3d modelers, and musicians. Making a game requires a lot of different specilizations and that means a lot of people and a lot of cash to pay them.
Im often annoyed by how low creativity is in the industry myself but lets face it there are only so many base ideas you can work with in a game. I'd hate to see gamers fall into the same trap of thinking that different and innovative and new always = good. Look at the art of painting. A lot of snobby people go around saying what a "good " painting is based off of what kind of new concepts it introduces but to most of us these paintings just look like so many pieces of junk.
Believe it or not but a lot of problems with the game industry are problems with the developers and not the suits. A big enough portion of them act like whiney prima donna's and throw productivity out the window by trying to introduce new idea's that are just boring in the first place. All to many of them forget that the real purpose is to just make a game thats fun.
Japan may be a lot like the US in some ways but in others its very different. Lets remember this is the same society that puts so much pressure on their children in school that some of them just flip. They're a lot more into peer pressure than the US. A lot of people try to do peer pressure in the states but with so many different peoples from varied backgrounds it doesn't fly so well.
So sure maybe our bosses will try and pull crap like keeping us on call by cell phone 24/7 but none of our friends are going to look down their noses at us for letting our battery run out acting like its some sort social taboo.
Either way I don't see as it will become much of a problem. In all reality the phone proves just as much of an invasion of privacy at home as a cell phone does walking around. Just get caller id or turn it off. Nobody can make you answer it.
"What about some of the new stuff on Cartoon Network. Genndy Tartakovsky and others have done some wonderful work. Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack are all great shows."
I've never been able to get past the fact that Dexter's Laboratory just looks ugly. Powerpuff Girls are ok and I think it's great to have stuff that appeals to girls but. Samurai Jack is pretty dark and dosn't always look so good either. All in all they're MUCH MUCH better than the average US animation though. They still suffer hugely from the need for a recuring storyline though.
As for sheep in the big city despite the fact that most american's love comedy some of us just like it enough to only watch it occasionally.
While I think Futurama and The Simpsons are great for a laugh there is deffinetly a real dearth of serious animation in the US. I think that's the real reason Japanese animation is so popular. Most of the american stuff is comical in nature or geared towards kids.
Japanese animation on the other hand covers EVERYTHING. There is little in Japan that you can't find an animated series about. So with all this anime they're filling a real hole of genre's.
There are a couple of other reasons to though honestly. I think one of the first and foremost is that they translate these shows over and all the sudden you can watch a new episode 5 days a week. For anyone who's fed up with having to wait a whole..long..week.. to watch a rerun thats a godsend. It's like reading a book you can't put down. In an almost shameful sense it's the same reason soap opera's are popular.
The other reasons are needing adult cartoons blah blah etc. etc. Mostly there are a lot of adults out there that just don't jive with what the mommies out there will allow to be put on prime time tv. I've watched Futurama and I think it's great crack em up stuff but I can't get into it. It dosn't jive with my taste of how animation should look and it's a story made to make people laugh instead of a story with parts that make you laugh. Different strokes for different folks as always.
"This elephant though, like the one with the missing tail gene does not express it, and natural selection does not come into play. 5 generations down the track, two close relatives have a child with this super spit power. Unfortunately, because of the second fact I listed above, this child also has a missing tail, one leg that can't move properly, a reduced brain size, and a bad back meaning it has difficulty feeding in hard to reach places. The problem here is that along with the beneficial mutation there came a host of harmful mutations."
This is an interesting concept mind you but as usualy happens when people have a counter argument to something fairly complicated you sometimes miss fairly obvious mistakes. For one your concept of mutations is driving how you evaluate evolution. Elephants don't suddenly evolve the ability to spit acid and therefore have some sort of evolutionary advantage. In fact the reality is in this case unless the elephant was in a highly isolated enviroment the mutation would get blended into the gene pool as background noise and never remanifest EVER. That kind of mutation is far too severe to really take hold at all. The community would have to be so isolated that inbreeding would kill them off almost. To understand evolution you have to really really concentrate on the time scale involved. As we are short lived beings this is sometimes hard for us to concieve.
For example one of the favorite arguments against evolution is flying. How could anything ever evolve something so complex by just mere natural selection. They think "gee how could such a complext mutation happen no matter how much randomness was applied". The answer is quite simple. We in fact know now the highly likely reason why beings evolved the ability to fly. There is a bug (forget what its called sorry) that skates on water. It uses its extreme light weight (note how low weight is important to flying beings) to float ontop of water without breaking its surface. To move around it kind of hops and skates along the water with its long almost flight capable wings. Scientist took these bugs and did studies on them. They cut the wings smaller and smaller till they were practically nubs and the bugs could STILL jerk around quick as heck with them. They did a documentary on it even the video was quite interesting. Obviously the amount of time it takes for a water organism to evolve into something that floats on the water is astronomical and then who knows how long it goes from floating to skating to jumping and finally flying. It's almost inconceivable but when laid out its obvious to see how it works. Thats how evolution is though unless you know what happened its just almost impossible to imagine how BIG changes happened.
So in conclusion while I it's good to question scientific concepts I think your arguments are fairly uninformed here. "Macro-evolution" as you put it just dosn't even exist. It's a word created by people who can't comprehened that small changes are all that are required to reach huge differences in gentic diversity.
I dont want to ruffle religious feathers but perhaps evidence for your creation theories would be more proper? I've noticed religious people tend to try and discount other concepts instead of promoting their own. Usually they believe that if everything else is discounted then creation must simply be how things happened. This is a futile goal because if you did convince people that evolution isn't true they'd no sooner believe in "creation" than they did before. They'd just go searching for another solution with founding in the physical laws which they can observe. In something like this the observable laws of the universe are the status quo. You'd have to first determine exactly what every law of the universe is then point out how they don't explain EVERYTHING for you to have proof. Even then though the point of faith is to believe without proof though isnt it?
I don't mean to start an argument here but some people have been saying things like "when we start changing our own genes evolution would INCREASE" blah blah. What nonsense is this? In fact the truth would be almost the opposite. When we start changing our own genes manually we totally thwart the very concept of evolution. Evolution is quite simply a dumbed down way to say that order exists in chaos. Why should we even worry about whether or not its stopped when in 100 years the things we will be capable of doing manually will blow evolutionary change out of the water. Not to mention why should we restrict our genes to things that improve survival? Suppose we do all end up with uniform skin color, engineer skin thats vibrant purple or something. Would that help our survival? Unlikely unless we start growing polen stems and need some bugs to pass on our seed. Would it look cool though? HECK YA! Maybe Im weird but there could deffinetly be something sexy about pale blue skin for instance.
So why even worry? Id rather worry about this quote "If people start to live to 150, and are capable of producing children for more than 100 of those years, the effects could be dramatic, he says. "People will start to produce dozens of children in their lifetimes, and that will certainly start to skew our evolution." Where the heck would we put all those people! Heres to hoping that increased standards of living drives down the birth rate even more.
"There is no way hydrogen is ever going to be allowed aboard an airplane,"
Oh dear whatever will travelers do! Sitting in the middle of the air inside a hollow several ton metal contraption FILLED with explosive fuel! Wherever will they get power for there tiny little low power laptops!?!?
If you ever watch TechTV Live of the Screensavers regularly they had a whole lot of stuff about this the day they launched it. Supposedly theres no real services for it yet and the cost is going to be based on how much data you download. The only real reason to get it at this point would be a replacement for ricochet to use with your laptop. Also its not the same 3g they're using in Japan it's supposed to be limited to 144kbps whereas its 300+ something over there. One of the tech leads they talked to said Verizon basically released it a little ahead of time to be able to say they did it first. That's why theres no real product other than data to it.
The pricing will be disgusting no doubt and anything but browsing w/ pictures OFF will probably be unwise except for those with to much money. They were saying how some of the current providers using the already existing technology charged as much as 75 bucks per SESSION online average. That was the extreme but I think thats a good indication it's not the pancea of wireless communication we're hoping for yet.
I hate elitism and I dont like how this guy is doing it but everyones free to be elite if they like. Somehow I think more would be gained by trying to educate outlook users on the bugs though. But then again there are people out there who dont want to understand there computer anymore than the typical person wants to understand his vcr. They just dont care. Just like I don't care what goes in a hot dog. It tastes good thats enough for me.
Perhaps something else along the same lines but not quite so annoying would be acceptable though. Like html formating your email with the code tag and then putting the html for the email in the code tag. This way outlook displays the same crap we have to see everytime someone sends us an html email! They can still read the msg but its annoying for them just like it is for us. I wouldn't do this all the time but it'd a good once a month thing just to remind all those outlook users dome of us hate html. Even more interesting though is simply using a font tag with a class attribute to set the font to I dunno...4 or 5 pixels! They'd have to squint really hard if they used outlook but to everyone else it would be one tag. Humor like this would serve as a more polite way of poking people about html email but still let them read the page.
You know I don't really want to get into whether or not gaming is addicting. Obviously it can be for the wrong kind of person and for other people it just isn't even a question.
/warning rant coming
What makes me sick is the damn symptoms everyone talks about and what they think is so bad about computer gaming to much. "Oh my god he sits in front of the computer screen for 5 hours doing nothing but playing that stupid game that will never amount to anything, he needs to get a life". This is just disgusting when someone says something like this all there really saying is "I don't think thats very enjoyable therefore he's a looser". Well you know what? I hate sports they're boring as fuck to me. I don't go around calling people who drink beer and watch football all day on sunday loosers (well at least not because of that). If just makes me want to smack someone around (see people make people violent not games:). Why is it god damn acceptable for men to be annoying obssessed with sports to the point where they know every little stupid stat that never stood for anything anyways but it's not acceptable for me to have every weapon dmg/ratio memorized in Shattered Galaxy.
"Oh he has no friends nobody even talks to him". Bullshit I bet most of these people have more friends online than the average "real life" person has had in his life. Their retort is that dosn't count of course online people are "fake". WTF? They're fake? Why because you can't play football with them? Are they made of plastic simply because you can't see them? Maybe the average persons empathic skills are so pathetic that they have to make up with physical closeness but not everyone is that way.
Oh and don't even get me started on the he dosn't go outside argument. Why are people suddenly seen as loosers because they don't like to have a mental masturbation everytime they see a pretty flower. Then they get all uppity about so said person having no appreciation for beauty. Hello have we forgotten beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Just because they think the outdoors is boring and nothing special dosn't mean they don't think other things are beautiful and awe inspiring. Anyone seen those spell effects in Dark Ages of Camelot? That's fucking beauty right there that god didn't see fit to put on this natural earth. I never get to walk down the sidewalk and see a total dumbass get smited by a huge fucking hammer from the sky crackling with lighting all around it.
/rant off
So basically same ol same ol. People want everyone else to join their "club" and get all uppity when they're different. What's even worse is some people think this is the worst part about gaming. They totally neglect the fact that there are actually some poor souls out that do get geniunely addicted and have real problems that interfere with them enjoying their lives.
Take that poor kid that wrote the essay for instance. The kid sounded as if games had really messed him up. He failed school. That's a problem when you end up doing something really bad that you would of never chosen to do w/o the addiction in the first place. The kid seemed pretty upset about it true but he seemed more upset that he thought he was such a looser. Sounded to me like so many people had told him that he was a looser that he was starting to believe it. Maybe if his family would of concentrated on urging him to do his homework instead of making him feel like a looser snail who needed to crawl into the shell of gaming he might of passed.
"He holds a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, (BSBA) and a Master of Arts in Organizational Management (MAOM). He also has a Technician class Ham Radio License, and a Single Engine Land pilots license." quoted from this site on Mr. Schmidt.
How exactly does someone with college education like that get to become a cyber security advisor? He was a police officer too. Maybe I'm reading to much into stereotypes but this sure dosn't sound like the kind of guy I'd want protecting me from a nerdy kid who lives in his basement with a cafinee IV making root kits.
Jartan
Well that's kind of a hard question to answer but having 3 wheels dosn't necissarily make it more stable. A gyroscope dosn't even have a wheel it sits on a pin point and no matter how hard you bump it it won't fall over:). From the way they talk about this it sounds a lot more stable than a 3 wheel scooter. On a 3 wheeler if someone knocks you lightly as your whizzing past from the wrong angle (3 oclock) you'll get knocked over pretty easy. With two wheels typically getting hit from in front or behind is the only way to cause instability but the gyros+motors take that away.
Also the whole control mechanism is based on the concept of two wheels allowing you to lean and move. I guess the basic way to put it is the thing is designed to be safer than even a tricycle and henceforth be allowed on sidewalks.
Jartan
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
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I think that this is a pretty cool invention, and this guy is the real thing. But I was extremely disapointed when he started commenting about how it was going to "change cities" and get rid of cars.
This assertion begs several questions (which are extremly relevent to someone living in, say, Austin, where I am):
This product has little relevance to someone in a city as small as austin (~900k in a spread out area). I know I lived there not long ago.
1. How many people live close enough to work that they can afford the time to communte on a device that moves at walking speed? (no one I know)
This device isn't for getting from your home to work it's for getting to the subway terminal or bus stop then from the bus stop or subway terminal to work. But perhaps people in a city like new york could just skip the subway with something this. Either way if you added up all the cities where the population is so high that public transport becomes a necissity then the answer to your question is a LOT of people.
2. How many people live in places where the weather is neither too warm or too cold to spend the time outside?
The target market for this product dosn't have a choice of whether or not to go outside. New York is a cold place in winter and it gets VERY slushy and slippery. I've a friend with arthritis there that gets worried she'll fall when the slush gets bad. If this device could make her trip in that nasty cold to the subway shorter and eliminate her chance of falling I'd imagine she might even get health care to pay for such a thing in 10 years.
3. How many businesses have the infrastructure to handle storing and charging these things?
Huh? It can plug into a standard outlet and it dosn't look all that big to me. I'll admit I'm not very up and up on what might be complicated details of stuffing something in the corn....err I mean storage infastructure.
4. Is it really going to share the sidewalk with pedestrians? Where are they going to go now?
I admit I don't get how this would work for high traffic sidewalks if they move 4 times faster than walking speed. I dont live in such a city so I can't say how this would work but everyone who seems to live in such a place seems excited about it so they must not see any problem with it interfering with pedestrians. This could be the linchpin problem for the device and it sounds like this guys main worry is getting it accepted on sidewalks.
5. What about security? Riding around on a $3000 device that can't move faster than walking speed is a huge crime oppurtunity.
I guess I don't get this one? I think you mean whats to stop some crook from running up to you and pointing a gun at you and telling you to stop? I'd think a laptop is more likely of this higher resale market for those. Also FYI 8mph is a very quick trot and hence much faster than walking speed:).
I really get disapointed when people who are smart in one are (ie fantastic engineering) think that they can easily solve all the problems (real or not) for the rest of us. The market of ideas, economics, and labor always decides what happens based on the aggregate effect of the millions of small decisions made by the individuals.
If his device really is good enought to get rid of cars, it won't be because he SAID so, it will be because he made something that has the same (or better) combination of convinience, speed, economy (both $$ and time), and security as the car. And, unfortunately, this cool device is not "IT".
I'm not sure which article you read (or didn't read I guess). None of it even hinted at replacing the car. It simply tries to address areas where cars do not work at all. Mainly heavily populated urban areas which very few americans have any expierence with. Remember though heavily populated = huge market.
Jartan
Re:It doesn't look like much but...
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C'mon, mass has nothing to do with braking distance, unless you get to the point of reaching heat-dissipation limits of the brake material itself. Remember your first-year physics - mass falls out of the equation, and velocity, gravity, and the coefficient of friction are the relevant variables. The car takes longer to stop simply because it is likely going faster...
Huh? Did someone forget momentum = mass * velocity? Or perhaps you were asleep during that physics class hmm? Perhaps you'd like to back that up in a test where I let someone toss a whiffle ball at me at 20 mph and you let someone throw a lead brick at you at 20 mph.
Jartan
Re:It's a damn scooter
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You can walk faster than 8mph? Damn how long are your legs? Walking 8mph would mean you'd do a mile in 7.5 minutes. Last I ran the mile I got a pretty good workout doing it in 8 minutes.
Jartan
Re:Arrogance more powerful than its technology?
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I doubt it works like your thinking. Imagine leaning forward less than a millimeter and it all the sudden starts moving forward. The accelerational force would simply balance the whole system. Kind of like leaning into a fast wind.
Jartan
Why this is a big deal.
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Take a eueropean veiwpoint for once and imagine everywhere is like downtown new york. The big deal about this device is it lets you move four times faster but it dosnt take up anymore space than your body normally would. Get rid of the cars and all the sudden you have tons of room and no more traffic and no more parking. This is like a solution to the "last mile" problem of subways. Subways work great for getting around to most places but you still have to do like half a miles worth of walking to get to a terminal then to get to where your going from the terminal you stop at in most cases. If you've never been to a city with foot traffic like new york the best way to think of it is that everyday you have to do the equivalent of traversing the mall to several stores. All that walking back and forth blah blah etc. etc.
I would think the only deterant to this thing will be how heavy it is for when you finally have to pick it up and use your feet and how long the batteries will last.
You have to wonder though if something like this became common how pathetic will we become physically. It's getting quite common that the only exercise a lot of people get is walking they do in their daily day to day stuff. What would happen if they loose even that? Better get your kids in the habit of doing exercise now it might become even more valuable of a habit than it already is.
Slashdot Mirror
What would be great is if we grounded all the shuttles and canceled all the shoddy projects and put all of Nasa's money into making a shuttle that doesn't cost so much to launch.
Your point about CISC and RISC cores brings up a very interesting question.
If we're getting ready to put even 4 cores on desktops then isn't the chance for computer companies to finally drop x86? I don't know what kind of tradeoffs were made in creating x86-64 but I'd think at least some were made. With everyone popping out chips with multiple cores though then perhaps at some point in the future one of those cores could be dedicated to x86 for legacy support?
Other interesting things I'd like to see happen too like maybe an IBM cell processor and an x86 processor on the same chip. Unlikely but it wouldn't be imposible for Intel or AMD to make something like the cell and put it on one of their future chips.
Im constantly amazed how optimistic some people get about a space elevator. The main post and a lot of things other people are saying make it seem like they think technology is the deciding factor in whether or not one will get built. The only reason nobody has really spoken out against the idea is the average person thinks the scientists are smoking some good crack on this one.
This isn't a harmless piece of cable we're talking about. The real barrier is going to be whether or not it'd be dangerous if it breaks or if it's cut. If it'll burn up and IF the burnt nanotubes aren't dangerous then maybe there will be a snowballs chance in *$#@ that the public will ok such a project. You can be guaranteed that if it's dangerous though that everyone will just assume that it will break or be broken intentionally.
Theres nothing WRONG with Microsoft bundling in it's Media Player or Web Browser or whatever. Doing that is no different than them including Notepad.
The problem is when they use their monopoly of the operating system to pretty much require you to use their version of the software or when they use the monopoly to make their product inheirently better.
For example in windows if you go into the control panel and open up internet options will it configure your Mozilla browser? Can you setup your help file system to use a different default renderer for it's html files? Or my favorite your pretty much required to keep IE installed so you can use Windows Update to get the almost daily CRITICAL updates for their buggy software.
The media player isn't going to be quite the versatile system component that an HTML renderer is but there are still going to be a lot of applications that end up using it and they won't have much choice thanks to tie-ins like properitary windows media formats.
The sad thing is that Gates isn't lying when he says he's making this stuff a central part of the operating system. Clearly linux is following suit with it's own html renderers. The problem is that with Microsoft they never give the user any options to say "hey thanks for making html such an intergal part of my computing expierence now let me use X product instead of your sucky component please".
Mod me as flamebait I'm sure but those of you who think Slashdot is a news site need to get some wires uncrossed. It's no different than any other blog out there.
Why is it that we're always seeing people expect quality editing and other journalistic qualities like lack of bias? Even worse who are these idiots who mod such comments up?
It's just a bunch of guys posting links to other news sites! This is a community FOR NERDS not a replacement for your newspaper.
Onto the actual news this is great. You could say it's the final proof that intel can no longer really dictate things completely in the x86 market. The trend was fairly obvious for a while but this has a nice way of finalizing that fact.
I guess for once I can understand how the reporter got confused. The earths rotational speed has nothing to do with how long a year is. It has to do with how long a DAY is.
So why do we gain a second every YEAR? If we were to continue such a trend it would imply that the earth would take twice as long to orbit the sun in approx 3.5 million years. Last I checked that's an alarming rate of change for a planetary object.
We're talking about dangerous materials trucks people not your hillbilly cousin Jonny in his pickup. It's not exactly like we have to protect the privacy of people carrying what are essentially large bombs on wheels roaming across the country.
The people who expect some sort of editorial integrity from Slashdot really piss me off admittedly. Slashdot is not a news service it's just a blog. That being said though the blatant cut-and-paste-dont-even-read-it policy has got to go. Don't post stuff thats blatant sensationalism right out of someones email to you. You think the links cool then fine post it with your own blurb.
Notice how he quotes Microsoft Trustworthy Computing(palidum) like it's some kind of great feature? Im personally a little scared that this is deffinetly slated for release in longhorn. We need to start warning our relatives and friends about this kind of crap or it's going to make it in for sure. If that crap gets put into the hardware too we're done for and we can kiss our freely configurable computers and software goodbye.
Jartan
Reading the blurb for this article you'd think consoles are somehow raising the bar of entry into the gaming market. Maybe that's true for console games but the bar of entry for computer games is nearly non existant when it comes to hardware and coding materials.
The real barrier of entry is paying all the people that are required to make a game. Sure maybe coders who love to play games are willing to take a cut for a long while and try and start a stuido. But what about artists , 3d modelers, and musicians. Making a game requires a lot of different specilizations and that means a lot of people and a lot of cash to pay them.
Im often annoyed by how low creativity is in the industry myself but lets face it there are only so many base ideas you can work with in a game. I'd hate to see gamers fall into the same trap of thinking that different and innovative and new always = good. Look at the art of painting. A lot of snobby people go around saying what a "good " painting is based off of what kind of new concepts it introduces but to most of us these paintings just look like so many pieces of junk.
Believe it or not but a lot of problems with the game industry are problems with the developers and not the suits. A big enough portion of them act like whiney prima donna's and throw productivity out the window by trying to introduce new idea's that are just boring in the first place. All to many of them forget that the real purpose is to just make a game thats fun.
Japan may be a lot like the US in some ways but in others its very different. Lets remember this is the same society that puts so much pressure on their children in school that some of them just flip. They're a lot more into peer pressure than the US. A lot of people try to do peer pressure in the states but with so many different peoples from varied backgrounds it doesn't fly so well.
So sure maybe our bosses will try and pull crap like keeping us on call by cell phone 24/7 but none of our friends are going to look down their noses at us for letting our battery run out acting like its some sort social taboo.
Either way I don't see as it will become much of a problem. In all reality the phone proves just as much of an invasion of privacy at home as a cell phone does walking around. Just get caller id or turn it off. Nobody can make you answer it.
Jartan
"What about some of the new stuff on Cartoon Network. Genndy Tartakovsky and others have done some wonderful work. Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack are all great shows."
I've never been able to get past the fact that Dexter's Laboratory just looks ugly. Powerpuff Girls are ok and I think it's great to have stuff that appeals to girls but. Samurai Jack is pretty dark and dosn't always look so good either. All in all they're MUCH MUCH better than the average US animation though. They still suffer hugely from the need for a recuring storyline though.
As for sheep in the big city despite the fact that most american's love comedy some of us just like it enough to only watch it occasionally.
Jartan
While I think Futurama and The Simpsons are great for a laugh there is deffinetly a real dearth of serious animation in the US. I think that's the real reason Japanese animation is so popular. Most of the american stuff is comical in nature or geared towards kids.
Japanese animation on the other hand covers EVERYTHING. There is little in Japan that you can't find an animated series about. So with all this anime they're filling a real hole of genre's.
There are a couple of other reasons to though honestly. I think one of the first and foremost is that they translate these shows over and all the sudden you can watch a new episode 5 days a week. For anyone who's fed up with having to wait a whole..long..week.. to watch a rerun thats a godsend. It's like reading a book you can't put down. In an almost shameful sense it's the same reason soap opera's are popular.
The other reasons are needing adult cartoons blah blah etc. etc. Mostly there are a lot of adults out there that just don't jive with what the mommies out there will allow to be put on prime time tv. I've watched Futurama and I think it's great crack em up stuff but I can't get into it. It dosn't jive with my taste of how animation should look and it's a story made to make people laugh instead of a story with parts that make you laugh. Different strokes for different folks as always.
Jartan
"This elephant though, like the one with the missing tail gene does not express it, and natural selection does not come into play. 5 generations down the track, two close relatives have a child with this super spit power. Unfortunately, because of the second fact I listed above, this child also has a missing tail, one leg that can't move properly, a reduced brain size, and a bad back meaning it has difficulty feeding in hard to reach places. The problem here is that along with the beneficial mutation there came a host of harmful mutations."
This is an interesting concept mind you but as usualy happens when people have a counter argument to something fairly complicated you sometimes miss fairly obvious mistakes. For one your concept of mutations is driving how you evaluate evolution. Elephants don't suddenly evolve the ability to spit acid and therefore have some sort of evolutionary advantage. In fact the reality is in this case unless the elephant was in a highly isolated enviroment the mutation would get blended into the gene pool as background noise and never remanifest EVER. That kind of mutation is far too severe to really take hold at all. The community would have to be so isolated that inbreeding would kill them off almost. To understand evolution you have to really really concentrate on the time scale involved. As we are short lived beings this is sometimes hard for us to concieve.
For example one of the favorite arguments against evolution is flying. How could anything ever evolve something so complex by just mere natural selection. They think "gee how could such a complext mutation happen no matter how much randomness was applied". The answer is quite simple. We in fact know now the highly likely reason why beings evolved the ability to fly. There is a bug (forget what its called sorry) that skates on water. It uses its extreme light weight (note how low weight is important to flying beings) to float ontop of water without breaking its surface. To move around it kind of hops and skates along the water with its long almost flight capable wings. Scientist took these bugs and did studies on them. They cut the wings smaller and smaller till they were practically nubs and the bugs could STILL jerk around quick as heck with them. They did a documentary on it even the video was quite interesting. Obviously the amount of time it takes for a water organism to evolve into something that floats on the water is astronomical and then who knows how long it goes from floating to skating to jumping and finally flying. It's almost inconceivable but when laid out its obvious to see how it works. Thats how evolution is though unless you know what happened its just almost impossible to imagine how BIG changes happened.
So in conclusion while I it's good to question scientific concepts I think your arguments are fairly uninformed here. "Macro-evolution" as you put it just dosn't even exist. It's a word created by people who can't comprehened that small changes are all that are required to reach huge differences in gentic diversity.
I dont want to ruffle religious feathers but perhaps evidence for your creation theories would be more proper? I've noticed religious people tend to try and discount other concepts instead of promoting their own. Usually they believe that if everything else is discounted then creation must simply be how things happened. This is a futile goal because if you did convince people that evolution isn't true they'd no sooner believe in "creation" than they did before. They'd just go searching for another solution with founding in the physical laws which they can observe. In something like this the observable laws of the universe are the status quo. You'd have to first determine exactly what every law of the universe is then point out how they don't explain EVERYTHING for you to have proof. Even then though the point of faith is to believe without proof though isnt it?
Jartan
I don't mean to start an argument here but some people have been saying things like "when we start changing our own genes evolution would INCREASE" blah blah. What nonsense is this? In fact the truth would be almost the opposite. When we start changing our own genes manually we totally thwart the very concept of evolution. Evolution is quite simply a dumbed down way to say that order exists in chaos. Why should we even worry about whether or not its stopped when in 100 years the things we will be capable of doing manually will blow evolutionary change out of the water. Not to mention why should we restrict our genes to things that improve survival? Suppose we do all end up with uniform skin color, engineer skin thats vibrant purple or something. Would that help our survival? Unlikely unless we start growing polen stems and need some bugs to pass on our seed. Would it look cool though? HECK YA! Maybe Im weird but there could deffinetly be something sexy about pale blue skin for instance.
So why even worry? Id rather worry about this quote "If people start to live to 150, and are capable of producing children for more than 100 of those years, the effects could be dramatic, he says. "People will start to produce dozens of children in their lifetimes, and that will certainly start to skew our evolution." Where the heck would we put all those people! Heres to hoping that increased standards of living drives down the birth rate even more.
Jartan
"There is no way hydrogen is ever going to be allowed aboard an airplane,"
Oh dear whatever will travelers do! Sitting in the middle of the air inside a hollow several ton metal contraption FILLED with explosive fuel! Wherever will they get power for there tiny little low power laptops!?!?
Jartan
If you ever watch TechTV Live of the Screensavers regularly they had a whole lot of stuff about this the day they launched it. Supposedly theres no real services for it yet and the cost is going to be based on how much data you download. The only real reason to get it at this point would be a replacement for ricochet to use with your laptop. Also its not the same 3g they're using in Japan it's supposed to be limited to 144kbps whereas its 300+ something over there. One of the tech leads they talked to said Verizon basically released it a little ahead of time to be able to say they did it first. That's why theres no real product other than data to it.
The pricing will be disgusting no doubt and anything but browsing w/ pictures OFF will probably be unwise except for those with to much money. They were saying how some of the current providers using the already existing technology charged as much as 75 bucks per SESSION online average. That was the extreme but I think thats a good indication it's not the pancea of wireless communication we're hoping for yet.
Jartan
I hate elitism and I dont like how this guy is doing it but everyones free to be elite if they like. Somehow I think more would be gained by trying to educate outlook users on the bugs though. But then again there are people out there who dont want to understand there computer anymore than the typical person wants to understand his vcr. They just dont care. Just like I don't care what goes in a hot dog. It tastes good thats enough for me.
Perhaps something else along the same lines but not quite so annoying would be acceptable though. Like html formating your email with the code tag and then putting the html for the email in the code tag. This way outlook displays the same crap we have to see everytime someone sends us an html email! They can still read the msg but its annoying for them just like it is for us. I wouldn't do this all the time but it'd a good once a month thing just to remind all those outlook users dome of us hate html. Even more interesting though is simply using a font tag with a class attribute to set the font to I dunno...4 or 5 pixels! They'd have to squint really hard if they used outlook but to everyone else it would be one tag. Humor like this would serve as a more polite way of poking people about html email but still let them read the page.
Jartan
You know I don't really want to get into whether or not gaming is addicting. Obviously it can be for the wrong kind of person and for other people it just isn't even a question.
:). Why is it god damn acceptable for men to be annoying obssessed with sports to the point where they know every little stupid stat that never stood for anything anyways but it's not acceptable for me to have every weapon dmg/ratio memorized in Shattered Galaxy.
/warning rant coming
What makes me sick is the damn symptoms everyone talks about and what they think is so bad about computer gaming to much. "Oh my god he sits in front of the computer screen for 5 hours doing nothing but playing that stupid game that will never amount to anything, he needs to get a life". This is just disgusting when someone says something like this all there really saying is "I don't think thats very enjoyable therefore he's a looser". Well you know what? I hate sports they're boring as fuck to me. I don't go around calling people who drink beer and watch football all day on sunday loosers (well at least not because of that). If just makes me want to smack someone around (see people make people violent not games
"Oh he has no friends nobody even talks to him". Bullshit I bet most of these people have more friends online than the average "real life" person has had in his life. Their retort is that dosn't count of course online people are "fake". WTF? They're fake? Why because you can't play football with them? Are they made of plastic simply because you can't see them? Maybe the average persons empathic skills are so pathetic that they have to make up with physical closeness but not everyone is that way.
Oh and don't even get me started on the he dosn't go outside argument. Why are people suddenly seen as loosers because they don't like to have a mental masturbation everytime they see a pretty flower. Then they get all uppity about so said person having no appreciation for beauty. Hello have we forgotten beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Just because they think the outdoors is boring and nothing special dosn't mean they don't think other things are beautiful and awe inspiring. Anyone seen those spell effects in Dark Ages of Camelot? That's fucking beauty right there that god didn't see fit to put on this natural earth. I never get to walk down the sidewalk and see a total dumbass get smited by a huge fucking hammer from the sky crackling with lighting all around it.
/rant off
So basically same ol same ol. People want everyone else to join their "club" and get all uppity when they're different. What's even worse is some people think this is the worst part about gaming. They totally neglect the fact that there are actually some poor souls out that do get geniunely addicted and have real problems that interfere with them enjoying their lives.
Take that poor kid that wrote the essay for instance. The kid sounded as if games had really messed him up. He failed school. That's a problem when you end up doing something really bad that you would of never chosen to do w/o the addiction in the first place. The kid seemed pretty upset about it true but he seemed more upset that he thought he was such a looser. Sounded to me like so many people had told him that he was a looser that he was starting to believe it. Maybe if his family would of concentrated on urging him to do his homework instead of making him feel like a looser snail who needed to crawl into the shell of gaming he might of passed.
Jartan
"He holds a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, (BSBA) and a Master of Arts in Organizational Management (MAOM). He also has a Technician class Ham Radio License, and a Single Engine Land pilots license." quoted from this site on Mr. Schmidt.
How exactly does someone with college education like that get to become a cyber security advisor? He was a police officer too. Maybe I'm reading to much into stereotypes but this sure dosn't sound like the kind of guy I'd want protecting me from a nerdy kid who lives in his basement with a cafinee IV making root kits.
Jartan
Well that's kind of a hard question to answer but having 3 wheels dosn't necissarily make it more stable. A gyroscope dosn't even have a wheel it sits on a pin point and no matter how hard you bump it it won't fall over :). From the way they talk about this it sounds a lot more stable than a 3 wheel scooter. On a 3 wheeler if someone knocks you lightly as your whizzing past from the wrong angle (3 oclock) you'll get knocked over pretty easy. With two wheels typically getting hit from in front or behind is the only way to cause instability but the gyros+motors take that away.
Also the whole control mechanism is based on the concept of two wheels allowing you to lean and move. I guess the basic way to put it is the thing is designed to be safer than even a tricycle and henceforth be allowed on sidewalks.
Jartan
I think that this is a pretty cool invention, and this guy is the real thing. But I was extremely disapointed when he started commenting about how it was going to "change cities" and get rid of cars. :).
This assertion begs several questions (which are extremly relevent to someone living in, say, Austin, where I am):
This product has little relevance to someone in a city as small as austin (~900k in a spread out area). I know I lived there not long ago.
1. How many people live close enough to work that they can afford the time to communte on a device that moves at walking speed? (no one I know)
This device isn't for getting from your home to work it's for getting to the subway terminal or bus stop then from the bus stop or subway terminal to work. But perhaps people in a city like new york could just skip the subway with something this. Either way if you added up all the cities where the population is so high that public transport becomes a necissity then the answer to your question is a LOT of people.
2. How many people live in places where the weather is neither too warm or too cold to spend the time outside?
The target market for this product dosn't have a choice of whether or not to go outside. New York is a cold place in winter and it gets VERY slushy and slippery. I've a friend with arthritis there that gets worried she'll fall when the slush gets bad. If this device could make her trip in that nasty cold to the subway shorter and eliminate her chance of falling I'd imagine she might even get health care to pay for such a thing in 10 years.
3. How many businesses have the infrastructure to handle storing and charging these things?
Huh? It can plug into a standard outlet and it dosn't look all that big to me. I'll admit I'm not very up and up on what might be complicated details of stuffing something in the corn....err I mean storage infastructure.
4. Is it really going to share the sidewalk with pedestrians? Where are they going to go now?
I admit I don't get how this would work for high traffic sidewalks if they move 4 times faster than walking speed. I dont live in such a city so I can't say how this would work but everyone who seems to live in such a place seems excited about it so they must not see any problem with it interfering with pedestrians. This could be the linchpin problem for the device and it sounds like this guys main worry is getting it accepted on sidewalks.
5. What about security? Riding around on a $3000 device that can't move faster than walking speed is a huge crime oppurtunity.
I guess I don't get this one? I think you mean whats to stop some crook from running up to you and pointing a gun at you and telling you to stop? I'd think a laptop is more likely of this higher resale market for those. Also FYI 8mph is a very quick trot and hence much faster than walking speed
I really get disapointed when people who are smart in one are (ie fantastic engineering) think that they can easily solve all the problems (real or not) for the rest of us. The market of ideas, economics, and labor always decides what happens based on the aggregate effect of the millions of small decisions made by the individuals.
If his device really is good enought to get rid of cars, it won't be because he SAID so, it will be because he made something that has the same (or better) combination of convinience, speed, economy (both $$ and time), and security as the car. And, unfortunately, this cool device is not "IT".
I'm not sure which article you read (or didn't read I guess). None of it even hinted at replacing the car. It simply tries to address areas where cars do not work at all. Mainly heavily populated urban areas which very few americans have any expierence with. Remember though heavily populated = huge market.
Jartan
C'mon, mass has nothing to do with braking distance, unless you get to the point of reaching heat-dissipation limits of the brake material itself. Remember your first-year physics - mass falls out of the equation, and velocity, gravity, and the coefficient of friction are the relevant variables. The car takes longer to stop simply because it is likely going faster...
Huh? Did someone forget momentum = mass * velocity? Or perhaps you were asleep during that physics class hmm? Perhaps you'd like to back that up in a test where I let someone toss a whiffle ball at me at 20 mph and you let someone throw a lead brick at you at 20 mph.
Jartan
You can walk faster than 8mph? Damn how long are your legs? Walking 8mph would mean you'd do a mile in 7.5 minutes. Last I ran the mile I got a pretty good workout doing it in 8 minutes.
Jartan
I doubt it works like your thinking. Imagine leaning forward less than a millimeter and it all the sudden starts moving forward. The accelerational force would simply balance the whole system. Kind of like leaning into a fast wind.
Jartan
Take a eueropean veiwpoint for once and imagine everywhere is like downtown new york. The big deal about this device is it lets you move four times faster but it dosnt take up anymore space than your body normally would. Get rid of the cars and all the sudden you have tons of room and no more traffic and no more parking. This is like a solution to the "last mile" problem of subways. Subways work great for getting around to most places but you still have to do like half a miles worth of walking to get to a terminal then to get to where your going from the terminal you stop at in most cases. If you've never been to a city with foot traffic like new york the best way to think of it is that everyday you have to do the equivalent of traversing the mall to several stores. All that walking back and forth blah blah etc. etc.
I would think the only deterant to this thing will be how heavy it is for when you finally have to pick it up and use your feet and how long the batteries will last.
You have to wonder though if something like this became common how pathetic will we become physically. It's getting quite common that the only exercise a lot of people get is walking they do in their daily day to day stuff. What would happen if they loose even that? Better get your kids in the habit of doing exercise now it might become even more valuable of a habit than it already is.
Jartan