I stil don't understand why a device that has a mic, and a speaker, and a screen, a processor, storage, and a battery can't function perfectly well as:
An MP3 player A PDA A phone
Add a CCD and it's easy to integrate a camera. Even if the camera isn't as powerful as a nice standalone digital, the fact that it's easy to carry on your person at all times increases its utility.
A friend of mine just got a Qualcomm camera-phone, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play with taking candid shots, where I might have never used a "real" camera.
Again, i'm not arguing that the Sony device is any good, but I am arguing that integration is not identically equal to bad engineering.
What? So the market settles on one and only one solution for a given problem? That's just a stupid contention. Yes, that has in fact occured to a large extent in the PC OS market, but that is because of an artificial monopoly. Such a monopoly certainly doesn't exist in portable electronic device manufacturing.
Yes, a product's support lifespan is definitely related to the number of units produced, but that has little to do with its suitability to my purposes, particularly in the case of portable computers, where many of the moving (that is, failure-prone) parts are fairly standard. (And yes, I remember the Libretto and the NoteJet and the cool OmniBook with its mouse on a popsicle stick that was such an incredibly clever idea I can't believe nobody else has used it)
No, not everybody needs Panasonic Toughbook laptops, but I'm damn glad to see them on the market. If I was ever to go into adventure travel, that'd be my first purchase.
Of course, we're talking specifically about a Sony device, which means that any after-warrantee service will cost you the deficit of Nigeria, so the point is academic.
Me, I/hate/ redundancy. I think it's just dumb that I can't buy an optical disc jukebox that serves all my computers and my home entertainment system. I think it's silly to have four CD-ROM mechanisms scattered around, when one or two would do just as well (yes, you have to consider two users wanting to do diff. things simultaneously, but that can be engineered around).
With mobile devices, a PDA, phone, MP3 player, and camera (for example) have about 70% common components (by weight). So, if I'm clever, I can glom together four devices, each of which would weigh four to six ounces or so, and glom them into one eight ounce device (yes, I just made up those numbers). Yes, you need to solve a battery life problem, but I'd rather carry one spare battery for my Uber-Device than four separate devices.
The One Device hasn't yet been created, but I've seen a couple that are awful close. Kyocera's PDA/phone/MP3 players are awfully attractive.
Interface design: Do you need to be able to operate your PDA and your camera simultaneously? No? Then why would there be an interface problem? Several PDA/phones have arguably better UI than their individual components because you don't have to hold the PDA in one hand and dial with the other.
It just takes smart UI design and clever engineering. It can be done, and done well.
Is Sony's lap-camcorder an example of a good convergence product? Dunno. I'd have to play with it and evaluate the ergonomics. But I'm glad they made it, and I'll be glad to see the machines that replace it.
Yep. Now burn your PC, and go buy a stand-alone word processor, adding machine, fax, US VideoTel terminal, and a Playstation.
This idea that "integration is bad" in the computer age is just stupid. There has never been a tool as flexible and extensible as the PC, and there is no reason not to connect two devices together to share (processor, storage, user interface) resources.
You want to carry lots of standalone devices? That's fine, Batman, but I like the idea of product integration.
Me buying an ink cart with an expiration date does not give HP license to destroy that cart on the expiration date.
You can use the milk that expired yesterday. You can eat the chips that expired last week. The expiration dates are supposed to be a protection for the customer, to keep stores from selling old stock, not a mechanism for the manufacturer to increase their profit margins by destroying still-viable cartridges.
HP's cartridges still have ink in them. The ink worked satisfactorily yesterday, but today I can't use it because HP has decided that it's "expired". There is no physical reason that the cartridge shouldn't be working just fine: The ink is still there, and while it's not the "freshest", it still makes the marks on the page well enough.
Designing a product to wear out in a specified amount of time is done all the time, although I think it's reprehensible. However, ENFORCING that planned obsolesence by an artificial date-stamp is appalling.
I mean, should Sony get to come break my stereo because they decided it only is supposed to work for five years?
Who the hell cares about how the files are ACTUALLY stashed away? Should I remember the cylinder address of whatever file I want to start modifying?
OF COURSE it's an organizational metaphor. What on a GUI screen isn't? The only question is whether it's more or less useful than other metaphors for more or less humans.
Yep. With the later bomb computers, they pickle at some pre-surveyed radius from the target.
But you still have to know where on the ground that radius is. The bomb computer helps, but the human judgement and training is what puts iron on target.
Nowadays it's easy. You point a laser at a target, tell the laser to radio to an airplane "I want this think to make a big ba-da-boom right now", airplane sorta drops the bomb kinda whenever, and the bomb flies itself onto the spot that the laser had designated.
JDAM does not require the laser to illuminate the target, but soldiers do use a laser-GPS device to first get their location (from GPS) and then the laser to get elevation, azimuth, and range to the target. The target's coordinates are then sent to the bomb, which tells the aircraft "Hey, fly over there four miles and I'll be able to hit my target. Thanks."
Especially handy are the new 250lb small-diameter bombs with the JDAM kit. With a properly equipped aircraft overhead, it's like the soldiers have 250lb precision guided hand grenades.
Any and all people who disagree with you are "rush ditto-heads".
And you're not a victim of propaganda, oh no! You're a levelheaded person with your finger on the pulse of the universe. All problems are shallow to your eyes. People bow before your wisdom.
Riiiiiight. And you posted anonymously, why?
The only people dumber and more short-sighted than Rush Limbaugh are the ones who think anybody who doesn't hew to their own philosophy must be poorly informed or mentally deficient.
Lots of people who are smarter than you disagree with you. This is true for all values of "you".
Re:Physics
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Nuke-Lobbing
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, but the CEP will also be a function of when they start the pull-up and how accurately they fly the vector from the IP to the target. Plenty of skill and judgement are still required.
So it's not as easy as, say, pointing a laser and dropping a Paveway.
My post explained how the United States is in no meaningful way an "imperialist" power. Such powers have, well, empires. The United States never has, nor do I expect it ever will, control an empire.
No, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines, the Marshall Islands and Guam do not count as an empire. If they did, it'd be the shittiest empire in history.
Chomsky thinks the US is Imperialist. He's wrong. Get over it.
I absolutely loathe what the current administration is doing with its domestic policy right now. Letting Rumsfeld wipe his ass with the Constitution because he thinks terrorists are out to get him is not acceptable to me.
However, the hand-wringers out there who opine that the United States is some sort of bloody-handed dictatorial regime are not thinking clearly. Anybody who thinks Bush (and his crazy reactionary psycho right-wing henchmen) are anywhere near as bad as Saddam is deluded.
The WMD issue is absurd. I'm surprised the administration tried to play that card: It weakens their case. Remove Saddam because he's a brutal oppressive tyrant, and he controls a strategic asset; that's fine. That's justifiable. But haring off after some bunker full o' nasty chemicals...that's a waste of time. And trying to tie this into the "War on Terrorism" is absurd.
When the last US boots leave Iraqi soil, sometime in the next 12-18 months, I'll be waiting for your apology. The US has no reason to colonize/subjugate Iraq. It would be militarily impossible without using unconscionably brutal tactics, and whatever bad stuff may have happened in Vietnam and Central America, the US Military simply doesn't work like that today. It would also be stupid. The cost of maintaining a military presence in combat in Iraq would dramatically outweigh any oil purchase savings that could be realized after the reinstatement of a representative Iraqi government.
Be skeptical...that's good. I'm sure skeptical of the Administration's real agenda here. But I do not doubt that the Iraqi people are going to be better off, safer and happier, for ths process than they would be otherwise. I believe the Iraqi people agree with me.
I did not talk about the war as an unprovoked attemp to wrest away control of Iraqi oil. And I can think whatever the hell I want about Bush's dishonesty.
I do not agree with the President's public justifications of the war, but I do believe that justifications exist.
The US wants to buy oil from a stable Iraqi government at fair market prices. Please explain to me how that is bad for the Iraqi people. If, in a year, there are still US soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad and guarding oil fields, then we can talk about imperialism. Until then, you're making stuff up.
And civilians mistreated more by the US soldiers than by Saddam? You're a nut. Prove your case, because on the face of it, it's absurd.
OK, so the soldiers were guarding the office of a ministry that actually had something valuable, rather than a bunch of nice furniture?
Sounds like they were doing their job.
Yes the war is about oil. No it is not about the US owning the oil. It is about the US ensuring that a stable, relatively non-belligerent foreign power controls the oil, so that the US can buy it, bringing wealth and prosperity to the people of said foreign power.
I defy you to defend your claim that the United States is an imperialist nation. That's just a stupid contention.
That's why I put the word "imperialist" in quotes. It's silly to think that the US is imperialist. Minus fifty points for poor reading comprehension.
Noam Chomsky should stick to linguistics. Minus a zillion points for citing that psycho.
I intentionally avoided mentioning Bush, because I think he's being quite dishonest about what this war is about. I think his handling of the situation is really irresponsible, similar to FDR's handling of the situation with Japan immediately before Pearl Harbor. FDR drew the foul, and Bush is doing the same thing. Minus ten points for putting words in my mouth.
And your contention that I'm somehow "spoon fed" my opinion is just ridiculous. You have no idea what information I use to formulate my views, and if you did, you'd know that I have never encountered a similar notion. This idea is mine, and I take full responsibility for it. Minus another zillion points for presumption.
I am thinking about the war strictly as a utilitarian issue. Can it be justified in terms only of the United States' direct welfare? Even without concerns about WMD and terrorism, the oil issue is sufficient to justify the US's interests in the region, up to and including the use of military force.
Again, the US is different in that the Iraqi people will retain control over their oil fields, and paid well for it. That would not have happened with any other powerful nation in history.
Re:offtopic
on
Nuke-Lobbing
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
So...the operation in Iraq is about oil.
Duh, you think? See, the difference between America and every other "imperialist" nation in the history of the WORLD is that America permits adversarial, even belligerent nations to control a vital strategic resource.
The Caesars would have rolled into Iraq and installed a Roman government to control oil supply. This OPEC thing would never have happened.
OF COURSE the war in the middle east is about oil. More to the point, it's about protecting the supply of a strategically essential resource.
What exactly is wrong with that?
Re:Physics
on
Nuke-Lobbing
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· Score: 5, Informative
Well, the guys who actually did it said that their bombs normally fell within 300ft of their targets.
Airspeed indicators can be pretty accurate.
Re:What I want to know is...
on
T-Shirt Cannon
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· Score: 1
I'm just really glad that somebody stupid enough to look down the barrel of a firearm isn't going to be behind the stick of a combat jet.
Write a game in which a computer thinks like a woman, and reacts believably.
Implementing a meatspace game like chess or go is not difficult. Writing a computer program to basically brute force a good strategy is not difficult. Writing your RTS AI so it can coordinate many things in many places simultaneously (the way a human can not) is also easy.
Making a game that thinks like a woman? Or a man, for that matter? Write me when you figure it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, so buy a DLP. That's the only device that'd be worth a damn on a big screen like that anyhow.
I wouldn't go near an LCD now that DLPs are available. Reflective rather than transmissive==good thing.
I stil don't understand why a device that has a mic, and a speaker, and a screen, a processor, storage, and a battery can't function perfectly well as:
An MP3 player
A PDA
A phone
Add a CCD and it's easy to integrate a camera. Even if the camera isn't as powerful as a nice standalone digital, the fact that it's easy to carry on your person at all times increases its utility.
A friend of mine just got a Qualcomm camera-phone, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play with taking candid shots, where I might have never used a "real" camera.
Again, i'm not arguing that the Sony device is any good, but I am arguing that integration is not identically equal to bad engineering.
See, I don't want my belt to look like Batman's.
What? So the market settles on one and only one solution for a given problem? That's just a stupid contention. Yes, that has in fact occured to a large extent in the PC OS market, but that is because of an artificial monopoly. Such a monopoly certainly doesn't exist in portable electronic device manufacturing.
Yes, a product's support lifespan is definitely related to the number of units produced, but that has little to do with its suitability to my purposes, particularly in the case of portable computers, where many of the moving (that is, failure-prone) parts are fairly standard.
(And yes, I remember the Libretto and the NoteJet and the cool OmniBook with its mouse on a popsicle stick that was such an incredibly clever idea I can't believe nobody else has used it)
No, not everybody needs Panasonic Toughbook laptops, but I'm damn glad to see them on the market. If I was ever to go into adventure travel, that'd be my first purchase.
Of course, we're talking specifically about a Sony device, which means that any after-warrantee service will cost you the deficit of Nigeria, so the point is academic.
Me, I /hate/ redundancy. I think it's just dumb that I can't buy an optical disc jukebox that serves all my computers and my home entertainment system. I think it's silly to have four CD-ROM mechanisms scattered around, when one or two would do just as well (yes, you have to consider two users wanting to do diff. things simultaneously, but that can be engineered around).
With mobile devices, a PDA, phone, MP3 player, and camera (for example) have about 70% common components (by weight). So, if I'm clever, I can glom together four devices, each of which would weigh four to six ounces or so, and glom them into one eight ounce device (yes, I just made up those numbers). Yes, you need to solve a battery life problem, but I'd rather carry one spare battery for my Uber-Device than four separate devices.
The One Device hasn't yet been created, but I've seen a couple that are awful close. Kyocera's PDA/phone/MP3 players are awfully attractive.
Interface design: Do you need to be able to operate your PDA and your camera simultaneously? No? Then why would there be an interface problem? Several PDA/phones have arguably better UI than their individual components because you don't have to hold the PDA in one hand and dial with the other.
It just takes smart UI design and clever engineering. It can be done, and done well.
Is Sony's lap-camcorder an example of a good convergence product? Dunno. I'd have to play with it and evaluate the ergonomics. But I'm glad they made it, and I'll be glad to see the machines that replace it.
YOU want.
That's fine.
You might be surprised to note that what I want is different.
Good news? The free market serves us both.
And the butterfly keyboard kicked ass.
Yep. Now burn your PC, and go buy a stand-alone word processor, adding machine, fax, US VideoTel terminal, and a Playstation.
This idea that "integration is bad" in the computer age is just stupid. There has never been a tool as flexible and extensible as the PC, and there is no reason not to connect two devices together to share (processor, storage, user interface) resources.
You want to carry lots of standalone devices? That's fine, Batman, but I like the idea of product integration.
Me buying an ink cart with an expiration date does not give HP license to destroy that cart on the expiration date.
You can use the milk that expired yesterday. You can eat the chips that expired last week. The expiration dates are supposed to be a protection for the customer, to keep stores from selling old stock, not a mechanism for the manufacturer to increase their profit margins by destroying still-viable cartridges.
Speaking of bullshit analogies...
HP's cartridges still have ink in them. The ink worked satisfactorily yesterday, but today I can't use it because HP has decided that it's "expired". There is no physical reason that the cartridge shouldn't be working just fine: The ink is still there, and while it's not the "freshest", it still makes the marks on the page well enough.
Designing a product to wear out in a specified amount of time is done all the time, although I think it's reprehensible. However, ENFORCING that planned obsolesence by an artificial date-stamp is appalling.
I mean, should Sony get to come break my stereo because they decided it only is supposed to work for five years?
Who the hell cares about how the files are ACTUALLY stashed away? Should I remember the cylinder address of whatever file I want to start modifying?
OF COURSE it's an organizational metaphor. What on a GUI screen isn't? The only question is whether it's more or less useful than other metaphors for more or less humans.
I think we should pronounce Steve's name like Coach Z does.
Joooooorrruuuubbbs.
Seems like a reasonable enough definition to me. I've slept since my Orbital Mechanics class, so some of the fiddly bits are lost on me.
Like, you know, definitions of words and stuff. : )
They're being polite, dude.
Yep. With the later bomb computers, they pickle at some pre-surveyed radius from the target.
But you still have to know where on the ground that radius is. The bomb computer helps, but the human judgement and training is what puts iron on target.
Nowadays it's easy. You point a laser at a target, tell the laser to radio to an airplane "I want this think to make a big ba-da-boom right now", airplane sorta drops the bomb kinda whenever, and the bomb flies itself onto the spot that the laser had designated.
JDAM does not require the laser to illuminate the target, but soldiers do use a laser-GPS device to first get their location (from GPS) and then the laser to get elevation, azimuth, and range to the target. The target's coordinates are then sent to the bomb, which tells the aircraft "Hey, fly over there four miles and I'll be able to hit my target. Thanks."
Especially handy are the new 250lb small-diameter bombs with the JDAM kit. With a properly equipped aircraft overhead, it's like the soldiers have 250lb precision guided hand grenades.
Bombing is getting easy.
Yeah. Forget the bad guys shooting from cover of the museum. Protect it at all costs!
How do you do that, exactly?
Any and all people who disagree with you are "rush ditto-heads".
And you're not a victim of propaganda, oh no! You're a levelheaded person with your finger on the pulse of the universe. All problems are shallow to your eyes. People bow before your wisdom.
Riiiiiight. And you posted anonymously, why?
The only people dumber and more short-sighted than Rush Limbaugh are the ones who think anybody who doesn't hew to their own philosophy must be poorly informed or mentally deficient.
Lots of people who are smarter than you disagree with you. This is true for all values of "you".
Yes, but the CEP will also be a function of when they start the pull-up and how accurately they fly the vector from the IP to the target. Plenty of skill and judgement are still required.
So it's not as easy as, say, pointing a laser and dropping a Paveway.
My post explained how the United States is in no meaningful way an "imperialist" power. Such powers have, well, empires. The United States never has, nor do I expect it ever will, control an empire.
No, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines, the Marshall Islands and Guam do not count as an empire. If they did, it'd be the shittiest empire in history.
Chomsky thinks the US is Imperialist. He's wrong. Get over it.
I absolutely loathe what the current administration is doing with its domestic policy right now. Letting Rumsfeld wipe his ass with the Constitution because he thinks terrorists are out to get him is not acceptable to me.
However, the hand-wringers out there who opine that the United States is some sort of bloody-handed dictatorial regime are not thinking clearly. Anybody who thinks Bush (and his crazy reactionary psycho right-wing henchmen) are anywhere near as bad as Saddam is deluded.
The WMD issue is absurd. I'm surprised the administration tried to play that card: It weakens their case. Remove Saddam because he's a brutal oppressive tyrant, and he controls a strategic asset; that's fine. That's justifiable. But haring off after some bunker full o' nasty chemicals...that's a waste of time. And trying to tie this into the "War on Terrorism" is absurd.
When the last US boots leave Iraqi soil, sometime in the next 12-18 months, I'll be waiting for your apology. The US has no reason to colonize/subjugate Iraq. It would be militarily impossible without using unconscionably brutal tactics, and whatever bad stuff may have happened in Vietnam and Central America, the US Military simply doesn't work like that today. It would also be stupid. The cost of maintaining a military presence in combat in Iraq would dramatically outweigh any oil purchase savings that could be realized after the reinstatement of a representative Iraqi government.
Be skeptical...that's good. I'm sure skeptical of the Administration's real agenda here. But I do not doubt that the Iraqi people are going to be better off, safer and happier, for ths process than they would be otherwise. I believe the Iraqi people agree with me.
Your thesis is dumb.
I did not talk about the war as an unprovoked attemp to wrest away control of Iraqi oil. And I can think whatever the hell I want about Bush's dishonesty.
I do not agree with the President's public justifications of the war, but I do believe that justifications exist.
The US wants to buy oil from a stable Iraqi government at fair market prices. Please explain to me how that is bad for the Iraqi people. If, in a year, there are still US soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad and guarding oil fields, then we can talk about imperialism. Until then, you're making stuff up.
And civilians mistreated more by the US soldiers than by Saddam? You're a nut. Prove your case, because on the face of it, it's absurd.
OK, so the soldiers were guarding the office of a ministry that actually had something valuable, rather than a bunch of nice furniture?
Sounds like they were doing their job.
Yes the war is about oil. No it is not about the US owning the oil. It is about the US ensuring that a stable, relatively non-belligerent foreign power controls the oil, so that the US can buy it, bringing wealth and prosperity to the people of said foreign power.
I defy you to defend your claim that the United States is an imperialist nation. That's just a stupid contention.
That's why I put the word "imperialist" in quotes. It's silly to think that the US is imperialist. Minus fifty points for poor reading comprehension.
Noam Chomsky should stick to linguistics. Minus a zillion points for citing that psycho.
I intentionally avoided mentioning Bush, because I think he's being quite dishonest about what this war is about. I think his handling of the situation is really irresponsible, similar to FDR's handling of the situation with Japan immediately before Pearl Harbor. FDR drew the foul, and Bush is doing the same thing. Minus ten points for putting words in my mouth.
And your contention that I'm somehow "spoon fed" my opinion is just ridiculous. You have no idea what information I use to formulate my views, and if you did, you'd know that I have never encountered a similar notion. This idea is mine, and I take full responsibility for it. Minus another zillion points for presumption.
I am thinking about the war strictly as a utilitarian issue. Can it be justified in terms only of the United States' direct welfare? Even without concerns about WMD and terrorism, the oil issue is sufficient to justify the US's interests in the region, up to and including the use of military force.
Again, the US is different in that the Iraqi people will retain control over their oil fields, and paid well for it. That would not have happened with any other powerful nation in history.
So...the operation in Iraq is about oil.
Duh, you think? See, the difference between America and every other "imperialist" nation in the history of the WORLD is that America permits adversarial, even belligerent nations to control a vital strategic resource.
The Caesars would have rolled into Iraq and installed a Roman government to control oil supply. This OPEC thing would never have happened.
OF COURSE the war in the middle east is about oil. More to the point, it's about protecting the supply of a strategically essential resource.
What exactly is wrong with that?
Well, the guys who actually did it said that their bombs normally fell within 300ft of their targets.
Airspeed indicators can be pretty accurate.
I'm just really glad that somebody stupid enough to look down the barrel of a firearm isn't going to be behind the stick of a combat jet.
What a fucking moron.
OK, maybe I wasn't clear.
Write a game in which a computer thinks like a woman, and reacts believably.
Implementing a meatspace game like chess or go is not difficult. Writing a computer program to basically brute force a good strategy is not difficult. Writing your RTS AI so it can coordinate many things in many places simultaneously (the way a human can not) is also easy.
Making a game that thinks like a woman? Or a man, for that matter? Write me when you figure it out.
Kay. Now write a computer game that doesn't work analytically.
Now you see the problem.