I wonder if we'll see a resurgence in comic books / graphic novels. There'll always be a market for physical comic books but I think there's a much larger audience out there who would enjoy the stories but don't want to spend the money collecting them. I know there's iPad apps for that sort of thing but I think a colour Kindle is much more appealing, and the 4096-colour range of this E Ink screen would be well suited to the artwork style.
I wonder if this will end up hurting Apple because it will start people thinking that if Apple is trying tactics like this to stop sales of the Galaxy Tab, then the Galaxy Tab must offer serious competition to the iPad. Apple normally don't resort to legal tactics to stop competitors since they can usually rely on producing a better product.
The fact that the display booth at IFA was hastily covered up just smells of desperation on Apple's part. Of course it's more complicated than that, but most people won't see it that way. I suspect this battle will just result in bad PR for Apple, and extra publicity for Samsung.
This is correct. We banned automatic weapons in 1996 and look at us now: data limits on all our broadband plans. I hope this can be a lesson to the rest of the world.
The guys in this article started facebook pages called "Smash dwn in Northwich Town" (sic) and "The Warrington Riots". There is nothing political about what went on in the UK.
When you have massive riots in multiple cities, I'd be hard pressed to consider it just reckless lawlessness as entertainment.
In the article a researcher says, "You can still do a lot of statistical functions and perform analysis like logistical regression, which is used to do things like predict how likely a person is to have a heart attack." Okay, but statistical analysis like that isn't particularly computationally-intensive. At some point, an authorised person is going to look at the data (of course), and they can perform the statistical analysis then. That's the way it's done now.
I just don't see how valuable any analysis will be if the system doesn't have an understanding about what the data represents. If it's all just numbers, then all you can do is perform arithmetic, which doesn't exactly require a server in the cloud.
While I don't mean to belittle the work done by these scientists, I want to point out a common mistake used in science journalism - referring to GFP as "glowing". It does not glow, in any sense of the word. It fluoresces, which means you need to shine blue or UV light on it and examine it through a filter that removes the incident light, and then it will appear green. It can appear quite amazing under those conditions, but you can't take this dog out for a walk at night and see it emitting green light. You won't even see it reflecting green light, unless you take him near a UV source.
No, they don't make sense, because you can buy a 20" screen for $100.
The market for a dual-screen laptop is basically the intersection of these groups: 1. Those who absolutely need two monitors when travelling, 2. Those who aren't willing to pack a second monitor with them but are will to pack a 4.5kg laptop, and 3. Those who are moving around too much to justify buying a second monitor at their destination. I think that's a pretty small market for an expensive device.
The article says the designer came up with the idea "when he needed a video editing workstation on a 6 month working holiday in Hawaii." He then says, "I realized one morning that I did not want to haul my desktop and extra monitors around to every hotel for editing with the Adobe suite." Well, fair enough, so this laptop would be great for him and anyone else on a 6-month video-editing holiday moving from hotel to hotel. But most people tend to stay in one place when working for 6 months, or if they're moving from hotel to hotel, they probably don't need 2 monitors.
If he finds a market for this laptop design, good on him, but to answer the headline's question: no, it doesn't make sense for the rest of us.
Your computers will be broadcasting their MAC addresses in all the packets they send, so it takes just one captured packet to obtain a valid MAC address that can be used to connect to your network. That's actually less secure than WEP, which requires thousands of packets to obtain a valid key. Not to mention more effort, since if someone legitimately wants to connect, you have to whitelist their MAC address.
You'd be better off using WPA - more secure, more convenient.
From the Qi-hardware wiki, one of the group's goals is to provide:
the proof that community development is superior to proprietary approaches
Well that's great, except it's 2011 and they've made a portable computer that lacks wifi. Do we really want people associating "open source" with "less capable"?
the NanoNote hand-held platform failed to get the attention of many due to its low specs and the lack of wireless connectivity.
Guess what? It still has low specs, and it still lacks wifi. I'd never heard of the NanoNote, and I'd never heard of 802.15.4. Now they're combined into a single product that no one will be interested in. I guess that's an improvement, right?
I'm struggling to understand what these researchers have made, exactly. They certainly didn't invent phase-change memory, and the article states that this "Moneta" uses memory modules from Micron Technology. The wikipedia article mentions Samsung started shipping modules last year, ready for use in mobile applications. So clearly PCM has been available for some time. So perhaps Moneta is an actual device available for end users? That would be exciting!
Swanson hopes to build the second generation of the Moneta storage device in the next six to nine months and says the technology could be ready for market in just a few years as the underlying phase-change memory technology improves.
So it's not ready then. I really cannot see what these guys have achieved.
Come on, get your buzzwords right. Cloud computing is when much of the processing is done on remote servers (the "cloud"). Distributed computing is when the processing is done by ordinary desktops worldwide. That's what this is. The article makes this mistake several times, but it's not entirely their fault. The system is called the "Nereus V Cloud" despite clearly being a distributed computing program.
Using coloured lights and human eyesight to coordinate vehicles raises concerns about the safety of such systems, would you trust Joe Sixpack to drive your car?
Humans are fallible, and hundreds die on the road every day. Would we accept a computer system that causes hundreds of people to die? Of course not. So any computer system that's considered capable of driving a car will almost certainly be safer than a human driver. Probably a thousand times safer.
And the death of bin Laden is no exception. Those 3000 tweets/second are not carrying "breaking news" of any kind; they are people making jokes, political talking-points or simply repeating rumours and hearsay. Even the article states that most of the tweets came after the news appeared on TV.
Fact is, the overwhelming majority of people on twitter have no first-hand experience of the event, and those that do have first-hand experience are not about to leak any details of it. All the good information is collected on websites like the BBC, not on Twitter, so if I want news, I'll stick with a proper news source.
The summary and article seem to be implying this is more clever than it is.
overloading the neural networks connected to the retina with a brief flash of high-intensity light. 'It's the inverse of blindness
No, I think it's just blindness, albeit temporary. You're not really "overloading the neural networks", you're just flashing a bright light in someone's eyes. Unless you're doing something very clever with that flash of light that makes it more effective than just a normal bright light...
The device consists of a 75-watt lamp, combined with optics that collect and focus the visible light into a targeted beam which can be aimed like a flashlight
Okay, nothing particularly clever there. He's invented a "really bright flashlight". No surprises that it can be aimed like one!
Recovery time ranges from 'seconds to 20 minutes,'
So, it's... unreliable?
Look, I'm no fan of tasers, but at least they do their job pretty effectively. You can't move after being hit by one. This thing doesn't stop you madly swinging your arms about until your eyesight comes back, which I think will be a pretty common response.
The internet makes it much easier to find (mis)information about "demonic possession" and therefore increase the demand for exorcists. I think it goes something like this: 1. Fundamentalist parent is concerned that teenage daughter's behaviour indicates she's dabbling in the occult, or demonic possession, 2. Parent looks up symptoms of demonic possession on the internet, finds other fundamentalist parents who describe similar symptoms ("Once I smelled alcohol on my daughter's breath!"), thus confirming parent's fears, 3. Parent calls for an exorcist, 4. Profit (for some).
I find that Experts-Exchange is all but gone from my (IT-related) search results, supplanted entirely by StackOverflow. I think EE were in trouble even without this Google feature.
Seeing inside a cell directly without dying.. could revolutionize the way cells are studied
I work in a biology lab, and looking directly into a cell is one of my most dangerous tasks. Lesser men have been struck dead by viewing the horrors that lurk beneath the cell membrane. A microscope that lets us look inside a cell without dying would revolutionise biology forever!
From this photo here you can see that the logo for thunderbolt is a commonly-used symbol for electricity. It certainly looks as if that's where the power supply is supposed to plug in. I think it's a poor choice of name and symbol, compared to Light Peak.
You're suggesting they will encourage people to use their phones to report potholes, and then issue speeding fines using the collected data? I'm sure that'll really encourage participation in the program.
The government has more efficient ways of oppressing you than asking you to opt-in to a pothole-reporting system. Put down the tinfoil hat.
Do you really think that Lightsquared will be allowed to continue if their transmitters are found to interfere with GPS? The FCC will revoke their license in a heartbeat. That might result in a lawsuit from Lightsquared but the rest of us will forget about it and get back to using our GPS-enabled 4G phones.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if we'll see a resurgence in comic books / graphic novels. There'll always be a market for physical comic books but I think there's a much larger audience out there who would enjoy the stories but don't want to spend the money collecting them. I know there's iPad apps for that sort of thing but I think a colour Kindle is much more appealing, and the 4096-colour range of this E Ink screen would be well suited to the artwork style.
I wonder if this will end up hurting Apple because it will start people thinking that if Apple is trying tactics like this to stop sales of the Galaxy Tab, then the Galaxy Tab must offer serious competition to the iPad. Apple normally don't resort to legal tactics to stop competitors since they can usually rely on producing a better product.
The fact that the display booth at IFA was hastily covered up just smells of desperation on Apple's part. Of course it's more complicated than that, but most people won't see it that way. I suspect this battle will just result in bad PR for Apple, and extra publicity for Samsung.
Unfortunately, the recipe itself is behind a paywall. Any chance of posting it here?
This is correct. We banned automatic weapons in 1996 and look at us now: data limits on all our broadband plans. I hope this can be a lesson to the rest of the world.
Oh come on.
With a political message and marches in the streets, not blatant theft of consumer goods. To illustrate:
This is a political riot.
This is people stealing things because they want to.
The guys in this article started facebook pages called "Smash dwn in Northwich Town" (sic) and "The Warrington Riots". There is nothing political about what went on in the UK.
Welcome to British youth culture.
In the article a researcher says, "You can still do a lot of statistical functions and perform analysis like logistical regression, which is used to do things like predict how likely a person is to have a heart attack."
Okay, but statistical analysis like that isn't particularly computationally-intensive. At some point, an authorised person is going to look at the data (of course), and they can perform the statistical analysis then. That's the way it's done now.
I just don't see how valuable any analysis will be if the system doesn't have an understanding about what the data represents. If it's all just numbers, then all you can do is perform arithmetic, which doesn't exactly require a server in the cloud.
While I don't mean to belittle the work done by these scientists, I want to point out a common mistake used in science journalism - referring to GFP as "glowing". It does not glow, in any sense of the word. It fluoresces, which means you need to shine blue or UV light on it and examine it through a filter that removes the incident light, and then it will appear green. It can appear quite amazing under those conditions, but you can't take this dog out for a walk at night and see it emitting green light. You won't even see it reflecting green light, unless you take him near a UV source.
There is a biological technique that does cause things to glow, but it's more complicated than a single protein so is not as commonly used as GFP.
No, they don't make sense, because you can buy a 20" screen for $100.
The market for a dual-screen laptop is basically the intersection of these groups:
1. Those who absolutely need two monitors when travelling,
2. Those who aren't willing to pack a second monitor with them but are will to pack a 4.5kg laptop, and
3. Those who are moving around too much to justify buying a second monitor at their destination.
I think that's a pretty small market for an expensive device.
The article says the designer came up with the idea "when he needed a video editing workstation on a 6 month working holiday in Hawaii."
He then says, "I realized one morning that I did not want to haul my desktop and extra monitors around to every hotel for editing with the Adobe suite."
Well, fair enough, so this laptop would be great for him and anyone else on a 6-month video-editing holiday moving from hotel to hotel. But most people tend to stay in one place when working for 6 months, or if they're moving from hotel to hotel, they probably don't need 2 monitors.
If he finds a market for this laptop design, good on him, but to answer the headline's question: no, it doesn't make sense for the rest of us.
In their defence, the "snobby U of M rich guy in a turtleneck" direction is usually quite profitable.
Your computers will be broadcasting their MAC addresses in all the packets they send, so it takes just one captured packet to obtain a valid MAC address that can be used to connect to your network. That's actually less secure than WEP, which requires thousands of packets to obtain a valid key. Not to mention more effort, since if someone legitimately wants to connect, you have to whitelist their MAC address.
You'd be better off using WPA - more secure, more convenient.
What's wrong with simply saying "online"? They're putting the patient records online. Medical staff will be able to access them through the internet.
Alright, now I'll hit the submit button and send this text to the cloud!
From the Qi-hardware wiki, one of the group's goals is to provide:
Well that's great, except it's 2011 and they've made a portable computer that lacks wifi. Do we really want people associating "open source" with "less capable"?
Guess what? It still has low specs, and it still lacks wifi. I'd never heard of the NanoNote, and I'd never heard of 802.15.4. Now they're combined into a single product that no one will be interested in. I guess that's an improvement, right?
Why detect the iPhone? Wouldn't it make more sense to constantly emit the infra-red signal so that it affects all iPhones?
I'm struggling to understand what these researchers have made, exactly. They certainly didn't invent phase-change memory, and the article states that this "Moneta" uses memory modules from Micron Technology. The wikipedia article mentions Samsung started shipping modules last year, ready for use in mobile applications. So clearly PCM has been available for some time. So perhaps Moneta is an actual device available for end users? That would be exciting!
So it's not ready then. I really cannot see what these guys have achieved.
Come on, get your buzzwords right. Cloud computing is when much of the processing is done on remote servers (the "cloud"). Distributed computing is when the processing is done by ordinary desktops worldwide. That's what this is. The article makes this mistake several times, but it's not entirely their fault. The system is called the "Nereus V Cloud" despite clearly being a distributed computing program.
How about this:
Humans are fallible, and hundreds die on the road every day. Would we accept a computer system that causes hundreds of people to die? Of course not. So any computer system that's considered capable of driving a car will almost certainly be safer than a human driver. Probably a thousand times safer.
And the death of bin Laden is no exception. Those 3000 tweets/second are not carrying "breaking news" of any kind; they are people making jokes, political talking-points or simply repeating rumours and hearsay. Even the article states that most of the tweets came after the news appeared on TV.
Fact is, the overwhelming majority of people on twitter have no first-hand experience of the event, and those that do have first-hand experience are not about to leak any details of it. All the good information is collected on websites like the BBC, not on Twitter, so if I want news, I'll stick with a proper news source.
The summary and article seem to be implying this is more clever than it is.
No, I think it's just blindness, albeit temporary. You're not really "overloading the neural networks", you're just flashing a bright light in someone's eyes. Unless you're doing something very clever with that flash of light that makes it more effective than just a normal bright light...
Okay, nothing particularly clever there. He's invented a "really bright flashlight". No surprises that it can be aimed like one!
So, it's... unreliable?
Look, I'm no fan of tasers, but at least they do their job pretty effectively. You can't move after being hit by one. This thing doesn't stop you madly swinging your arms about until your eyesight comes back, which I think will be a pretty common response.
The internet makes it much easier to find (mis)information about "demonic possession" and therefore increase the demand for exorcists.
I think it goes something like this:
1. Fundamentalist parent is concerned that teenage daughter's behaviour indicates she's dabbling in the occult, or demonic possession,
2. Parent looks up symptoms of demonic possession on the internet, finds other fundamentalist parents who describe similar symptoms ("Once I smelled alcohol on my daughter's breath!"), thus confirming parent's fears,
3. Parent calls for an exorcist,
4. Profit (for some).
I find that Experts-Exchange is all but gone from my (IT-related) search results, supplanted entirely by StackOverflow. I think EE were in trouble even without this Google feature.
I work in a biology lab, and looking directly into a cell is one of my most dangerous tasks. Lesser men have been struck dead by viewing the horrors that lurk beneath the cell membrane. A microscope that lets us look inside a cell without dying would revolutionise biology forever!
From this photo here you can see that the logo for thunderbolt is a commonly-used symbol for electricity. It certainly looks as if that's where the power supply is supposed to plug in. I think it's a poor choice of name and symbol, compared to Light Peak.
You're suggesting they will encourage people to use their phones to report potholes, and then issue speeding fines using the collected data? I'm sure that'll really encourage participation in the program.
The government has more efficient ways of oppressing you than asking you to opt-in to a pothole-reporting system. Put down the tinfoil hat.
Do you really think that Lightsquared will be allowed to continue if their transmitters are found to interfere with GPS? The FCC will revoke their license in a heartbeat. That might result in a lawsuit from Lightsquared but the rest of us will forget about it and get back to using our GPS-enabled 4G phones.