Being a developer of the touchtable, I can tell you that the article is backwards. You spread your fingers to zoom in, and move them together to zoom out.
This looks almost exactly like an extension to Squeak EToys. Very similar interface. Heck, the files in the.zip are even similar to what you would find with a Squeak distribution: An.exe (the runtime) and a.image (the content)
Though I'm struggling to see any mention of Squeak anywhere on the pages. Maybe I'm wrong...
Yes the textured 3D buildings are nice, though Google does have a lot of these in its 3D Warehouse, it just needs some integration. However, where Microsoft is lacking is the rest. All the text, road markers, etc.. are rasterized on the images and are not overlaid as vector graphics. Therefore if the detail level of the imagery isn't great, or you are looking at something partially in the distance (so the level of detail is reduced), you cannot read any of the text. I think in this case, Google is leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft. Of course, all of the imagery is just Virtual Earth 2D rendered on a globe, so I'm sure Microsoft will improve the 3D part of this, since I'm sure using the 2D imagery was a very fast way to get some beta out the door that shows off the 3D buildings.
Ok, everyone realizes this was recorded in February right? Last I checked its the end of October. Jeff Han has been covered I don't know how many times on how many sites (probably on Slashdot too - haven't checked the archives yet).
There's no such thing as no interface btw. Yes, you can remove a lot of the mode-switching with different gestures, but there is always going to be some sort of interface to allow you to access other functions. In my mind, once you get above about 4 or 5 gestures, things start to become confusing for people again - what was that gesture again? Thus defeating the purpose of no interface.
Well, it seems like every version of Firefox still has issues with espn.com. Its definitely the most reliable site to crash and/or generate 100% cpu time on any recent version (1.5.x and 2.0). Just go browse to one of the scoreboard pages a few times. It really likes to do this on Mac.
So I guess it looks like Mac dropped the video out port on the 15" MacBookPro. I currenly have a 15" powerbook, and I like hooking it up to my TV for watching encoded QT movies or TV shows or whatever. I guess I won't be able to hook the new one up to my older TV anymore.
I'm currently setting up a VoIP system for a very small office (5-10 people).
What we've got is an Asterisk PBX setup by a company called Fonality.
They did a pretty good job doing the initial setup. They will set up everything depending on your outbound config (T1 or whatever) and even set up phones. They can do remote support which I've found tends to be very quick.
They also have a web-based front end for configuration of simple tasks, (e.g. extensions, call menu, etc..), though I don't use it and prefer to edit the asterisk config myself (their config is broken out into lots of small includes, which makes it a bit harder at first to understand the dialplan flow).
The Cisco 7960 phones are great if you have the budget for them. I believe they run around $400 each at the moment. I haven't tried any of the "softphone" solutions yet to see if they are any good.
I would definitely go with a real VoIP provider and not try and use the Voice-Over-My-Internet-Connection route. QoS is a huge deal. We are using MCI at the moment, and things seem to be working out decently well. One thing to watch out for is that if you want to save money and split a T1 (1/2 voice, 1/2 data), I've found that MCI (and maybe others) do not offer Caller ID on the voice side since it is not a full PRI line (we are moving to a full PRI line very soon).
Also, getting a split T1 means that you need an external TSU which is around an additional $1000 up-front hardware cost.
Its not that Linus wasn't happy with the BK licensing, its that there were issues involved with developers (specificially a contractor under OSDL) trying to to reverse-engineer some of the features in BK. Even though an agreement was reached that this developer would stop doing this, apparently he continued. Larry McVoy (and BitKeeper) responded by saying that they were removing the Free BK license, and employees of OSDL (which Linus is) were not eligible for a free license under any conditions.
At this point Linus really didn't have a choice whether to switch SCM systems or not.
Kerneltrap story. Read the 2nd paragraph under "Free Versus Free".
I believe darcs ended up being slower than arch on a tree the size of the kernel.
See LKML SCM thread and reply messages for some concerns about darcs.
I personally have an RSA SecurID that I use for work and I love it. I think its a really great system and it meets our authentication needs. In case you aren't familiar (or haven't read other posts), SecurID is a fob that can put on your keychain that lasts I think 5 or so years and gives you a new 6 digit token each minute. This combined with your own passphrase authenticates.
The fob uses time-based encryption against the auth server so that it knows at a given point in time what the 6 digit number should be.
Actually, wiring harnesses are pretty damn heavy. I know that a wiring harness of a Cadillac Escalade weighs in at somewhere around 100-110lbs for the complete harness.
My main use for distcc currently is building software for my powerbook. I do a lot of work with Qt on both Linux and Mac, and lets just say Qt compiles very slow on my powerbook (which is an older 800 mhz G4). Also, I've had to build all of Qt on this machine because the fink packages are old and don't even use the Mac version (they use the X11 version which really sucks and makes apps on Macs look like crap).
So at work we have a couple dual G5s I use, and also a few Linux machines which I've built darwin cross-compilers for (yes its a pain in the ass).
What a lot of people don't realize is that there are already immense problems with current voting technologies especially punchcard and optical scanning ballots. This is mostly due to the fact that very antiquated machines are used to process the ballots. Think of it this way: Say you have some number of feeders into 1 machine that reads punchcard ballots. The feeders end up feeding faster than the machine can handle so after some period of time, the machine gets jammed. Voter personnel then remove all ballots that were in the machine to be counted and some that "might have been counted" (since they don't know exactly on which ballot the machine jammed), and then they insert a control card which essentially tells the machine "don't count ballots who's numbers you've already seen, etc.." And then they start feeding the ballots again. Now imagine that this happens every 15 minutes on average. The amount of error that accumulates is phenominal.
They continue this process until they get some number of runs that agree, and then publish the result.
A friend of mine who has done extensive research into this at grad school, once requested the datapoints for all ballots tabulated in prior elections.
In a sample of 150,000 ballots, she received around 760,000 data points, which equates to 5 runs of the ballots though the machine....but where did the extra 10,000 come from?
I believe in her research she determined that there already was a 5-10% error in current voting tabulations.
As I just posted (oops). The XBox2 will not be backwards compatible with the XBox unless an emulator is written. The XBox2 is based on a completely different architecture (PowerPC vs. Intel).
One reason people might stay away from the XBox2 is that there will be no backwards compatibility, therefore you must have a lineup of studios and game designers to have titles for your machine immediately. You can't phase in the games over a more gradual period of time because the older games can be played on the new console. Who would want to buy a console that will only have 4 games for it total?
Note: I don't remember if Sony said the PS3 was going to be backwards compatible to the PS2.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone use a modified Range Rover. They've been using these for god knows how long to navigate terrain in Africa on safaris and other ventures where there are 0 roads.
And another thing, stop putting a damn space in Caltech. Its 1 word when written like that.
Squeak is not a childish language by any stretch of the imagination. There are parts of Squeak that present themselves as childish (etoys for example) but this is one little part of Squeak and was primarily designed for children. The underlying foundations of Squeak are really quite full-featured. I have seen incredible apps written entirely in Squeak. I suspect that the author of the question only used etoys and that was it. There is a lot more worth looking at.
Followup: I guess it does provide a ftp/web server, but I think I could get a suitable box set up in an hour with all those things with at least triple the disk space.
I'm wondering what's the point of such a small drive as NAS? Is it when all your machines are filled up with HDs and you can't add any more? I mean, 80GB? There are firewire drives that are more than double that size.
Am I missing some crucial point here? I understand that to add more storage you might have to take a server down, etc.. But I guess when I see how much my company uses disk space, a 80GB anything would be filled probably within a month - seems like you would have money better spent on bigger drives.
Slashdot Mirror
Being a developer of the touchtable, I can tell you that the article is backwards.
You spread your fingers to zoom in, and move them together to zoom out.
Everyone keeps forgetting that TouchTable, Inc. already sells a 'multi-touch' table with a real application (that is actually being used!).
This looks almost exactly like an extension to Squeak EToys. .zip are even similar to what you would find with a Squeak distribution: .exe (the runtime) and a .image (the content)
Very similar interface.
Heck, the files in the
An
Though I'm struggling to see any mention of Squeak anywhere on the pages. Maybe I'm wrong...
Yes the textured 3D buildings are nice, though Google does have a lot of these in its 3D Warehouse, it just needs some integration.
However, where Microsoft is lacking is the rest.
All the text, road markers, etc.. are rasterized on the images and are not overlaid as vector graphics. Therefore if the detail level of the imagery isn't great, or you are looking at something partially in the distance (so the level of detail is reduced), you cannot read any of the text.
I think in this case, Google is leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft.
Of course, all of the imagery is just Virtual Earth 2D rendered on a globe, so I'm sure Microsoft will improve the 3D part of this, since I'm sure using the 2D imagery was a very fast way to get some beta out the door that shows off the 3D buildings.
Ok, everyone realizes this was recorded in February right?
Last I checked its the end of October.
Jeff Han has been covered I don't know how many times on how many sites (probably on Slashdot too - haven't checked the archives yet).
There's no such thing as no interface btw.
Yes, you can remove a lot of the mode-switching with different gestures, but there is always going to be some sort of interface to allow you to access other functions.
In my mind, once you get above about 4 or 5 gestures, things start to become confusing for people again - what was that gesture again? Thus defeating the purpose of no interface.
Well, it seems like every version of Firefox still has issues with espn.com.
Its definitely the most reliable site to crash and/or generate 100% cpu time on any recent version (1.5.x and 2.0).
Just go browse to one of the scoreboard pages a few times. It really likes to do this on Mac.
So I guess it looks like Mac dropped the video out port on the 15" MacBookPro.
I currenly have a 15" powerbook, and I like hooking it up to my TV for watching encoded QT movies or TV shows or whatever.
I guess I won't be able to hook the new one up to my older TV anymore.
I'm currently setting up a VoIP system for a very small office (5-10 people). What we've got is an Asterisk PBX setup by a company called Fonality. They did a pretty good job doing the initial setup. They will set up everything depending on your outbound config (T1 or whatever) and even set up phones. They can do remote support which I've found tends to be very quick.
They also have a web-based front end for configuration of simple tasks, (e.g. extensions, call menu, etc..), though I don't use it and prefer to edit the asterisk config myself (their config is broken out into lots of small includes, which makes it a bit harder at first to understand the dialplan flow).
The Cisco 7960 phones are great if you have the budget for them. I believe they run around $400 each at the moment. I haven't tried any of the "softphone" solutions yet to see if they are any good.
I would definitely go with a real VoIP provider and not try and use the Voice-Over-My-Internet-Connection route. QoS is a huge deal. We are using MCI at the moment, and things seem to be working out decently well. One thing to watch out for is that if you want to save money and split a T1 (1/2 voice, 1/2 data), I've found that MCI (and maybe others) do not offer Caller ID on the voice side since it is not a full PRI line (we are moving to a full PRI line very soon). Also, getting a split T1 means that you need an external TSU which is around an additional $1000 up-front hardware cost.
Its not that Linus wasn't happy with the BK licensing, its that there were issues involved with developers (specificially a contractor under OSDL) trying to to reverse-engineer some of the features in BK.
Even though an agreement was reached that this developer would stop doing this, apparently he continued.
Larry McVoy (and BitKeeper) responded by saying that they were removing the Free BK license, and employees of OSDL (which Linus is) were not eligible for a free license under any conditions.
At this point Linus really didn't have a choice whether to switch SCM systems or not.
Kerneltrap story.
Read the 2nd paragraph under "Free Versus Free".
I believe darcs ended up being slower than arch on a tree the size of the kernel. See LKML SCM thread and reply messages for some concerns about darcs.
I personally have an RSA SecurID that I use for work and I love it. I think its a really great system and it meets our authentication needs. In case you aren't familiar (or haven't read other posts), SecurID is a fob that can put on your keychain that lasts I think 5 or so years and gives you a new 6 digit token each minute. This combined with your own passphrase authenticates.
The fob uses time-based encryption against the auth server so that it knows at a given point in time what the 6 digit number should be.
What's the power consumption of the DS?
I believe the USB spec allows for a maximum 500mA from a USB port.
Actually, wiring harnesses are pretty damn heavy.
I know that a wiring harness of a Cadillac Escalade weighs in at somewhere around 100-110lbs for the complete harness.
Reducing weight is a big deal for automakers.
Hell at least someone got it.
Ugliest.....Thing......Ever!
The IBM RISC processor that you refer to is actually going to manifest itself as dual Power5s in the Xbox2.
My main use for distcc currently is building software for my powerbook.
I do a lot of work with Qt on both Linux and Mac, and lets just say Qt compiles very slow on my powerbook (which is an older 800 mhz G4).
Also, I've had to build all of Qt on this machine because the fink packages are old and don't even use the Mac version (they use the X11 version which really sucks and makes apps on Macs look like crap).
So at work we have a couple dual G5s I use, and also a few Linux machines which I've built darwin cross-compilers for (yes its a pain in the ass).
What a lot of people don't realize is that there are already immense problems with current voting technologies especially punchcard and optical scanning ballots. This is mostly due to the fact that very antiquated machines are used to process the ballots. Think of it this way:
Say you have some number of feeders into 1 machine that reads punchcard ballots. The feeders end up feeding faster than the machine can handle so after some period of time, the machine gets jammed. Voter personnel then remove all ballots that were in the machine to be counted and some that "might have been counted" (since they don't know exactly on which ballot the machine jammed), and then they insert a control card which essentially tells the machine "don't count ballots who's numbers you've already seen, etc.."
And then they start feeding the ballots again.
Now imagine that this happens every 15 minutes on average. The amount of error that accumulates is phenominal.
They continue this process until they get some number of runs that agree, and then publish the result.
A friend of mine who has done extensive research into this at grad school, once requested the datapoints for all ballots tabulated in prior elections.
In a sample of 150,000 ballots, she received around 760,000 data points, which equates to 5 runs of the ballots though the machine....but where did the extra 10,000 come from?
I believe in her research she determined that there already was a 5-10% error in current voting tabulations.
As I just posted (oops).
The XBox2 will not be backwards compatible with the XBox unless an emulator is written.
The XBox2 is based on a completely different architecture (PowerPC vs. Intel).
One reason people might stay away from the XBox2 is that there will be no backwards compatibility, therefore you must have a lineup of studios and game designers to have titles for your machine immediately. You can't phase in the games over a more gradual period of time because the older games can be played on the new console.
Who would want to buy a console that will only have 4 games for it total?
Note: I don't remember if Sony said the PS3 was going to be backwards compatible to the PS2.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone use a modified Range Rover. They've been using these for god knows how long to navigate terrain in Africa on safaris and other ventures where there are 0 roads.
And another thing, stop putting a damn space in Caltech. Its 1 word when written like that.
Imagine your display goes fuzzy and blurred in the middle of a good film.
Or it just starts out blurry on that brand new 60" plasma.
Squeak is not a childish language by any stretch of the imagination. There are parts of Squeak that present themselves as childish (etoys for example) but this is one little part of Squeak and was primarily designed for children.
The underlying foundations of Squeak are really quite full-featured. I have seen incredible apps written entirely in Squeak.
I suspect that the author of the question only used etoys and that was it. There is a lot more worth looking at.
Followup:
I guess it does provide a ftp/web server, but I think I could get a suitable box set up in an hour with all those things with at least triple the disk space.
I'm wondering what's the point of such a small drive as NAS? Is it when all your machines are filled up with HDs and you can't add any more? I mean, 80GB? There are firewire drives that are more than double that size.
Am I missing some crucial point here?
I understand that to add more storage you might have to take a server down, etc.. But I guess when I see how much my company uses disk space, a 80GB anything would be filled probably within a month - seems like you would have money better spent on bigger drives.