Reread the grandparent. I think you missed the point, in that the GP agrees with your sentiment. The post basically said it was not a bad thing that the images were pulled, not that the GP thought the images should be available.
You have heard of "The Crow" right? Brandon Lee died while filming the movie and they finished his scenes with a stand-in. It's fairly obvious which scenes because you never get a close shot of his face, but it's been happening for at least 14 years now (that was 1994.) They did the same thing with Marlon Brando in the new Superman Returns movie only that was all done digitally.
I don't think we'll see any drastic changes in the business model though, because hollywood will continue to use high actor salaries as justification for ridiculous budgets which in turn are used to justify ridiculous ticket prices.
In the end, the only thing that will change the status quo is consumers boycotting all movies.
One with a fairly known and characterized course, like pancreatic cancer. Doesn't hurt much at all, and then one dies usually within 6 months after diagnoses. Five year survival is less than 5%.
Hell, if I had something like that, I'd probably volunteer. If you think pancreatic cancer doesn't hurt much, you're sadly misinformed.
I also don't see much point in sending someone who's dying on a trip to "colonize" another planet. At least send one or two healthy people who will be able to effectively return some sort of information once they arrive.
US support for 3G networks is highly limited compared to that of Europe or Asia, as far as I understand. Why would Apple bother supporting a network that has only limited use in their primary target market? It seems fairly obvious to me why they didn't add 3G support for this first generation.
I'll be surprised if any $2k-3k laptop changes the current laptop market. There are simply too many low priced laptops out there and the air doesn't really cater to what most consumers want right now.
My point is that for whatever reason, slashdot thinks geeks only fall into the programmer/recluse category, which simply isn't true. "us geeks" fall into all categories, social and non-social by nature.
I'll also say that being "smarter, as a whole, than the average person, which doesn't help our communication skills" is complete crap. Acting like you're smarter than everyone else is a problem for communication, but if you are, in fact, smarter than the average person you should be smart enough to compensate and learn how to communicate effectively.
I agree completely with not believing recruiters. I was amazed at the number of people in basic training who joined the military and didn't even know they could have a guaranteed job (or at least a guaranteed chance to train for a specific job) and just let the military decide where to stick them regardless of their own interests.
I think you've hit on why this will affect sales of Sony, Apple, and IBM's subnotebooks. The Apple and IBMs are simply too big to truly fit the category and Sony's, while very nice, are ridiculously expensive.
I would love to have my 12" iBook back, but the 13" macBook is still okay. I'll never buy a bigger computer again though, that's for sure. I'm seriously considering the eee now, for my general surfing and text needs and save the mac for when I need to run illustrator and the like.
I'm not sure why people think this won't work for video. Those are essentially the exact specs of Myth TV box and it works just fine. I have 2 tv tuner cards and a tvout video card (128 MB video RAM I believe). The processor is a P3 900 and it has 512 of PC133 (I think) RAM. It does just fine recording stuff to DVD, encoding the video (by the processor- not the tv tuners) and isn't ridiculously slow.
These machines will be more than enough for most people and just fine for a whole lot more, if they can get any real momentum in the market.
Other than your gaming needs, why wouldn't any of the low end machines do what you need? So you pay an extra $30 for some extra RAM to support the bloat that is OpenOffice, but you're still far below what you would pay for a "gaming" machine. Other than that, I didn't see anything you listed that is different than you can do with your phone except DVD burning, which won't be difficult on the machines listed, though possibly a little slow.
Who cares? Seriously, most of the world doesn't do anything with their computers other than email and surfing the internet, maybe saving some pictures from that new digital camera they got for Christmas. Computers no longer need to keep making "radical, rapid generational change" because people simply don't use them to their capacity now. People haven't kept buying new microwaves because they realized that anything new still did the same thing for them-cook a hot dog in 30 seconds. People will realize the same thing about computers in the very near future. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the life of a product or a particular technology. There will still be plenty of room for niche gamer markets, or high end machines for video rendering or big number crunching, just as there are today. To say that a larger base low-end will "stagnate" the high end is simply not realistic unless the uses for the high-end go away or the low end becomes so good that there's no justification for high-end. If that's his argument, I still see no problem with it.
According to this web site PT standards haven't gone up at all in recent history since those are about the same (roughly) as when I was in the military in the early 90s. I was in the Air Force, but trained with all services during tech school so I was quite familiar with Army standards of the time. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/army/a/afpt.htm
For soldiers 22-26 it's 40 push ups (in 2 minutes), 50 sit ups (in 2 minutes) and 16:36 time for the 2 mile run. Those values only get easier for older soldiers. If you think "most slashdotters" wouldn't make it in the door, I think you're sadly mistaken. Those are particularly easy values for anyone remotely fit to attain, and not particularly difficult for many people who aren't that fit. Obviously there is a contingent of folks who are sadly out of shape, for whatever reason, that it would be difficult for but it's far from "most" even in the slashdot community, I'd guess.
Why is it that geeks think of themselves in this regard? Seriously, not all intelligent, geeky people are slobs who can't keep regular hours. Being a geek doesn't mean you shun daylight or social interaction and definitely doesn't mean you shun discipline, despite what movies and some programmers might have you think. If you think it doesn't take discipline to work through a problem, methodically, deliberately, and to conclusion, be it coding, hardware, or some combination, I'd say you need to rethink your concept of discipline. A disciplined mind is just as important to the modern military as a disciplined body.
I'd also wager a large number of slashdot readers are either current or former military members from one country or another and are quite comfortable with the implied disciplines and standards that go along with that.
Just because a noticeable portion of geeks are actually similar to what you think doesn't mean that "most geeks" are and doesn't mean that even if they are as you suggest they can't be trained to fit within a more standard mold of military member as well.
That said, I wouldn't recommend this job to anyone who doesn't already want to be part of the military because it's not going to be nearly as glamorous as the recruiting posters would have you believe. Take it from a former Air Force member, the images you're seeing on tv for this job aren't the reality.
Why use your real (full) name as an email address with google? I have several gmail accounts and only one of them has even part of my name in it. Yes, I suppose they could scan my actual email content to find the other data if they wanted, but I don't use any of their other services because I don't really like them.
I'm not saying this concept shouldn't scare the hell out of people, I just think there are some fairly simple ways to help protect yourself from too much data consolidation.
What's wrong with doing it yourself? You keep all your own records. You can keep them in hard copy or digitally and take them wherever you need. You'll also have access to them whenever you need. Yes, difficult in emergencies, but certainly not impossible.
I think the point was that you shouldn't trust any company, person, whatever, with all of your medical information. Google might not be as bad as MS but they're still a corporation beholden to stock holders, and thus at some point will lose (assuming they haven't already) the moniker of a "good corporation".
Seriously, don't trust any large corporation. Trust individual people, not corporate entities.
You might not need it to your mouse, but would you want it to your billion inch HD plazma hanging on the wall so you don't need to run cables? There are plenty of uses for this. No, none of them are necessary and it's certainly more expensive than cables, for now, but more uses will present themselves in the future too. People didn't used to have any need of a home computer, but that didn't stop the industry from developing such that it's considered a standard appliance in most houses (in developed countries) these days.
The fact that the folks in the article actually have something that works. Vubiq says they have something but it's larger, and costs $12500 for a "development system", whatever that means, vice $10 for the one linked in the original article. All the other links you provided are still working on designs and haven't proven any design at all.
Of course they're going to be expensive in small quantities, but if this takes off, that price will come down drastically, to something more like $1-2 per chip, which will only increase usage. $10 isn't particularly expensive for cutting edge technology like this to begin with, so it really won't make much of a difference.
I think you'll also find most bluetooth receivers at the $19 price range are pieces of shit that aren't worth the money, and you'll have roughly 1000 times the speed or whatever? (I don't know the max speed of bluetooth but I think it's in the single digit Mbs range.)
Wouldn't that defeat his position though? I mean a blog catering to advertisement that bitches about the media being driven by the money certainly seems hypocritical to say the least.
(I haven't read the blog, just the snippets people have posted on slashdot.)
Do you have any references for your LEDs? Seriously, I'm planning to build one of these just to see if the Slashdotters are correct, or if it really works.
I don't know where, but someone posted a link to an image that showed a 1:160 gear in the bottom of the lamp that converted the spinning torque of the drive rod to spin a generator that provides the actual electricity, similar to a bicycle dynamo lighting system, from what I can tell. I don't know if that refutes your power concerns or not, to be honest, because I haven't run the numbers at all. Hopefully I'll have a few minutes this evening to see if it works out correctly, once I find the other link again.
You're right and I worded my last post incorrectly. What I meant was "no continuous human power or external electrical source (including chemical battery) is required." The two are very different, of course, but my mind made the automatic jump to fill in the blanks where perhaps it shouldn't have.
Slashdot Mirror
Reread the grandparent. I think you missed the point, in that the GP agrees with your sentiment. The post basically said it was not a bad thing that the images were pulled, not that the GP thought the images should be available.
You have heard of "The Crow" right? Brandon Lee died while filming the movie and they finished his scenes with a stand-in. It's fairly obvious which scenes because you never get a close shot of his face, but it's been happening for at least 14 years now (that was 1994.) They did the same thing with Marlon Brando in the new Superman Returns movie only that was all done digitally.
I don't think we'll see any drastic changes in the business model though, because hollywood will continue to use high actor salaries as justification for ridiculous budgets which in turn are used to justify ridiculous ticket prices.
In the end, the only thing that will change the status quo is consumers boycotting all movies.
Hell, if I had something like that, I'd probably volunteer. If you think pancreatic cancer doesn't hurt much, you're sadly misinformed.
I also don't see much point in sending someone who's dying on a trip to "colonize" another planet. At least send one or two healthy people who will be able to effectively return some sort of information once they arrive.
US support for 3G networks is highly limited compared to that of Europe or Asia, as far as I understand. Why would Apple bother supporting a network that has only limited use in their primary target market? It seems fairly obvious to me why they didn't add 3G support for this first generation.
I'll be surprised if any $2k-3k laptop changes the current laptop market. There are simply too many low priced laptops out there and the air doesn't really cater to what most consumers want right now.
My point is that for whatever reason, slashdot thinks geeks only fall into the programmer/recluse category, which simply isn't true. "us geeks" fall into all categories, social and non-social by nature.
I'll also say that being "smarter, as a whole, than the average person, which doesn't help our communication skills" is complete crap. Acting like you're smarter than everyone else is a problem for communication, but if you are, in fact, smarter than the average person you should be smart enough to compensate and learn how to communicate effectively.
I agree completely with not believing recruiters. I was amazed at the number of people in basic training who joined the military and didn't even know they could have a guaranteed job (or at least a guaranteed chance to train for a specific job) and just let the military decide where to stick them regardless of their own interests.
I think you've hit on why this will affect sales of Sony, Apple, and IBM's subnotebooks. The Apple and IBMs are simply too big to truly fit the category and Sony's, while very nice, are ridiculously expensive.
I would love to have my 12" iBook back, but the 13" macBook is still okay. I'll never buy a bigger computer again though, that's for sure. I'm seriously considering the eee now, for my general surfing and text needs and save the mac for when I need to run illustrator and the like.
I'm not sure why people think this won't work for video. Those are essentially the exact specs of Myth TV box and it works just fine. I have 2 tv tuner cards and a tvout video card (128 MB video RAM I believe). The processor is a P3 900 and it has 512 of PC133 (I think) RAM. It does just fine recording stuff to DVD, encoding the video (by the processor- not the tv tuners) and isn't ridiculously slow.
These machines will be more than enough for most people and just fine for a whole lot more, if they can get any real momentum in the market.
Other than your gaming needs, why wouldn't any of the low end machines do what you need? So you pay an extra $30 for some extra RAM to support the bloat that is OpenOffice, but you're still far below what you would pay for a "gaming" machine. Other than that, I didn't see anything you listed that is different than you can do with your phone except DVD burning, which won't be difficult on the machines listed, though possibly a little slow.
Who cares? Seriously, most of the world doesn't do anything with their computers other than email and surfing the internet, maybe saving some pictures from that new digital camera they got for Christmas. Computers no longer need to keep making "radical, rapid generational change" because people simply don't use them to their capacity now. People haven't kept buying new microwaves because they realized that anything new still did the same thing for them-cook a hot dog in 30 seconds. People will realize the same thing about computers in the very near future. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the life of a product or a particular technology. There will still be plenty of room for niche gamer markets, or high end machines for video rendering or big number crunching, just as there are today. To say that a larger base low-end will "stagnate" the high end is simply not realistic unless the uses for the high-end go away or the low end becomes so good that there's no justification for high-end. If that's his argument, I still see no problem with it.
iFarce
There, fixed that for you.
According to this web site PT standards haven't gone up at all in recent history since those are about the same (roughly) as when I was in the military in the early 90s. I was in the Air Force, but trained with all services during tech school so I was quite familiar with Army standards of the time. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/army/a/afpt.htm
For soldiers 22-26 it's 40 push ups (in 2 minutes), 50 sit ups (in 2 minutes) and 16:36 time for the 2 mile run. Those values only get easier for older soldiers. If you think "most slashdotters" wouldn't make it in the door, I think you're sadly mistaken. Those are particularly easy values for anyone remotely fit to attain, and not particularly difficult for many people who aren't that fit. Obviously there is a contingent of folks who are sadly out of shape, for whatever reason, that it would be difficult for but it's far from "most" even in the slashdot community, I'd guess.
Why is it that geeks think of themselves in this regard? Seriously, not all intelligent, geeky people are slobs who can't keep regular hours. Being a geek doesn't mean you shun daylight or social interaction and definitely doesn't mean you shun discipline, despite what movies and some programmers might have you think. If you think it doesn't take discipline to work through a problem, methodically, deliberately, and to conclusion, be it coding, hardware, or some combination, I'd say you need to rethink your concept of discipline. A disciplined mind is just as important to the modern military as a disciplined body.
I'd also wager a large number of slashdot readers are either current or former military members from one country or another and are quite comfortable with the implied disciplines and standards that go along with that.
Just because a noticeable portion of geeks are actually similar to what you think doesn't mean that "most geeks" are and doesn't mean that even if they are as you suggest they can't be trained to fit within a more standard mold of military member as well.
That said, I wouldn't recommend this job to anyone who doesn't already want to be part of the military because it's not going to be nearly as glamorous as the recruiting posters would have you believe. Take it from a former Air Force member, the images you're seeing on tv for this job aren't the reality.
Thank you. I was going to respond that the GP was completely wrong, but you did it better than I would have. someone please mod Parent up.
You've obviously never eaten kimchi. What goes in, must come back out, and it doesn't smell any better the second time around.
I love to eat the stuff, but it isn't a pleasant smell either way.
Why use your real (full) name as an email address with google? I have several gmail accounts and only one of them has even part of my name in it. Yes, I suppose they could scan my actual email content to find the other data if they wanted, but I don't use any of their other services because I don't really like them.
I'm not saying this concept shouldn't scare the hell out of people, I just think there are some fairly simple ways to help protect yourself from too much data consolidation.
What's wrong with doing it yourself? You keep all your own records. You can keep them in hard copy or digitally and take them wherever you need. You'll also have access to them whenever you need. Yes, difficult in emergencies, but certainly not impossible.
I think the point was that you shouldn't trust any company, person, whatever, with all of your medical information. Google might not be as bad as MS but they're still a corporation beholden to stock holders, and thus at some point will lose (assuming they haven't already) the moniker of a "good corporation".
Seriously, don't trust any large corporation. Trust individual people, not corporate entities.
You might not need it to your mouse, but would you want it to your billion inch HD plazma hanging on the wall so you don't need to run cables? There are plenty of uses for this. No, none of them are necessary and it's certainly more expensive than cables, for now, but more uses will present themselves in the future too. People didn't used to have any need of a home computer, but that didn't stop the industry from developing such that it's considered a standard appliance in most houses (in developed countries) these days.
The fact that the folks in the article actually have something that works. Vubiq says they have something but it's larger, and costs $12500 for a "development system", whatever that means, vice $10 for the one linked in the original article. All the other links you provided are still working on designs and haven't proven any design at all.
Of course they're going to be expensive in small quantities, but if this takes off, that price will come down drastically, to something more like $1-2 per chip, which will only increase usage. $10 isn't particularly expensive for cutting edge technology like this to begin with, so it really won't make much of a difference.
I think you'll also find most bluetooth receivers at the $19 price range are pieces of shit that aren't worth the money, and you'll have roughly 1000 times the speed or whatever? (I don't know the max speed of bluetooth but I think it's in the single digit Mbs range.)
Get back to your cube. And stay there!
Wouldn't that defeat his position though? I mean a blog catering to advertisement that bitches about the media being driven by the money certainly seems hypocritical to say the least.
(I haven't read the blog, just the snippets people have posted on slashdot.)
Do you have any references for your LEDs? Seriously, I'm planning to build one of these just to see if the Slashdotters are correct, or if it really works.
I don't know where, but someone posted a link to an image that showed a 1:160 gear in the bottom of the lamp that converted the spinning torque of the drive rod to spin a generator that provides the actual electricity, similar to a bicycle dynamo lighting system, from what I can tell. I don't know if that refutes your power concerns or not, to be honest, because I haven't run the numbers at all. Hopefully I'll have a few minutes this evening to see if it works out correctly, once I find the other link again.
You're right and I worded my last post incorrectly. What I meant was "no continuous human power or external electrical source (including chemical battery) is required." The two are very different, of course, but my mind made the automatic jump to fill in the blanks where perhaps it shouldn't have.