Yes it still needs human assistance, but that doesn't negate the fact that it provides 4 hours of light with no external power source required. That's pretty impressive, and can probably be improved somewhat if someone bothers to continue refining the design.
I'm actually pretty excited about making one (since it doesn't look like you can buy them yet) though I think I'd consider using glass instead of acrylic and possibly try adding some mirroring to help amplify the light somewhat. There may be some mirrors in the design already, I couldn't tell from the quick glance at the design drawings.
Kind of strange that they chose to wait till the last day
It's not strange at all. It gave them time to grease the right cogs in the machine, polish their arguments and get the "last word". It doesn't really matter how many comments the FCC got from other sources early on, it's the last comments that they will remember the most, whether they want to or not. It's just the nature of memory, and decision making, actually. The most recent information generally has the most impact on decision making unless it is marred with obvious errors. If the errors were so obvious to non-technical people there would be no need for the comments in the first place.
Doesn't really matter where you build it, people can get something and reverse engineer it no matter what.
That's true but when you provide the factory and the bill of materials, it makes their job a lot easier. That's the problem companies have; the "knock-offs" are (or were) often being built by the same people building the "real" product. I saw it in Korea (in the late 80s and early 90s) and it happens now in China, Indonesia, and other places. It's a part of doing business and like you said, it happens no matter where you manufacture.
Okay, while I think your post is an outright troll I'll respond because I occasionally think you have something insightful to say. I would ask for some references for your statement that iPhones have reduced quality when calling any other phone, or that they can be hacked with just whistled tones.
As for your assertion that the software isn't as good as Ubuntu, I'll say when Ubuntu works out of the box with my hardware I'll agree with you. Until then, I'll keep considering OS X a better solution. No it's not a fair comparison, since Ubuntu can't control all the hardware, but fact is OS X simply works and is generally more simple and intuitive.
Does that mean the iPhone is a good solution? I don't happen to think so, but I have no reason to think an open source solution will be any better. Despite your beliefs there are definitely reasons for closing your source just as there are reasons to open it.
I honestly don't know whether they're DRM free. I buy all his music on CDs and then rip them with whatever codec I feel like at the time. Although his last couple albums were "enhanced" so you couldn't [easily] do that with the store-bought albums, only with the free giveaways.
I'll not dispute that Prince comes off as greedy, but I'll mention that he gives his CDs away for free at his concerts (at least the last couple of major concerts he's done) and his general excuse for acting like an ass is actually simply control of his own music. He tends to think he's the only person capable of making his music sound good and doesn't want it diluted with a lot of bad remixes.
You're aware Lucas took a twenty year "break" between episode 6 and episode 1 right? Not that I want more Star Wars, but how much break do you think it needs?
All of those comments are based strictly on pure optics, not on software enhancements and the like. As we've all seen the quality of hubble's images get better and better over the years, I think it's safe to say that satellite imagery is well beyond the ability of strictly the optics "according to wikipedia". That information is also based on pre-1972 satellite technology according to the article you linked to, so I'd say we've made some improvements in optics since then.
I'm not saying there isn't a market for these computers, with or without a DVD drive, but unlike you most users want a DVD drive, for the simplicity of not needing another computer to share data, or a "spare" firewire/usb hard drive, or whatever. And, despite your assertion, most people don't carry movies around on "more reasonable media already". Sure, the trend is definitely moving that direction, but it's far from ubiquitous at this point. That said, looking ahead and leading the market isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This is just a first step. Soon there will be micro-uavs all over the place "spying" on citizens. Actually they're here now, in some areas, but the government is only just admitting to them and preparing the general population by saying this is for investigating "criminals". Of course we've seen how the current government defines "criminals" to essentially mean anyone they don't like, but baby steps cause far less revolts than just sending out armies of UAVs suddenly.
I totally know how to jack with my OCD friend, now. I've been trying to think of a prank for a long time, and now you've come up with it for me. Excellent.
There really isn't much point in "comparing" these two machines, they're so different. Seriously, the comparison that the Thinkpad is nearly $1k more than the Apple is ridiculous when you consider the extra functionality of just the DVD alone. I don't think most people use more than one USB port, but having a wired E-net and removable battery make the cost difference worth it, if you're in the market for a light machine.
I have Macs at home, but you have to recognize that the Air may be pretty, but it's sorely lacking in features that many people consider necessary these days.
A feature that photographers would pay for? I don't think you know too many photographers. Proving a photo is yours is already fairly easy. Furthermore, many photographers would simply find this an "extra setup step" that would save them nothing in the long run because they already digitally watermark their work as part of their post-processing.
This wouldn't be any benefit to most pros, and certainly wouldn't be worthy of considering a "feature" that would give the camera a price bump. A "feature" to a photographer would actually have something to do with lens and/or sensor speed/quality and resulting image quality, not something that no-one will ever notice without legal proceedings occurring.
Because they want something to come back to when they reach a deal. If they held out past the oscars many "analysts" of the industry speculated they wouldn't be able to recover their viewers. As it is I suspect most of the decent new shows are going to be dead anyway.
Changing email addresses is no more difficult than changing underwear. You send a message to all the people you care to receive email from, and you're done. Just like changing jobs gives you a new email address, but the same vendors know how to reach you because you actually want them to be able to reach you.
Archiving your old mail is certainly more difficult, but not impossible.
You're aware that the music companies don't pay the artists to make the music, right? All they do is pay for marketing, if they feel like marketing your band. Recording costs are charged to the performer out of CD sales. No, production costs aren't charged, as far as I know, to the band, so they get to save the 5 cents per CD it costs to produce large quantities of CDs. That's not insignificant, I know, but most bands aren't getting paid "huge sums of FUCKING MONEY" as you put it. Musicians (at least real musicians - not the lip syncers) make their money by doing concerts, not through CD sales.
I'm not a fan of sharing music, and I don't think ripping a CD I paid for should be illegal. That's why there's only one artist I still buy CDs from though he's not particularly generous either. He gives his CDs away at his concerts though, so these days I don't even have to buy them all because I go to every concert he does in my area.
Please read my reply to JonTurner above. I have no beef with faith, or individuals who come at faith with full understanding, but to say religions don't exert control is simply short-sighted or narrow-minded, take your pick. People in power like to stay in power. Religions come about for several reasons- to explain the unexplained, to share in a "religious" experience, and to control populations. I submit that whatever the original justification for a religion, invariably they all get morphed into the final, because they are controlled by people who exert influence over (generally large groups of) other people. When that happens, corruption happens, and unfortunately, that generally leads to worse corruption.
Name one religion that actively teaches its followers to leave other people alone and not try to convert them (the closest I've found is Buddhism, but that still does it to some extent) and I'll revoke my statement that religion is about control.
Interesting perspective that you think because I am not religious I lack life experience. I'll say first that you're letting your own beliefs cloud your judgement. As for my life experience, it's is quite varied. I've lived in multiple countries, traveled to many more, and studied religions for the last 20 years as a hobby. I've been to about 10-15 different denominations of Christian, as well as Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish churches and participated in all of them to some extent or another. All of my life experience is that a religious experience is, indeed, personal. But I've also found, from my life experience, that religions are controlled by people, and people invariably like power. Power comes from "control" in many respects, and that's why I don't like religions. I have nothing against faith in God or whatever you choose to call a higher power. I have everything against faith in a system of rules that doesn't have any basis on the religious, but completely on societal expectations and control of behavior based on something written hundreds to thousands of years ago which actually was passed by word of mouth for a thousand or more years before that. Just play one game of telephone with more than 10 people and then try to tell me that thousands of years are going to keep the message exactly the same.
A "religious" experience can be had without being part of a religion, and without causing a person to suddenly "find God" and join a religion. Hell, I have them all the time; when I see a child laugh, or watch a bird fly, when I see a rainbow over a particularly beautiful scene in the mountains.
Of course a particular religion won't say to control or force others to your will, but it most definitely says to teach others to bow to the will of your God. Don't tell me you haven't proselytized or that your Bible doesn't teach people to do so, because you're trying to do it in your post.
Name one church that offers help for those in need or does missionary work without trying to convert those people to its religion and its beliefs. That is the control I'm talking about. I'm not against people believing and having faith, just against trying to force/convince/whatever other people around them that their religion is the only correct one. They can't all teach similar things and only one of them be right.
Slashdot Mirror
The summary and the article both say 4 hours. It's a bit obscured by the " should last 200 years" comment though so not hard to miss.
Yes it still needs human assistance, but that doesn't negate the fact that it provides 4 hours of light with no external power source required. That's pretty impressive, and can probably be improved somewhat if someone bothers to continue refining the design.
I'm actually pretty excited about making one (since it doesn't look like you can buy them yet) though I think I'd consider using glass instead of acrylic and possibly try adding some mirroring to help amplify the light somewhat. There may be some mirrors in the design already, I couldn't tell from the quick glance at the design drawings.
Kind of strange that they chose to wait till the last day
It's not strange at all. It gave them time to grease the right cogs in the machine, polish their arguments and get the "last word". It doesn't really matter how many comments the FCC got from other sources early on, it's the last comments that they will remember the most, whether they want to or not. It's just the nature of memory, and decision making, actually. The most recent information generally has the most impact on decision making unless it is marred with obvious errors. If the errors were so obvious to non-technical people there would be no need for the comments in the first place.
Doesn't really matter where you build it, people can get something and reverse engineer it no matter what.
That's true but when you provide the factory and the bill of materials, it makes their job a lot easier. That's the problem companies have; the "knock-offs" are (or were) often being built by the same people building the "real" product. I saw it in Korea (in the late 80s and early 90s) and it happens now in China, Indonesia, and other places. It's a part of doing business and like you said, it happens no matter where you manufacture.
Okay, while I think your post is an outright troll I'll respond because I occasionally think you have something insightful to say. I would ask for some references for your statement that iPhones have reduced quality when calling any other phone, or that they can be hacked with just whistled tones.
As for your assertion that the software isn't as good as Ubuntu, I'll say when Ubuntu works out of the box with my hardware I'll agree with you. Until then, I'll keep considering OS X a better solution. No it's not a fair comparison, since Ubuntu can't control all the hardware, but fact is OS X simply works and is generally more simple and intuitive.
Does that mean the iPhone is a good solution? I don't happen to think so, but I have no reason to think an open source solution will be any better. Despite your beliefs there are definitely reasons for closing your source just as there are reasons to open it.
I honestly don't know whether they're DRM free. I buy all his music on CDs and then rip them with whatever codec I feel like at the time. Although his last couple albums were "enhanced" so you couldn't [easily] do that with the store-bought albums, only with the free giveaways.
I don't know about the others, but Prince definitely sells his music via downloads on his website as well as on physical media.
I'll not dispute that Prince comes off as greedy, but I'll mention that he gives his CDs away for free at his concerts (at least the last couple of major concerts he's done) and his general excuse for acting like an ass is actually simply control of his own music. He tends to think he's the only person capable of making his music sound good and doesn't want it diluted with a lot of bad remixes.
You're aware Lucas took a twenty year "break" between episode 6 and episode 1 right? Not that I want more Star Wars, but how much break do you think it needs?
Did I miss something in the new movies? Weren't Darth Maul, Tyrannus and Palpatine all working as Sith at the same time?
All of those comments are based strictly on pure optics, not on software enhancements and the like. As we've all seen the quality of hubble's images get better and better over the years, I think it's safe to say that satellite imagery is well beyond the ability of strictly the optics "according to wikipedia". That information is also based on pre-1972 satellite technology according to the article you linked to, so I'd say we've made some improvements in optics since then.
Dude, that's what web cams are for, who needs google?
I'm not saying there isn't a market for these computers, with or without a DVD drive, but unlike you most users want a DVD drive, for the simplicity of not needing another computer to share data, or a "spare" firewire/usb hard drive, or whatever. And, despite your assertion, most people don't carry movies around on "more reasonable media already". Sure, the trend is definitely moving that direction, but it's far from ubiquitous at this point. That said, looking ahead and leading the market isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This is just a first step. Soon there will be micro-uavs all over the place "spying" on citizens. Actually they're here now, in some areas, but the government is only just admitting to them and preparing the general population by saying this is for investigating "criminals". Of course we've seen how the current government defines "criminals" to essentially mean anyone they don't like, but baby steps cause far less revolts than just sending out armies of UAVs suddenly.
I totally know how to jack with my OCD friend, now. I've been trying to think of a prank for a long time, and now you've come up with it for me. Excellent.
There really isn't much point in "comparing" these two machines, they're so different. Seriously, the comparison that the Thinkpad is nearly $1k more than the Apple is ridiculous when you consider the extra functionality of just the DVD alone. I don't think most people use more than one USB port, but having a wired E-net and removable battery make the cost difference worth it, if you're in the market for a light machine.
I have Macs at home, but you have to recognize that the Air may be pretty, but it's sorely lacking in features that many people consider necessary these days.
"Funny. But am I the only person who thought how cool googleearth would be through aalib?"
Yes, you are.
A feature that photographers would pay for? I don't think you know too many photographers. Proving a photo is yours is already fairly easy. Furthermore, many photographers would simply find this an "extra setup step" that would save them nothing in the long run because they already digitally watermark their work as part of their post-processing.
This wouldn't be any benefit to most pros, and certainly wouldn't be worthy of considering a "feature" that would give the camera a price bump. A "feature" to a photographer would actually have something to do with lens and/or sensor speed/quality and resulting image quality, not something that no-one will ever notice without legal proceedings occurring.
Because they want something to come back to when they reach a deal. If they held out past the oscars many "analysts" of the industry speculated they wouldn't be able to recover their viewers. As it is I suspect most of the decent new shows are going to be dead anyway.
Changing email addresses is no more difficult than changing underwear. You send a message to all the people you care to receive email from, and you're done. Just like changing jobs gives you a new email address, but the same vendors know how to reach you because you actually want them to be able to reach you.
Archiving your old mail is certainly more difficult, but not impossible.
does that make me a "modular, Transformer-style human"?
No, just a geek for considering the possibility.
You're aware that the music companies don't pay the artists to make the music, right? All they do is pay for marketing, if they feel like marketing your band. Recording costs are charged to the performer out of CD sales. No, production costs aren't charged, as far as I know, to the band, so they get to save the 5 cents per CD it costs to produce large quantities of CDs. That's not insignificant, I know, but most bands aren't getting paid "huge sums of FUCKING MONEY" as you put it. Musicians (at least real musicians - not the lip syncers) make their money by doing concerts, not through CD sales.
I'm not a fan of sharing music, and I don't think ripping a CD I paid for should be illegal. That's why there's only one artist I still buy CDs from though he's not particularly generous either. He gives his CDs away at his concerts though, so these days I don't even have to buy them all because I go to every concert he does in my area.
Please read my reply to JonTurner above. I have no beef with faith, or individuals who come at faith with full understanding, but to say religions don't exert control is simply short-sighted or narrow-minded, take your pick. People in power like to stay in power. Religions come about for several reasons- to explain the unexplained, to share in a "religious" experience, and to control populations. I submit that whatever the original justification for a religion, invariably they all get morphed into the final, because they are controlled by people who exert influence over (generally large groups of) other people. When that happens, corruption happens, and unfortunately, that generally leads to worse corruption.
Name one religion that actively teaches its followers to leave other people alone and not try to convert them (the closest I've found is Buddhism, but that still does it to some extent) and I'll revoke my statement that religion is about control.
Interesting perspective that you think because I am not religious I lack life experience. I'll say first that you're letting your own beliefs cloud your judgement. As for my life experience, it's is quite varied. I've lived in multiple countries, traveled to many more, and studied religions for the last 20 years as a hobby. I've been to about 10-15 different denominations of Christian, as well as Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish churches and participated in all of them to some extent or another. All of my life experience is that a religious experience is, indeed, personal. But I've also found, from my life experience, that religions are controlled by people, and people invariably like power. Power comes from "control" in many respects, and that's why I don't like religions. I have nothing against faith in God or whatever you choose to call a higher power. I have everything against faith in a system of rules that doesn't have any basis on the religious, but completely on societal expectations and control of behavior based on something written hundreds to thousands of years ago which actually was passed by word of mouth for a thousand or more years before that. Just play one game of telephone with more than 10 people and then try to tell me that thousands of years are going to keep the message exactly the same.
A "religious" experience can be had without being part of a religion, and without causing a person to suddenly "find God" and join a religion. Hell, I have them all the time; when I see a child laugh, or watch a bird fly, when I see a rainbow over a particularly beautiful scene in the mountains.
Of course a particular religion won't say to control or force others to your will, but it most definitely says to teach others to bow to the will of your God. Don't tell me you haven't proselytized or that your Bible doesn't teach people to do so, because you're trying to do it in your post.
Name one church that offers help for those in need or does missionary work without trying to convert those people to its religion and its beliefs. That is the control I'm talking about. I'm not against people believing and having faith, just against trying to force/convince/whatever other people around them that their religion is the only correct one. They can't all teach similar things and only one of them be right.
Ah, but the point of religion isn't just to control me, but also to control you. Why bother if it can't do both?