Monochrome. As in, the display only shows one color. (Usually orange.) You may remember back when the stock exchanges used the large orage display boards rather than their nifty, giant color screens?
Do individual plasma cells support multiple hues?
Plasma displays can be built to provide differing levels of Red, Green, and Blue. However, the simplest form of the technology is to have each plasma cell either on or off.
CRTs and LCDs have three different cells per pixel, one each for red, green and blue. Really old CRTs and LCDs only had one cell per pixel, for grayscale.
Same idea. Color plasmas have three cells per pixel, one for each of the primary colors. However, plasma achieves different brightnesses by exposing a phospher screen for different periods of time. This is why they have a reputation for being susceptible to burn-in.
I believe that the poster meant to say, "Seven years after I noticed it..."
Electronic Paper was invented at Xerox in the 1970's. It's a LOT older than seven years. The only reason why people are noticing it is that advances in electronics are slowly making it practical.
It's a bit like Plasma displays. The stock market used a massive monochrome unit for decades before consumers jumped on "this newfangled Plasma TV thingy!"
Undeserved reputation?!? Have you *ever* tried to make C++ software on Symbian?
RTFA. Here's the relevent section:
In most regards, Symbian's reputation as a modern, robust, stable and advanced OS for smartphones is not well deserved.
I have never known anyone who has claimed that Symbian has such a reputation. In fact, it has the exact opposite reputation, making the "undeserved reputation" statement a bit odd.
Not exactly a situation where anyone "hates" Symbian, secretly or otherwise, more a situation where certain platforms work out better for certain companies.
Except that the companies who use Symbian do *hate* Symbian. I don't have any clue why the article states that Symbian has an "undeserved reputation". Its faults have been well known for quite a while now.
The only reason why it was chosen is that the alternatives at the time were Symbian and WinCE. (Contrary to the article's statement that Linux was a viable option.) WinCE was a more powerful OS, but it demanded hardware to match that power. Symbian was not quite as powerful, but at least it ran on highly constrained devices. So it's no surprise that the phone makers tried to keep their prices down by going with Symbian.
For a company like Apple, it does make sense to use their own OS as they have the necessary support staff and experience on hand. For a company like Nokia, however, they just don't see the software as important enough. Which is too bad. They make great phones, but consistently fall flat with poor (read: buggy) software implementations.
I think his point is that the bugs make challenging and fun bad guys. The moment that you manage to beat those bad guys, you're put up against something weaker rather than stronger. That's the exact opposite challenge curve you would expect, and is really annoying once you're pumped up in the heat of battle.
Pretty much. The more Mr. Quayle spoke, the more nervous he got, and the worse his mistakes got. It's interesting to watch, because he knows he's not making any sense, but his attempts to make it better just make it worse.
In Quayle-ese:
Same Orbit == "Similar enough to be semi-hospitable to human life." Canals == "Channels through which water once flowed."
At least he didn't have to speak on the possibility of microbial life on Mars. It would have been War of the Worlds all over again!
"Not now, Martha! Them ALIENS are attackin'! The Vice Prezident sez so!":P
Obviously, you don't play enough boxing. I'm not in the best shape, but I do walk/run home 3 miles from the train station. Wii Sports Boxing still leaves me breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. I have a hard time believing that the effect would be any different on most other video game players. At least, if you're doing it right.;)
FWIW, the Wii may not be an acceptable replacement for exercise, but it's a sight better than getting no exercise whatsoever.
You really have to feel sorry for poor Quayle. He was (*is*) actually an intelligent fellow. He just can't speak in public to save his life.
In this particular speech, he meant to say that where there's water, there's oxygen to be extracted. In this, he's quite correct. It would take a significant amount of energy, but it's perfectly feasible to extract breathable oxygen from water on Mars.
It's just the way he put it that's outright hilareous.:)
I'm waiting for Linux (or a price drop) on the Wii
I doubt you'll be seeing either Linux or a price drop anytime soon. How about News and Weather instead?:P
Personally, I'm outright shocked that it's February and it's still incredibly difficult to get a Wii. With Nintendo's sizable shipments of the console, I would have thought that they would have been available from day one. Instead, demand seems to be increasing before Nintendo has a chance to catch up with the current demand. It's scary to think what will happen when Nintendo actually starts advertising this thing.
BTW, if you do plan on getting a Wii, I highly recommend shopping the Gamecube deals now. There have been a lot of great clearance sales of both used and new games for the system. One of these days, however, retailers are going to figure out that demand for the old GCN stuff isn't tappering off with the sales of the Wii. So start stocking up while you can still get the games for under $10.
I just don't understand his beef with the game - quite literally, I couldn't understand the reasons he gave for it. They made no sense.
Here's where Zonk explained it:
If fighting bugs, popping data points, and keeping warm were the whole game I wouldn't have a lot to complain about. The issue is that bug battles are but one portion of the game. The 'primary' villains of the game aren't the bugs at all, but other humans. The ice pirates, corporate soldiers, and mechs from both groups are going to be your primary opponents before too long, and they are much less enjoyable to engage in combat. Human soldiers are downright boring compared with the attractive Akrid, and what is an 'acceptable' level of AI from an insect makes a human look unfit for duty. Waves of cohorts can be slain before the eyes of an ice pirate, but his programming requires him to stand (unblinking and unfiring) as you advance on his position. Also: What does an ice pirate do, exactly? Penguin keel-hauling? Shiver me timbers.
Mech combat suffers from the same problem. While piloting the vehicles feels right, combat against human opponents is unfulfilling. Wading through baddies in a mech is great, again, when they're bugs. Against humans you'll mostly be walking down your cretinous fellow sapients, who are too slow-witted to get out of your way. A consistent worry when mech piloting is that you'll blunder into someone with a rocket launcher just itching to fire from point blank range.
The rest of his complaints dealt with the semi-realism imposed on the game rather than allowing him to play hero. i.e. The bad guys take cheap shots with heat-seekers, the enemy gets to stomp you in his mech, etc.
Zonk: "Demos for this title have been downloaded endlessly since last year's E3, and in the format of a one-level demo there's a lot to like."
You: "On the contrary, I feel the game is very engaging - tons of stuff to do, battles that are always slightly different, good weapons, an intriguing story, great atmosphere, great graphical effects."
Zonk: "How can you go wrong with the formula of a devastated Earth, giant bugs, and mechs? By fronting the game with an unlikable protagonist and following up with AI that alternates between mindless and cheap, Capcom fails to deliver on the promise of any of those concepts."
I'm not trying to give you a hard time or anything, but he did answer your arguments before you ever posted them. Which isn't to say that you won't like the full game. Just that Zonk didn't, for reasons that he made clear.:)
...but does anyone else find it a bit scary how you can read news like this on your Wii at night, then wake up the next morning to see it on Slashdot? I'm not complaining or anything, but it seems like Nintendo's news selection is amazingly in tune with the news on Slashdot.
Or does the news on Slashdot have something to do with all the Slashdotters with their brand new Wiis? Hmmm....;)
Firefox drove more rigid adoption of the reference.
Which didn't exist when the Mozilla project started implementing it. Netscape was one of the participants that wrote those standards. Standards which Microsoft similarly participated in, but failed to implement.
But then I was a small brick and mortar, not an international conglomerate with offices spread across continents.
Not every corporation is an international conglomerate. First you'll get the new installations. Then you'll get the single-office corporations. Then you'll get the multi-office corporations. Before you know it, the international conglomerates are investing in multi-billion dollar upgrades so that they don't fall behind. Either that, or they pay mucho dinero for someone to provide them a custom transition solution.
I've worked for those international conglomerates before. The one that stuck out in my mind the most was a company using Exchange client with a special server connector to provide the full feature set of an HP Openmail Email/Groupware server. This being a Fortune 100 company, you can bet your boots that this setup had been created just for them. So if you're big enough, you get whatever you want.;)
I was under the impression that the current generation of High Def discs haven't made use of the VC-1 technology yet? Last I heard, it was in the spec, but the discs were deployed with MPEG-2 compression streams. Not that it really affects my point.
No. I'm talking about convenience > quality. Quality is not a driving factor at the moment, save for the early adopters. Consumers would much rather have convenience with acceptable quality rather than high quality with no noticeable increase in convenience. (If anything, the high def stuff is a mild decrease.)
Thus a minor quality upgrade (e.g. iTunes is 480p) coupled with a major increase in convenience is going to win the day; not the High Def frisbees. In addition, consumers will soon be able to have their cake and eat it too. Microsoft is already showing that Hi Def downloads that take advantage of more modern compression methods are possible on the higher end of the consumer bandwidth scale. The quality isn't quite as good as a $30 frisbee, but that's not going to swap most consumers. They can get the movie or TV show they want, when they want it, and for the price they want it.
In terms of installs what the primary function of a system is is what people use it for. If calandering is what they want, it is calandering that will drive installs. If it weren't for calandering the whole bloody mess would be a nonissue.
Agreed. But my argument is that the Calendaring of an OSS Server would diverge from Exchange in the same way as Firefox's DHTML support diverged heavily from IE's DHTML support. Firefox drove the adoption of a standard despite IE's stranglehold on the market.
However, the framework of the discussion is someone who was dissatisfied with his transition experience.
Precisely. Providing a good replacement for Exchange Server is a lot better upgrade path than chasing Microsoft's coattails.
The primary function of Exchange/Outlook is to be an Email Client/Server. Its secondary function is to be a calendaring and internal Usenet server. When you look at an Exchange server configured for compatibility, the key feature missing is calendaring. Something for which there is no current standard. The reason for this is that no companies would have adopted Exchange in the first place if it didn't provide email standard support. Had there been a calendar protocol already, Microsoft would have implemented it.
Yes, in new installs. Fresh businesses without an established infrastructure.
New installs and upgrade installs. Companies regularly shake up their infrastructure every time Microsoft releases a new version of Exchange/Outlook. This period provides companies with an opportunity to move to a competitor. Many would do so gladly, except that the current batch of competitors is an excercise in choosing the lesser of evils.
That being said, I'm under no illusions. New infrastructures would be the first to adopt. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's best to get the system working well before you start putting its reputation on the line with much larger companies.
There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances.
What, like an XBox 360 or an AppleTV? Not to mention those awefully convenient DVI ports on modern TVs and computers. I think you'll find that as the market expands, there will be even more compatible devices showing up on the market.
Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit. They'll spend the time to figure something out (or get the kid next door to set it up for them) if they REALLY want it. It's only when they don't care about something that the technology goes unused. (e.g. The infamous VCR clock blinking 12:00.) If the popularity of iTunes television shows is any indicator, consumers care about this technology.
A cross platform communications tool; where the interoperability framework comes from outside and is published.
1. Microsoft didn't follow the published specs with IE, thus creating an "Internet Explorer Only" internet.
2. Firefox chased their incompatible solution for a time, but was never able to fully catch up. Nor was it the ideal solution.
3. With partial (but good-enough) compatibility in place, Firefox was able to push the use of open standards.
4. Now it's Microsoft who's trying to catch up as their market share slowly dwindles.
Exchange is similarly compatible with a large number of standards (e.g. POP, IMAP, SMTP, etc.), and we have a "mostly compatbile" solution available. Now it's time to push a new groupware standard intended to displace Exchange rather than simply interoperate with it. Remember, for most companies, the email is an either/or proposition. The entire company runs Exchange/Outlook or the entire company runs a competitor like Lotus Notes. There is room to add a new competitor in the mix, but it needs to be at least as functional as Exchange Server is. If it exceeds the Exchange Server solution, then Microsoft will start losing ground to the new competitor.
FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways. So it has had (and still has) a good chance of "winning" against the competing HD-DVD format. The real problem with such a "win" is that it's not much of a "win" if you claim victory in the battle, but lose the war. Allow me to explain.
Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions. As it would seem, the vast majority of consumers are happy enough with their TVs as they are today. The real consumer push has been a much different one than quality.
Consumers today are looking for convenience first and quality second. They want to be able to sit in their living room and chose what they want to watch (or play!), when they want to watch it. Nothing makes this more apparent than the popularity of the TIVO and other DVR players.
These players timeshift shows from their regular schedules to a time that is more convenient for the viewer. Thanks to thier ties with online TV schedules, a user can setup his DVR to record dozens of shows. When he feels in the mood to watch something, he can then chose from the options at his disposal.
However, this process does have its drawbacks. The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.
The second drawback is that these devices have limited capacity. Once they are full, you must remove some material in order to make room for more material. This biases the devices against consumers who watch television on few, rare occasions, but enjoy a wide variety of entertainment.
The solution on the horizon is not digital transmissions over the airwaves, by digital cable, or even by plastic frisbees. The solution is to stream the video directly to the consumer over a broadband internet line. This allows the consumer to access a wide variety of quality material, but without the same storage drawbacks that limit DVR devices.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that many cell phones and digital cameras use OLED displays, I'd say they've been out for a little while now.
I believe that the poster meant to say, "Seven years after I noticed it..."
Electronic Paper was invented at Xerox in the 1970's. It's a LOT older than seven years. The only reason why people are noticing it is that advances in electronics are slowly making it practical.
It's a bit like Plasma displays. The stock market used a massive monochrome unit for decades before consumers jumped on "this newfangled Plasma TV thingy!"
VistA is a medical tracking system. OpenVistA is an OSS implementation.
Does that clarify my statement for you?
The only reason why it was chosen is that the alternatives at the time were Symbian and WinCE. (Contrary to the article's statement that Linux was a viable option.) WinCE was a more powerful OS, but it demanded hardware to match that power. Symbian was not quite as powerful, but at least it ran on highly constrained devices. So it's no surprise that the phone makers tried to keep their prices down by going with Symbian.
For a company like Apple, it does make sense to use their own OS as they have the necessary support staff and experience on hand. For a company like Nokia, however, they just don't see the software as important enough. Which is too bad. They make great phones, but consistently fall flat with poor (read: buggy) software implementations.
I think his point is that the bugs make challenging and fun bad guys. The moment that you manage to beat those bad guys, you're put up against something weaker rather than stronger. That's the exact opposite challenge curve you would expect, and is really annoying once you're pumped up in the heat of battle.
Pretty much. The more Mr. Quayle spoke, the more nervous he got, and the worse his mistakes got. It's interesting to watch, because he knows he's not making any sense, but his attempts to make it better just make it worse.
:P
In Quayle-ese:
Same Orbit == "Similar enough to be semi-hospitable to human life."
Canals == "Channels through which water once flowed."
At least he didn't have to speak on the possibility of microbial life on Mars. It would have been War of the Worlds all over again!
"Not now, Martha! Them ALIENS are attackin'! The Vice Prezident sez so!"
FWIW, the Wii may not be an acceptable replacement for exercise, but it's a sight better than getting no exercise whatsoever.
You really have to feel sorry for poor Quayle. He was (*is*) actually an intelligent fellow. He just can't speak in public to save his life.
:)
In this particular speech, he meant to say that where there's water, there's oxygen to be extracted. In this, he's quite correct. It would take a significant amount of energy, but it's perfectly feasible to extract breathable oxygen from water on Mars.
It's just the way he put it that's outright hilareous.
Personally, I'm outright shocked that it's February and it's still incredibly difficult to get a Wii. With Nintendo's sizable shipments of the console, I would have thought that they would have been available from day one. Instead, demand seems to be increasing before Nintendo has a chance to catch up with the current demand. It's scary to think what will happen when Nintendo actually starts advertising this thing.
BTW, if you do plan on getting a Wii, I highly recommend shopping the Gamecube deals now. There have been a lot of great clearance sales of both used and new games for the system. One of these days, however, retailers are going to figure out that demand for the old GCN stuff isn't tappering off with the sales of the Wii. So start stocking up while you can still get the games for under $10.
You: "I've only played the demo."
:)
Zonk: "Demos for this title have been downloaded endlessly since last year's E3, and in the format of a one-level demo there's a lot to like."
You: "On the contrary, I feel the game is very engaging - tons of stuff to do, battles that are always slightly different, good weapons, an intriguing story, great atmosphere, great graphical effects."
Zonk: "How can you go wrong with the formula of a devastated Earth, giant bugs, and mechs? By fronting the game with an unlikable protagonist and following up with AI that alternates between mindless and cheap, Capcom fails to deliver on the promise of any of those concepts."
I'm not trying to give you a hard time or anything, but he did answer your arguments before you ever posted them. Which isn't to say that you won't like the full game. Just that Zonk didn't, for reasons that he made clear.
"Ask not what Brown can do for you. Ask what you can do for Brown!"
...but does anyone else find it a bit scary how you can read news like this on your Wii at night, then wake up the next morning to see it on Slashdot? I'm not complaining or anything, but it seems like Nintendo's news selection is amazingly in tune with the news on Slashdot.
;)
Or does the news on Slashdot have something to do with all the Slashdotters with their brand new Wiis? Hmmm....
I've worked for those international conglomerates before. The one that stuck out in my mind the most was a company using Exchange client with a special server connector to provide the full feature set of an HP Openmail Email/Groupware server. This being a Fortune 100 company, you can bet your boots that this setup had been created just for them. So if you're big enough, you get whatever you want.
I was under the impression that the current generation of High Def discs haven't made use of the VC-1 technology yet? Last I heard, it was in the spec, but the discs were deployed with MPEG-2 compression streams. Not that it really affects my point.
:)
Thanks for the info.
No. I'm talking about convenience > quality. Quality is not a driving factor at the moment, save for the early adopters. Consumers would much rather have convenience with acceptable quality rather than high quality with no noticeable increase in convenience. (If anything, the high def stuff is a mild decrease.)
Thus a minor quality upgrade (e.g. iTunes is 480p) coupled with a major increase in convenience is going to win the day; not the High Def frisbees. In addition, consumers will soon be able to have their cake and eat it too. Microsoft is already showing that Hi Def downloads that take advantage of more modern compression methods are possible on the higher end of the consumer bandwidth scale. The quality isn't quite as good as a $30 frisbee, but that's not going to swap most consumers. They can get the movie or TV show they want, when they want it, and for the price they want it.
That being said, I'm under no illusions. New infrastructures would be the first to adopt. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's best to get the system working well before you start putting its reputation on the line with much larger companies.
Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit. They'll spend the time to figure something out (or get the kid next door to set it up for them) if they REALLY want it. It's only when they don't care about something that the technology goes unused. (e.g. The infamous VCR clock blinking 12:00.) If the popularity of iTunes television shows is any indicator, consumers care about this technology.
2. Firefox chased their incompatible solution for a time, but was never able to fully catch up. Nor was it the ideal solution.
3. With partial (but good-enough) compatibility in place, Firefox was able to push the use of open standards.
4. Now it's Microsoft who's trying to catch up as their market share slowly dwindles.
Exchange is similarly compatible with a large number of standards (e.g. POP, IMAP, SMTP, etc.), and we have a "mostly compatbile" solution available. Now it's time to push a new groupware standard intended to displace Exchange rather than simply interoperate with it. Remember, for most companies, the email is an either/or proposition. The entire company runs Exchange/Outlook or the entire company runs a competitor like Lotus Notes. There is room to add a new competitor in the mix, but it needs to be at least as functional as Exchange Server is. If it exceeds the Exchange Server solution, then Microsoft will start losing ground to the new competitor.
FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways. So it has had (and still has) a good chance of "winning" against the competing HD-DVD format. The real problem with such a "win" is that it's not much of a "win" if you claim victory in the battle, but lose the war. Allow me to explain.
Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions. As it would seem, the vast majority of consumers are happy enough with their TVs as they are today. The real consumer push has been a much different one than quality.
Consumers today are looking for convenience first and quality second. They want to be able to sit in their living room and chose what they want to watch (or play!), when they want to watch it. Nothing makes this more apparent than the popularity of the TIVO and other DVR players.
These players timeshift shows from their regular schedules to a time that is more convenient for the viewer. Thanks to thier ties with online TV schedules, a user can setup his DVR to record dozens of shows. When he feels in the mood to watch something, he can then chose from the options at his disposal.
However, this process does have its drawbacks. The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.
The second drawback is that these devices have limited capacity. Once they are full, you must remove some material in order to make room for more material. This biases the devices against consumers who watch television on few, rare occasions, but enjoy a wide variety of entertainment.
The solution on the horizon is not digital transmissions over the airwaves, by digital cable, or even by plastic frisbees. The solution is to stream the video directly to the consumer over a broadband internet line. This allows the consumer to access a wide variety of quality material, but without the same storage drawbacks that limit DVR devices.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.