Just buy a country or two in Africa. It would be cheaper and make more sense. He seems to have enough money to do it, and he couldn't possibly do a worse job than many of the "governments" already there.
That's a rather glib response, and incorrect. Additions, subtractions, are fairly simple operationsm and bitshifts are blazingly fast (and equivalent to dividing or multiplying by factors of 2) - in contrast, multiplications, divisions, and others are substantially more complex. You can improve performance a LOT if you design your codecs with these guidelines in mind. Check out the research section (fast DCT approximations) of this site - Nancy isn't the only codec to keep this matter in mind.
What I'd really like to know is - how well does nancy scale to higher resolutions? It could be competition for MPEG-4 even in the desktop arena. As someone who uses a 3-year-old laptop that can't really handle the &#($ing huge DivX files (which use pretty outdated technology across the board, whether you realize it or not), I welcome a codec that doesn't stress my system, and will save my battery life to boot.
Re:Segway is irrelevant to American cities
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
You're going to get your kids an expensive electric vehicle just to get to school? Kids got calories to burn!
I was thinking of the elderly and disabled for the target age group. People who aren't fast walkers and can't use bikes, but are OK standing up.
I said AMERICAN cities
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
...and also pointed out at the end that it would probably go over well in Japan and Europe - but not here. Did you even bother to read my post?
Frankly, that's only the beginning of segway's problems, and although you pointed out technologies will improve segway in the future, those technologies (i.e. lightweight electric motors and very energy dense electric power storage) will be applicable to a whole range of matters beyond segway, including a much better electric bike.
Re:/. needs a "Hype" topic with a picture of segwa
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
I think the segway is more photogenic than the transmeta, or the Y2K bug for that matter.
Tragedy of the Commons
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
It's a nice thought, but unfortunately it doesn't work. Many cities and universities have tried yellow-bike type programs (including Austin, where I used to live) and it ends up not working. Much like rental cars, people treat 'em like shit and use 'em like toilet paper. They don't own them, so there's no reason for them to take care of them. The hoard them, they steal them. It's generally not a big deal if all you're using is old crappy bikes, but something that's new - and $3000? Forget it.
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
A segway weighs 60lbs and is wider than a human. It is not a very luggable device. And you're going to bring that on a bus? (subway, train, whatever)
Segway is irrelevant to American cities
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What Dean seems not to have realized is that although a segway would be useful in some cities, it won't be to any in America that I can think of. He intended it to replace the car for in-city commuting. But the problem with cars in-city is not from people residing within it - it's from all the people commuting to and from the city. The fact is, most people either live in the suburbs and commute all over the place by car, or in a few cases (New York especially) live in the city and commute by walking and public transportation. The segway is not in competition with the walker or the car, but the bike - a cheaper, faster, healthier, more flexible (try hauling a 60lb segway up stairs) and more environmentally responsible way of getting around. The segway might have some uses for certain industries and age groups, and it will probably go over better in Europe and especially Japan, but here in the states there's not much point to it.
/. needs a "Hype" topic with a picture of segway
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 3, Redundant
Seriously... it's an interesting piece of tech, but I'll take my bike anyday.
The main problem with the radio spectrum today is that is has been portioned out over many decades. Over that time both needs and technology have changed. I don't think the entire spectrum should be opened up, but it would be smart to reevaluate and reorganize it, leaving more spectrum open for personal use, consolidating the entertainment bands to more efficiently use space with digital technologies like this, and leaving clear bands for scientific and emergency use. And of course, desiging devices so they don't transmit louder than they absolutely have to.
The only real problem with this are legacy devices, namely TV, mobile phones, and especially radio, and their transmission towers. If the transition can be eased for those devices (with adapters or cheap replacements and some gov't subsidy to upgrade transmitters) then I think things would go fine.
Recent rumors indicate that Steve Jobs will reveal a new device for the Macintosh "digital hub" paradigm at the next MacWorld Tokyo. Details are sketchy, but numerous sources have corraborated the name - Sharon Apple.
There's a big difference between a negative opinion and libel - an opinion is a personal statement meant to negatively impact the object, while libel is a FALSE written statement meant to negatively impact the object.
So while it's true that most of what you find on message boards is bullshit, and should thus be regarded as such without further verification, it can still be libel. All that matters is that it's a lie presented as fact to hurt the object.
However, what the defendants were accused of is TRADE libel - apparently they were saying things like "this stock sucks" clearly within the context of opinion. It could be considered libel within some contexts - but not within that of a message forum. Anyone getting stock tips off one of those is pretty dumb. So in their limited case, it seems they were not commiting libel.
I'm a bit of a New Urbanist, so I can immediately see how this idea can go BADLY wrong. Two points (among many) that you should consider...
1. People invariably tend to live around an hour's commute from work. Many studies have shown this. When the highway was invented, it didn't make it easier to live in the city and travel between them - it led millions of people to move farther away and for cars to become the dominant mode of transportation, with all it's ills. The same has happened with rail lines. In all cases, it means that much more space has to be devoted to providing for the transportation network - roads, parking lots, gas stations, etc. If you have people commuting by plane, you won't be letting people live in the country and work in the city - you'll be turning the entire nation into one big suburb.
2. No matter how much of a resource you produce, people will inevitably find a way to consume all of it. This rule applies to commodities like oil and food, as well as things like road space. Think building another highway will solve your traffic concerns by relieving the other roads? Think again. I just drove 400 miles to and from my brother's house this past weekend, and let me tell you the traffic was RIDICULOUS. There were jams in the middle of nowhere, at all times of day. Granted it is just before a holiday, but still. This leads me to point 2b: The most important feature of a transportation system is not its capacity, but how well it performs at maximum capacity. Roads perform terribly - they slow to a crawl and stop as soon as accidents occur. Rail, OTOH, is a little crowded in the cars but otherwise functions perfectly for the most part. How will individual air travel stack up? I think I can guess...
True, it will drop in price (that's why I said "at today's prices") but not to nothing. These are rare elements with many potential uses that haven't been exploited because they cost too much... therefore they can create their own market to some extent. Whether that will be enough to cover the cost of the mission and make profit on top, I don't know. It does depend on how NASA prices it and releases it. It's not illegal to do it slowly (the diamond trade works this way). I'm sure there are actuaries somewhere who could give you a good estimate.
I don't know if anyone remembers this earlier slashdot article, which also discussed the matter of mining space. It also mentioned that one near earth asteroid (NEO 3554 Amun, about 2km wide) that was worth about 20 trillion dollars. Mind you that's in today's market, but I'd say there is more than enough economic incentive to go for it. I don't understand why NASA hasn't already - just one rock could solve their many budgetary woes for years to come, would be a tremendously telegenic venture, and would stimulate practical space technologies tremendously...
Don't tell me you've forgotten the tunnel of love orgy? And there was some other stuff as well... The best part of the movie is since it's rated PG people often don't bother to edit it before it ends up on TV!
Well from a teenage boy's perspective (I was at the time I saw), the inexplicably PG-13 rated Logan's Run, which is chock full of nudity and sex, was a godsend. I guess the philosophical themes and 70s sensibilities won over the ratings board...
Well since we're talking about DVDs here, why not have it available in separate (off-disc, available on the net) config files which are made by the objecting parties? They won't be that large (unless you're supporting alternate scenes and language), you could download them in large batches and load them automatically. You'd just need a specially configured player with maybe a compact flash or small hard drive to hold them. Just distribute advance copies to certain groups so that they can make their modification files in time for the DVD release, and let the right-wingers deprive themselves of their movies instead of doing it to the rest of us.
I think it certainly does have its uses, even for those of us who don't have kids. I remember seeing "The Thomas Crown Affair" with my family, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite so uncomfortable as watching a nude sex scene with your mom... I wish I could have set THAT to a PG-13 level...
The enabling force of globalization is not a matter of economics or culture - these are just factors which come into play when globalization occurs. No, globalization is all about mobility. Of ideas, goods, and people. Improvements in transportation enable us to go anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, and to send products and raw materials anywhere at low cost. Improvements in communication culminating in satellite television and the internet have brought the ideas and culture of the world to our doorstep, and vice versa.
Is it any surprise that this can cause great change and upheaval? It shouldn't be. Is this inherently a bad thing? No, it's just the way things are. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and endlessly bitching about the state of the third world without offering solutions beyond isolation (which is laughably implausable and irritatingly patronizing) is pointless.
Let's face it - our world is approaching the point where a single person can acquire the capability of affecting (or even taking) the lives of everyone on the planet. It's high time we learned to deal with it, give up the idea that everything should be forcefully driven back to some non-existent state of blissful ignorance, and try to create a common set of values for the world.
Re:I haven't been able to nail it down
on
Defining Globalism
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· Score: 1
Call me biased, but having gone through high school and college, I have a hard time taking most of these folks seriously. It's easy to proseletize when you're not even living in the real world.
Our team currently uses the best lead-acid batteries available. They're expensive, but much less so than Lithium Ions, which is what most teams are moving to. But of course they're very heavy. Budget does make a big difference in the kind of car you can build, with regards to practically every component. You may have heard that the University of Michigan won the recent american solar challenge this past summer - what you probably didn't hear is that they have huge amounts of resources both within and outside their school, and a monstrously large budget. Their car cost over a $1,000,000 for components alone. In contrast our current car is worth about $250,000.
When I talk about chemical engines, I'm talking mostly about potential efficiency. There are some pretty amazing engine designs out there - there was a recent article about a rotary engine that only had one moving part besides the shaft and valves and required no lubrication.
Most teams use the same type of engine, which is built into one of the wheels. It's a lot louder than you would expect (makes this wierd popping noise) but gets better than 90% efficiency. OTOH the power range it can provide is limited.
I'm not sure about orders of magnitude, but I can tell you our car runs on about as much power as a hairdryer.
Slashdot Mirror
Just buy a country or two in Africa. It would be cheaper and make more sense. He seems to have enough money to do it, and he couldn't possibly do a worse job than many of the "governments" already there.
That's a rather glib response, and incorrect. Additions, subtractions, are fairly simple operationsm and bitshifts are blazingly fast (and equivalent to dividing or multiplying by factors of 2) - in contrast, multiplications, divisions, and others are substantially more complex. You can improve performance a LOT if you design your codecs with these guidelines in mind. Check out the research section (fast DCT approximations) of this site - Nancy isn't the only codec to keep this matter in mind.
What I'd really like to know is - how well does nancy scale to higher resolutions? It could be competition for MPEG-4 even in the desktop arena. As someone who uses a 3-year-old laptop that can't really handle the &#($ing huge DivX files (which use pretty outdated technology across the board, whether you realize it or not), I welcome a codec that doesn't stress my system, and will save my battery life to boot.
You're going to get your kids an expensive electric vehicle just to get to school? Kids got calories to burn!
I was thinking of the elderly and disabled for the target age group. People who aren't fast walkers and can't use bikes, but are OK standing up.
...and also pointed out at the end that it would probably go over well in Japan and Europe - but not here. Did you even bother to read my post?
Frankly, that's only the beginning of segway's problems, and although you pointed out technologies will improve segway in the future, those technologies (i.e. lightweight electric motors and very energy dense electric power storage) will be applicable to a whole range of matters beyond segway, including a much better electric bike.
I think the segway is more photogenic than the transmeta, or the Y2K bug for that matter.
It's a nice thought, but unfortunately it doesn't work. Many cities and universities have tried yellow-bike type programs (including Austin, where I used to live) and it ends up not working. Much like rental cars, people treat 'em like shit and use 'em like toilet paper. They don't own them, so there's no reason for them to take care of them. The hoard them, they steal them. It's generally not a big deal if all you're using is old crappy bikes, but something that's new - and $3000? Forget it.
A segway weighs 60lbs and is wider than a human. It is not a very luggable device. And you're going to bring that on a bus? (subway, train, whatever)
What Dean seems not to have realized is that although a segway would be useful in some cities, it won't be to any in America that I can think of. He intended it to replace the car for in-city commuting. But the problem with cars in-city is not from people residing within it - it's from all the people commuting to and from the city. The fact is, most people either live in the suburbs and commute all over the place by car, or in a few cases (New York especially) live in the city and commute by walking and public transportation. The segway is not in competition with the walker or the car, but the bike - a cheaper, faster, healthier, more flexible (try hauling a 60lb segway up stairs) and more environmentally responsible way of getting around. The segway might have some uses for certain industries and age groups, and it will probably go over better in Europe and especially Japan, but here in the states there's not much point to it.
Seriously... it's an interesting piece of tech, but I'll take my bike anyday.
The main problem with the radio spectrum today is that is has been portioned out over many decades. Over that time both needs and technology have changed. I don't think the entire spectrum should be opened up, but it would be smart to reevaluate and reorganize it, leaving more spectrum open for personal use, consolidating the entertainment bands to more efficiently use space with digital technologies like this, and leaving clear bands for scientific and emergency use. And of course, desiging devices so they don't transmit louder than they absolutely have to.
The only real problem with this are legacy devices, namely TV, mobile phones, and especially radio, and their transmission towers. If the transition can be eased for those devices (with adapters or cheap replacements and some gov't subsidy to upgrade transmitters) then I think things would go fine.
That was you? I lived in one of those houses! You're making me angry! And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!!!!
Bruce Banner
Recent rumors indicate that Steve Jobs will reveal a new device for the Macintosh "digital hub" paradigm at the next MacWorld Tokyo. Details are sketchy, but numerous sources have corraborated the name - Sharon Apple.
There's a big difference between a negative opinion and libel - an opinion is a personal statement meant to negatively impact the object, while libel is a FALSE written statement meant to negatively impact the object.
So while it's true that most of what you find on message boards is bullshit, and should thus be regarded as such without further verification, it can still be libel. All that matters is that it's a lie presented as fact to hurt the object.
However, what the defendants were accused of is TRADE libel - apparently they were saying things like "this stock sucks" clearly within the context of opinion. It could be considered libel within some contexts - but not within that of a message forum. Anyone getting stock tips off one of those is pretty dumb. So in their limited case, it seems they were not commiting libel.
cryptochrome
I'm a bit of a New Urbanist, so I can immediately see how this idea can go BADLY wrong. Two points (among many) that you should consider...
1. People invariably tend to live around an hour's commute from work. Many studies have shown this. When the highway was invented, it didn't make it easier to live in the city and travel between them - it led millions of people to move farther away and for cars to become the dominant mode of transportation, with all it's ills. The same has happened with rail lines. In all cases, it means that much more space has to be devoted to providing for the transportation network - roads, parking lots, gas stations, etc. If you have people commuting by plane, you won't be letting people live in the country and work in the city - you'll be turning the entire nation into one big suburb.
2. No matter how much of a resource you produce, people will inevitably find a way to consume all of it. This rule applies to commodities like oil and food, as well as things like road space. Think building another highway will solve your traffic concerns by relieving the other roads? Think again. I just drove 400 miles to and from my brother's house this past weekend, and let me tell you the traffic was RIDICULOUS. There were jams in the middle of nowhere, at all times of day. Granted it is just before a holiday, but still. This leads me to point 2b: The most important feature of a transportation system is not its capacity, but how well it performs at maximum capacity. Roads perform terribly - they slow to a crawl and stop as soon as accidents occur. Rail, OTOH, is a little crowded in the cars but otherwise functions perfectly for the most part. How will individual air travel stack up? I think I can guess...
It'd be interesting to see this technology applied to the war industry.
Marketing just has to play up the clockless thing like it's the best ever. "Gigahertz, Schmigahertz"... "So fast it doesn't even need a clock"... etc.
True, it will drop in price (that's why I said "at today's prices") but not to nothing. These are rare elements with many potential uses that haven't been exploited because they cost too much... therefore they can create their own market to some extent. Whether that will be enough to cover the cost of the mission and make profit on top, I don't know. It does depend on how NASA prices it and releases it. It's not illegal to do it slowly (the diamond trade works this way). I'm sure there are actuaries somewhere who could give you a good estimate.
I don't know if anyone remembers this earlier slashdot article, which also discussed the matter of mining space. It also mentioned that one near earth asteroid (NEO 3554 Amun, about 2km wide) that was worth about 20 trillion dollars. Mind you that's in today's market, but I'd say there is more than enough economic incentive to go for it. I don't understand why NASA hasn't already - just one rock could solve their many budgetary woes for years to come, would be a tremendously telegenic venture, and would stimulate practical space technologies tremendously...
Don't tell me you've forgotten the tunnel of love orgy? And there was some other stuff as well... The best part of the movie is since it's rated PG people often don't bother to edit it before it ends up on TV!
Well from a teenage boy's perspective (I was at the time I saw), the inexplicably PG-13 rated Logan's Run, which is chock full of nudity and sex, was a godsend. I guess the philosophical themes and 70s sensibilities won over the ratings board...
Well since we're talking about DVDs here, why not have it available in separate (off-disc, available on the net) config files which are made by the objecting parties? They won't be that large (unless you're supporting alternate scenes and language), you could download them in large batches and load them automatically. You'd just need a specially configured player with maybe a compact flash or small hard drive to hold them. Just distribute advance copies to certain groups so that they can make their modification files in time for the DVD release, and let the right-wingers deprive themselves of their movies instead of doing it to the rest of us.
I think it certainly does have its uses, even for those of us who don't have kids. I remember seeing "The Thomas Crown Affair" with my family, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite so uncomfortable as watching a nude sex scene with your mom... I wish I could have set THAT to a PG-13 level...
The enabling force of globalization is not a matter of economics or culture - these are just factors which come into play when globalization occurs. No, globalization is all about mobility. Of ideas, goods, and people. Improvements in transportation enable us to go anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, and to send products and raw materials anywhere at low cost. Improvements in communication culminating in satellite television and the internet have brought the ideas and culture of the world to our doorstep, and vice versa.
Is it any surprise that this can cause great change and upheaval? It shouldn't be. Is this inherently a bad thing? No, it's just the way things are. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and endlessly bitching about the state of the third world without offering solutions beyond isolation (which is laughably implausable and irritatingly patronizing) is pointless.
Let's face it - our world is approaching the point where a single person can acquire the capability of affecting (or even taking) the lives of everyone on the planet. It's high time we learned to deal with it, give up the idea that everything should be forcefully driven back to some non-existent state of blissful ignorance, and try to create a common set of values for the world.
Call me biased, but having gone through high school and college, I have a hard time taking most of these folks seriously. It's easy to proseletize when you're not even living in the real world.
Our team currently uses the best lead-acid batteries available. They're expensive, but much less so than Lithium Ions, which is what most teams are moving to. But of course they're very heavy. Budget does make a big difference in the kind of car you can build, with regards to practically every component. You may have heard that the University of Michigan won the recent american solar challenge this past summer - what you probably didn't hear is that they have huge amounts of resources both within and outside their school, and a monstrously large budget. Their car cost over a $1,000,000 for components alone. In contrast our current car is worth about $250,000.
When I talk about chemical engines, I'm talking mostly about potential efficiency. There are some pretty amazing engine designs out there - there was a recent article about a rotary engine that only had one moving part besides the shaft and valves and required no lubrication.
Most teams use the same type of engine, which is built into one of the wheels. It's a lot louder than you would expect (makes this wierd popping noise) but gets better than 90% efficiency. OTOH the power range it can provide is limited.
I'm not sure about orders of magnitude, but I can tell you our car runs on about as much power as a hairdryer.