Provided you have the requisite skills, find a recruiter (aka Head Hunter) to get you a contract position at Microsoft (Volt, Comsys, et al.), Verizon, etc. You'll make more money, get a peek at the corporate culture (to see if you like it), and might have a better "inside track" at applying. You might even get paid for all the hours you work! (depending on the ethics of the corporation and your contract agency).
The down-side is that you will have to pay for your own benefits (generally) and may resent the fact that someone is taking home part of what the company pays without doing any work for it, and will have less job security.
How do you contact such a person, yo ask? Post your resume on Monster with the right keywords (provided, of course, that you have the skills!).
You know, someone has to 'seed' whatever Google returns. In my googling, I've often found that the answers come from previous 'ask Slashdot' stories that got archived.
It is indeed brave to 'ask Slashdot' AND make your identity publicly known. But I think the possibility of getting one or two truly insightful replies or links might be worth it to the poster (and the rest of us), provided that he has exceptionally thick skin!
It depends. Existing native 120 Hz displays (such as your 10 yr old CRT monitor) will do a beautiful job supporting 3D with LCD shutter glasses. So do native 120 Hz DLP and CRT projectors. The eye separation is easily done with existing LCD shutter glasses with these (Google eDimensional, NuVision, CrystalEyes, etc.). It is possible that you will need additional hardware to make these work with whatever a 3D BlueRay player looks like.
The "grey area" includes displays that claim to be 120 Hz but do not take 120 Hz input (some 3DTV devices require specially formatted 3D input at 60 Hz and convert to 120 Hz themselves), or displays that do not switch cleanly from one frame to the next (such as some 120 Hz LCDs). These may require special types of glasses, or might not work at all.
Your best bet is to look for "3D Ready" displays in LCD and DLP devices if you're going to get something right now. Devices that support some form of 3D now will most likely be usable with whatever comes out next.
I think 120 Hz displays will become more affordable than you think. There are also other decent 3D technologies that do fine at 60 Hz. My favorite is passive-polarized LCD monitors with passive polarized (i.e., cheap) glasses.
Arisawa (P240W) and Zalman (Trimon) both make very decent models (I like the Arisawa better). The problem I've noticed with these is that there is a "sweet spot" for viewing -- this will probably disappear with better manufacturing.
The other problem is that a good 3D effect requires as large a screen as possible (the perceived depth is proportional to the width of the actual screen -- you can't easily get 10 ft of depth you your laptop).
Well, you are partially right. We get our 3D information of the world not only from stereo disparity (each eye seeing something different) but also from parallax (stuff changing location as you move your head), accommodation (different objects being at different focal differences) and convergence (both your eyes changing direction to look at the same object).
The fact that parallax is important is why all high-end 3D visualization systems include head tracking (thus showing a much more realistic 3D picture). This will eventually (i.e., sooner than later) find its way into games, and can be done with current 3DTV technology.
There are several reasons for your headache:
1) The "3D" you see is at a different distance than your TV, hence your eye trying to focus on something that is not there. This can be remedied by better 3D content (i.e., once people get past the 'poke you in the eye' effect of 3D)
2) Low refresh rate or Bad Technology. I believe bad 3D is WAY worse than no 3D at all and turns people off forever. If you've ever seen an active 3D display running lower than 120 Hz or anaglyph 3D (colored glasses), or, God forbid, Pulfrich glasses (one dark and one light), you will remember the headache.
The other thing I mentioned (accommodation, convergence) will take a while to get into consumer (or even research) devices.
If you've seen the DLP projection 3DTV devices out there, you might be impressed with what can be done nowadays. I'm glad the format is out there.
That being said, 3D is not for everyone, and probably not for every type of content. I'm sure you'll be able to hit a button and turn it off if you don't like it..:)
As much as I don't like it as a user, I believe the "paywall" approach would work if there was one dominant way to pay for a "pass" (or a micropayment account) that would unlock millions of sites.
I have no interest in paying for a Salon (or a Slashdot) subscription, but I could see myself paying $7/month to "Google Paywall" if it unlocked millions of sites for me.
Of course, it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to compete with the psychology of "free", and I would hate the privacy implications of having to identify myself to every site I visit, even if it were trivially cheap...
Another point that people seem to be missing is that movies are intrinsically momre expensive and difficult to produce than music. While you might have an independent music act that is just as good as Britney Spears, we are a LONG way from independent movies that match the production quality/acting/special effects/etc. of Star Wars, 2012, etc. [Look at the credits for any movie to have at least an _idea_ of how much work goes into it].
For this reason, the democratization that threatens "big music" is very unlikely to threaten Hollywood. (The occasional independent movie that becomes a hit is unlikely to change the general trend).
The latest feat, being presented at a supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore., doesn't mean the computer thinks like a cat, or that it is the progenitor of a race of robo-cats.
The fact that they have stress this makes me suspicious. BTW, I can't find my mouse this morning...
This is a great advancement for high end virtual reality systems, but the current state of "rendering in the cloud" sounds like either a solution looking for a problem or the wrong application of the technology.
On a future Internet with sub 30 ms latency, this would ROCK. [You could have low-powered wearable augmented reality devices, "Rainbows End" style gaming, and maybe even the engine behind a Snow Crash style metaverse that remote users can log in to].
NVidia is NOT doing itself a favor with the lame empty office with boring blinds demo. They'd better come up with something sexier quick if they want to sell this (and I don't mean the remote avatar someone posted a link to).
This reminds me of the "thin client" hype circa 1999. "Thin clients" exist now in the form of AJAX enabled web browsers, Netbooks, phones etc, but that technology took about a decade to come to fruition and found a different (and more limited) niche than all the hype a decade ago [they were supposed to replace worker's PCs for word processing, spreadsheets, etc].
For instance, Joe User picks up that nice Windows 7 Home Premium machine he saw at Best Buy, and plugs his Windows Vista drive in to copy over applications, unaware his old computer was running Vista x64, while his new Windows 7 machine is 32-bit. Joe has some Problems now, when he tries to run some of his old installed software that was 64-bit only.
Unfortunately, the days when you could transfer applications from one machine to the other simply by copying binaries are LONG gone in the PC world...
Send some "test" links yourself. When you manage to break into the user's machine, e-mail the user his own confidential document, password, etc. Then tell him _how_ he exposed himself and that you _could_ have been the bad guy.
I learned how to use chmod properly this way a LONG time ago -- the teaching method was highly effective...:)
(You will, of course, get the careless users ticked off -- so make sure you have management approval for this. But seeing _proof_ of what _will_ happen will get the message across for good).
No, the screen does not screw up the polarization in a 3D DLP TV. It is an active shutter glass technology, but also some of the best 3D I've ever seen (reference: Samsung 120 Hz DLP TV with NuVision cinema glasses).
If you like passive, try passive-polarized monitors (Arisawa P240W, Zalman Trimon, etc. Some of them suffer from parallax issues where there is a "sweet spot" for viewing, even with glasses, but otherwise the glasses are cheap and the 3D is good). They are also very easy to drive (interlaced stereo input)
I can't judge this man, but I can't imagine that the "good job dying already" attitude I've seen in the article and EVERY post here helping people like the members of "Not Dead Yet": http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/
How is this different than now?
on
NASA May Outsource
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
NASA already hires contractors for doing a lot of the technical work right now. If I am not mistaken, large portions of the Space Shuttle and the ISS were manufactured by Boeing, just to give one example...
5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait -- it can't!
If such a population-limiting feature on this monstrosity is not mercy shown to us by the Almighty Lord, what is it??
If you want to have NASA 20 years from now, land on the Moon, land on Mars, or both. Visit the Lagrange points too after that if you must.
Otherwise, give the $15B a year to AIG so that they can buy more monogrammed staplers for their executive suites.
I love science, but I COULD CARE LESS about what the rocks on Mars look like unless I have a chance of ever going there in my lifetime. Nor will you inspire _my_ kids unless they have at least the dream of such a chance (if you buy into the NASA's there to inspire the kids thing)
All that being said, I _did_ spend 6 years at NASA and vote on space issues before anything else...
Again that is where you and I differ. I'd point it out. Every time. And I hope the 'jerk' would point it out to me. See, I like to be a straight shooter. I tell people when I have a problem. They know when I have a problem and it's up to them if they want to listen or not. I will not lie and I will not mislead somebody.
A fool finds no pleasure in understanding
but delights in airing his own opinions.
Proverbs 18:2
[I used to think like you until I happened on the verse above]
I personally would abstain from such an election on principle alone. It is impossible to _guarantee_ that your vote will be kept anonymous.
[The only way to guarantee such a thing would be to require people to pick up single use digital keys printed on paper from a physical location and use these as login credentials. Even then, you'd have to vote using a digital proxy or from an internet cafe, all of which undermines the so called "convenience" of an all digital election].
Who knows what kind of unprovable inconveniences might befall you if you vote for the guy who ends up losing? (if not now, in the future once a political machine figures out how to exploit such information...)
For a democracy to work, Secret ballots should be secret and marked on hard, tangible, non-electronic paper.
Slashdot Mirror
Provided you have the requisite skills, find a recruiter (aka Head Hunter) to get you a contract position at Microsoft (Volt, Comsys, et al.), Verizon, etc. You'll make more money, get a peek at the corporate culture (to see if you like it), and might have a better "inside track" at applying. You might even get paid for all the hours you work! (depending on the ethics of the corporation and your contract agency).
The down-side is that you will have to pay for your own benefits (generally) and may resent the fact that someone is taking home part of what the company pays without doing any work for it, and will have less job security.
How do you contact such a person, yo ask? Post your resume on Monster with the right keywords (provided, of course, that you have the skills!).
YMMV
You know, someone has to 'seed' whatever Google returns. In my googling, I've often found that the answers come from previous 'ask Slashdot' stories that got archived.
It is indeed brave to 'ask Slashdot' AND make your identity publicly known. But I think the possibility of getting one or two truly insightful replies or links might be worth it to the poster (and the rest of us), provided that he has exceptionally thick skin!
It depends. Existing native 120 Hz displays (such as your 10 yr old CRT monitor) will do a beautiful job supporting 3D with LCD shutter glasses. So do native 120 Hz DLP and CRT projectors. The eye separation is easily done with existing LCD shutter glasses with these (Google eDimensional, NuVision, CrystalEyes, etc.). It is possible that you will need additional hardware to make these work with whatever a 3D BlueRay player looks like.
The "grey area" includes displays that claim to be 120 Hz but do not take 120 Hz input (some 3DTV devices require specially formatted 3D input at 60 Hz and convert to 120 Hz themselves), or displays that do not switch cleanly from one frame to the next (such as some 120 Hz LCDs). These may require special types of glasses, or might not work at all.
Your best bet is to look for "3D Ready" displays in LCD and DLP devices if you're going to get something right now. Devices that support some form of 3D now will most likely be usable with whatever comes out next.
I hope this helps...
I think 120 Hz displays will become more affordable than you think. There are also other decent 3D technologies that do fine at 60 Hz. My favorite is passive-polarized LCD monitors with passive polarized (i.e., cheap) glasses.
Arisawa (P240W) and Zalman (Trimon) both make very decent models (I like the Arisawa better). The problem I've noticed with these is that there is a "sweet spot" for viewing -- this will probably disappear with better manufacturing.
The other problem is that a good 3D effect requires as large a screen as possible (the perceived depth is proportional to the width of the actual screen -- you can't easily get 10 ft of depth you your laptop).
Well, you are partially right. We get our 3D information of the world not only from stereo disparity (each eye seeing something different) but also from parallax (stuff changing location as you move your head), accommodation (different objects being at different focal differences) and convergence (both your eyes changing direction to look at the same object).
The fact that parallax is important is why all high-end 3D visualization systems include head tracking (thus showing a much more realistic 3D picture). This will eventually (i.e., sooner than later) find its way into games, and can be done with current 3DTV technology.
There are several reasons for your headache:
1) The "3D" you see is at a different distance than your TV, hence your eye trying to focus on something that is not there. This can be remedied by better 3D content (i.e., once people get past the 'poke you in the eye' effect of 3D)
2) Low refresh rate or Bad Technology. I believe bad 3D is WAY worse than no 3D at all and turns people off forever. If you've ever seen an active 3D display running lower than 120 Hz or anaglyph 3D (colored glasses), or, God forbid, Pulfrich glasses (one dark and one light), you will remember the headache.
The other thing I mentioned (accommodation, convergence) will take a while to get into consumer (or even research) devices.
If you've seen the DLP projection 3DTV devices out there, you might be impressed with what can be done nowadays. I'm glad the format is out there.
That being said, 3D is not for everyone, and probably not for every type of content. I'm sure you'll be able to hit a button and turn it off if you don't like it.. :)
Bring on the hoverboards and the flying cars. It's almost 2010 already!!
(Somebody had to say it. Now can someone better versed in physics than myself explain why this won't happen?)
Really. Does the name not mean anything??? :)
As much as I don't like it as a user, I believe the "paywall" approach would work if there was one dominant way to pay for a "pass" (or a micropayment account) that would unlock millions of sites.
I have no interest in paying for a Salon (or a Slashdot) subscription, but I could see myself paying $7/month to "Google Paywall" if it unlocked millions of sites for me.
Of course, it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to compete with the psychology of "free", and I would hate the privacy implications of having to identify myself to every site I visit, even if it were trivially cheap...
Another point that people seem to be missing is that movies are intrinsically momre expensive and difficult to produce than music. While you might have an independent music act that is just as good as Britney Spears, we are a LONG way from independent movies that match the production quality/acting/special effects/etc. of Star Wars, 2012, etc. [Look at the credits for any movie to have at least an _idea_ of how much work goes into it].
For this reason, the democratization that threatens "big music" is very unlikely to threaten Hollywood. (The occasional independent movie that becomes a hit is unlikely to change the general trend).
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of These !!
I have seriously been looking for a way to filter out Fox News from Google News (they add too much noise, IMHO). They will now do it for me :)
The fact that they have stress this makes me suspicious. BTW, I can't find my mouse this morning...
This is a great advancement for high end virtual reality systems, but the current state of "rendering in the cloud" sounds like either a solution looking for a problem or the wrong application of the technology.
On a future Internet with sub 30 ms latency, this would ROCK. [You could have low-powered wearable augmented reality devices, "Rainbows End" style gaming, and maybe even the engine behind a Snow Crash style metaverse that remote users can log in to].
NVidia is NOT doing itself a favor with the lame empty office with boring blinds demo. They'd better come up with something sexier quick if they want to sell this (and I don't mean the remote avatar someone posted a link to).
This reminds me of the "thin client" hype circa 1999. "Thin clients" exist now in the form of AJAX enabled web browsers, Netbooks, phones etc, but that technology took about a decade to come to fruition and found a different (and more limited) niche than all the hype a decade ago [they were supposed to replace worker's PCs for word processing, spreadsheets, etc].
Unfortunately, the days when you could transfer applications from one machine to the other simply by copying binaries are LONG gone in the PC world...
Send some "test" links yourself. When you manage to break into the user's machine, e-mail the user his own confidential document, password, etc. Then tell him _how_ he exposed himself and that you _could_ have been the bad guy.
I learned how to use chmod properly this way a LONG time ago -- the teaching method was highly effective... :)
(You will, of course, get the careless users ticked off -- so make sure you have management approval for this. But seeing _proof_ of what _will_ happen will get the message across for good).
No, the screen does not screw up the polarization in a 3D DLP TV. It is an active shutter glass technology, but also some of the best 3D I've ever seen (reference: Samsung 120 Hz DLP TV with NuVision cinema glasses).
If you like passive, try passive-polarized monitors (Arisawa P240W, Zalman Trimon, etc. Some of them suffer from parallax issues where there is a "sweet spot" for viewing, even with glasses, but otherwise the glasses are cheap and the 3D is good). They are also very easy to drive (interlaced stereo input)
..by this universal glorification of suicide?
I can't judge this man, but I can't imagine that the "good job dying already" attitude I've seen in the article and EVERY post here helping people like the members of "Not Dead Yet": http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/
NASA already hires contractors for doing a lot of the technical work right now. If I am not mistaken, large portions of the Space Shuttle and the ISS were manufactured by Boeing, just to give one example...
They better provide FiOS!!
If such a population-limiting feature on this monstrosity is not mercy shown to us by the Almighty Lord, what is it??
If you want to have NASA 20 years from now, land on the Moon, land on Mars, or both. Visit the Lagrange points too after that if you must.
Otherwise, give the $15B a year to AIG so that they can buy more monogrammed staplers for their executive suites.
I love science, but I COULD CARE LESS about what the rocks on Mars look like unless I have a chance of ever going there in my lifetime. Nor will you inspire _my_ kids unless they have at least the dream of such a chance (if you buy into the NASA's there to inspire the kids thing)
All that being said, I _did_ spend 6 years at NASA and vote on space issues before anything else...
River deltas house some unique ecosystems. Has anyone done an environmental impact study on using something like this?
See
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/about/habitat_types/selecting_freshwater_ecoregions/habitat17.cfm
A fool finds no pleasure in understanding
but delights in airing his own opinions.
Proverbs 18:2
[I used to think like you until I happened on the verse above]
"You know why women can't play Chess? They have small hearts...can't get enough blood to the brain. That's why Chess is a Young Man's Sport!"
-- Eccentric Chess Player to a bunch of college freshmen hanging out at the Union. I was one of the dumbfounded freshmen...
It's good to know that Math is not in this category :)
I personally would abstain from such an election on principle alone. It is impossible to _guarantee_ that your vote will be kept anonymous.
[The only way to guarantee such a thing would be to require people to pick up single use digital keys printed on paper from a physical location and use these as login credentials. Even then, you'd have to vote using a digital proxy or from an internet cafe, all of which undermines the so called "convenience" of an all digital election].
Who knows what kind of unprovable inconveniences might befall you if you vote for the guy who ends up losing? (if not now, in the future once a political machine figures out how to exploit such information...)
For a democracy to work, Secret ballots should be secret and marked on hard, tangible, non-electronic paper.