Yes, but then Vista knows it's "tainted". It will refuse to run "protected media path" DRM, because it is supposed to protect such DRM against snooping by unsigned code. Memory-sniffing attacks such as those recently deployed on Windows XP against HD-DVD players are supposedly thwarted by Vista's "protected media path". This sounds like a backdoor to load unsigned code into the kernel without it being aware, giving you complete control over your own computer at all times, even when it is running PMP DRM crap.
If they built the ramp inside the pyramid, it is probably still there. So if we find it, we can in fact claim to have "solved" the mystery. And if we look for it thoroughly without finding any traces, we can probably rule out the idea. This theory is better than the average pyramid construction theory because it *is* actually falsifiable.
He's right. Component with decent cables (and the ones that come with the 360 are fine) has no visible ghosting or interference. There are fewer compatibility issues and no DRM, and component video hardware and cables are far, far cheaper than HDMI. More compatible, quality indistinguishable, far cheaper, no DRM: component wins. HDMI's *only* real-world advantage is an easier physical plug-in process. But you only have to do that once.
On the hard-drive front, I can't imagine why MS went with a laptop-size hard drive. Is the physical size of the hard drive really *that* big a deal? At newegg today, laptop hard drives are $120 for 160G, while desktop drives are $145 for 500G. MS have saved a ton of their own money and given us more space at the same time, just by compromising a bit on the size of the (already quite large) enclosure. What were they thinking? (Apple did the same thing on AppleTV, but at least the AppleTV is actually small.)
Without some major advance, it's unlikely that hard drives will need anything faster
You mean a major advance like solid-state hard drives? Which, by the time this tech comes out, will have likely grabbed a significant portion of the high-end laptop market, if not more?
The video that is on the SpaceX website is a tiny bit shorter than the live webcast. Just before the live webcast cut out, the oscillation got much worse, and the slight roll visible at the end of the video turned into a full-blown rolling motion. The entire spacecraft rolled over and the Sun illuminated the side of the rocket just as the feed cut out. (not everyone saw this last part, perhaps due to Windows Media Player caching?)
I also thought it was odd when the ring around the base of the rocket nozzle fell off (just before fairing separation). It didn't look like that was supposed to happen. Anyone know more about that?
Microsoft Research has always done great things. Check out their graphics research or their Singularity OS. Microsoft Research is almost like a completely independent entity.
In related news, there is also a plan to free the world from tooth decay by introducing a GM strain of mouth bacteria that out-competes existing strains yet doesn't produce the acids which damage teeth. It's an interesting technique with a lot of promise, but also a lot of risk.
The Mozilla developers aren't enthused about XPCOM either. They're stuck with it as it's deeply entwined with the foundations of Mozilla, but if you read around Bugzilla you'll hear them talking about "deCOMtamination" work they are doing.
Good riddance! I don't want my ISP blocking ports, blocking pop-ups for me, performing QoS for me, filtering my spam, performing NAT on me, or "shaping" my traffic. I want my ISP to deliver my packets as fast as possible and that's it. All of those functions belong at the edge of the network, under *my* control, not at the ISP under the control of a monopoly or duopoly.
The only legitimate ISP traffic modification, IMHO, is to intervene when a customer's connection is being used to maliciously degrade the service of others, by flooding, operating as a spam relay, or distributing viruses. However, the real solution to these problems is not in the network, but at the client.
ISPs should notify their customers of malicious behavior, and if it is egregious, they should completely disconnect that customer from the Internet to prevent further damage and to provoke action. Customers whose computers were taken over would then actually *realize* it, and start taking measures to improve their security. This could only be good for the Internet. Maybe consumers would even wise up and start demanding improved security from their operating system vendor.
Anyway, if the final legislation did not include some kind of exception for malicious behavior, I would be very surprised.
No need for two GPS receivers. If you are moving, the GPS can easily tell which direction you are going, which is more important than the direction you are facing anyway (especially on a boat or plane where they might be different without an easy way to tell).
Display lists are an old solution, not used much any more. Vertex buffers are what is used nowadays. DirectX never even had a call analagous to glVertex3f, it started straight out with vertex buffers. The small batch problem refers to the fact that DirectX's rendering calls are incredibly CPU intensive. Making a call to render one triangle takes the same amount of time as a call to render thousands of triangles. Making more than about 200 draw calls per frame will cause your application to become CPU-bound, even if you're only rendering 200 triangles! The graphics card can handle the polygons without breaking a sweat but DirectX burns up your CPU doing God knows what instead of passing them along. This makes it difficult to render more than about 200 (depending on CPU speed) objects, which isn't really a whole lot when you think about all of the things that go into a realistic scene.
I don't know if OpenGL suffers from the same phenomenon. My guess is that it does to some degree, but I can't imagine that it's as bad as DirectX.
The geometry shader is actually a cool concept. It fits into the pipeline *before* the vertex shader, and it has the ability to create and delete vertices and polygons, which vertex shaders cannot do. This helps free up PCI bandwidth and CPU time by generating complex geometry completely on the graphics card. Applications using stencil shadow volumes and particle systems should benefit immediately, and in the future I expect a move toward lots more procedural generation of geometry. Today's graphics cards can render so many triangles that most applications just can't send them enough to keep them occupied, so having the card generate its own triangles makes sense. For example, you could send the card a list of points on the ground and it could generate a field of unique leafy plants swaying in the wind, one for each point. If the plants are complex then the bandwidth saved by generating that vertex data on the card instead of transferring it over the PCI bus from main memory could be huge.
AFAIK, the code you write in Visual Studio runs on your computer, not the lego RCX. Your RCX has to remain pointed at the IR transmitter attached to your computer at all times so it can be controlled, which is pretty lame. If you really want to do something interesting with an RCX, you'd be better off with "Not Quite C" which allows you to write high-level code that runs on the RCX brick autonomously.
Except that in this case, there's actually a sound business reason for them to produce open-source drivers. Unlike ATI and NVIDIA, thir market is small (people who are too dumb to realize that a cheap Radeon or GeForce would be better?) and they don't have much of a following. Releasing open-source drivers would get them a ton of positive press and attention, which they need, and it might even give them a small legitimate market of people who would buy their products on principle. It could even lead to improved drivers, which is something else they desparately need. They wouldn't have to include patented texture compression in the open-source drivers; real open-source zealots wouldn't want to use it anyway and hackers could add it themselves later.
It really doesn't make sense for ATI or NVIDIA to open-source their drivers, but you can actually make a good business case for S3.
I recently got a Thinkpad X60 which has EV-DO built in (provided by Verizon). I've been getting ~100KBps downloads pretty reliably in the LA area (about 700-800 Mbps, note B/b). I'm pretty satisfied with it; I've cancelled my DSL and I can still use the iTunes music/video store, YouTube, Google Video, and Adult Swim Fix. I'm surprised how well streaming video works over the connection in general. On the down side, latency is noticably higher than DSL and upload speeds are terrible; you wouldn't do well using Skype or playing games, though I haven't tried it myself. Coverage has been very good for me so far.
The service is $60/month unlimited on a 2-year contract if your cell service is also through Verizon, and IMHO it's worth it if you can cancel your home broadband. My biggest concern is that the Terms of Service are retarded; they basically prohibit doing anything but checking your email and viewing HTML over HTTP. Video of any kind is expressly prohibited, as are games, and they even forbid using it as a "replacement for a wired broadband connection". They don't seem to actually attempt to enforce any of it. Hopefully competition from Sprint will force them to drop those clauses, as Sprint doesn't have them AFAIK.
Something else to consider is that cell carriers are going to be quickly moving to EV-DO Revision A, and then Revision B in a year or two, so a laptop with hardware built in may not be the best choice upgradability wise, especially when the PC cards are free with a contract. I haven't seen information anywhere about whether current EV-DO hardware will be software-upgradable to Revision A or B; I'm thinking likely not. Revision A will provide massively improved uplink and doubled downlink, along with improved latency likely usable for VoIP and even games. Revision B will boast peak speeds of 70/25 Mbps down/up, and if Verizon/Sprint actually sell those speeds there's hardly any point in a wired connection at all. Finally, competition in the broadband market!
No robot body has yet come within a light-year of the elegant structure of the human musculo-skeletal system which allows us to move so flexibly and fluidly while being quite damage-resistant and lightweight. No energy storage device can even come close to the human body's ability to go for weeks without fuel. No motor or artificial muscle offers the excellent performance characteristics and efficiency of biological muscle. Our senses of touch, smell, and taste have not been replicated in hardware; though specialized sensors exist they don't perform equivalently. And the long-term durability and automatic self-repair of the human body is completely unmatched in the mechanical world.
I wish we had a pirate party here; they'd get my vote. But in the absence of that, we can still help Sweden's pirate party by donating part of the money they need to participate in their elections. Perhaps with their success we can start a real debate in other countries and eventually bring the US around.
Minor quibble: The point of patents is not to prevent the transmission of information. Patents were originally designed to encourage public disclosure of inventions. Patents are intended to prevent the *use* of information. Which in some ways is even worse.
Doesn't really affect your argument, which I agree with wholeheartedly.
You underestimate the impatience of the consumer. We go to movies because we can't wait six months for the DVD. We buy video games at full price even though we know in six months the price will be halved. We buy hardcover books because we can't wait for the paperback or the library waiting list. We want to keep ahead of the Joneses so we can stay at the top of the watercooler gossip, and we're plenty willing to pay. Five years is IMHO plenty, perhaps even too much.
I don't think you could send enough juice to drive a reliable release mechanism over a distance of multiple inches. Anyway, the system they're talking about in the article is activated from tens of meters away, which means that the release energy is definitely stored in the fastener somehow. I just don't see how these could possibly be reliable to release on command, reliable to *not* spontaneously release, reuseable, long-lasting, and also cheap enough to replace screws. Any one of those would be hard; all five is unlikely.
Don't these require batteries which will eventually go dead, rendering them unable to be released remotely, and possibly difficult to remove at all? Also, if anyone believes these things are truly hack-proof, they must be pretty gullible.
Exploits for IE 7 will maybe not be able to install viruses (if the sandbox holds up to real attack, and that's a *big* if), but they will still be able to read all your history and cookies, spoof secure sites, even become memory-resident and steal any subsequently entered bank passwords or credit card numbers. You can't prevent them from doing anything that IE itself can do.
Some of your wishes are obsolete! Firefox 1.5 already includes Javascript image creation in the form of the canvas element (more, more, more). PNG compression is included. And of course there's also SVG. In the future, there may even be OpenGL...
I don't see how price fixing can even be *defined* in the music market. The entire industry is built on government-granted monopolies (copyright). Supply is infinite; competition is crippled; prices are arbitrary even in the absence of any shady dealings.
Even if the attorney general did decide to take some action, it would undoubtedly be some slap-on-the-wrist fine or equally ineffective measure. Nobody seems to ever consider doing something that might be effective. In this case, the problem is at its root caused by the government-granted monopoly of copyright. No copyright, no problems! If the government is unhappy with the copyright monopolies they have created, why not strike the problem at its root and weaken the copyrights of those who abuse them?
This would work not just on music companies but on any business built on copyright; for example software businesses such as Microsoft. Instead of a fine, simply slash the duration of copyright on the company's assets, or even release some portion of them to the public domain immediately. This would not only serve as a deterrent to future abuses; it would actually reduce their *ability* to commit abuses in the present, and it would measurably benefit the public as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but then Vista knows it's "tainted". It will refuse to run "protected media path" DRM, because it is supposed to protect such DRM against snooping by unsigned code. Memory-sniffing attacks such as those recently deployed on Windows XP against HD-DVD players are supposedly thwarted by Vista's "protected media path". This sounds like a backdoor to load unsigned code into the kernel without it being aware, giving you complete control over your own computer at all times, even when it is running PMP DRM crap.
If they built the ramp inside the pyramid, it is probably still there. So if we find it, we can in fact claim to have "solved" the mystery. And if we look for it thoroughly without finding any traces, we can probably rule out the idea. This theory is better than the average pyramid construction theory because it *is* actually falsifiable.
He's right. Component with decent cables (and the ones that come with the 360 are fine) has no visible ghosting or interference. There are fewer compatibility issues and no DRM, and component video hardware and cables are far, far cheaper than HDMI. More compatible, quality indistinguishable, far cheaper, no DRM: component wins. HDMI's *only* real-world advantage is an easier physical plug-in process. But you only have to do that once.
On the hard-drive front, I can't imagine why MS went with a laptop-size hard drive. Is the physical size of the hard drive really *that* big a deal? At newegg today, laptop hard drives are $120 for 160G, while desktop drives are $145 for 500G. MS have saved a ton of their own money and given us more space at the same time, just by compromising a bit on the size of the (already quite large) enclosure. What were they thinking? (Apple did the same thing on AppleTV, but at least the AppleTV is actually small.)
The video that is on the SpaceX website is a tiny bit shorter than the live webcast. Just before the live webcast cut out, the oscillation got much worse, and the slight roll visible at the end of the video turned into a full-blown rolling motion. The entire spacecraft rolled over and the Sun illuminated the side of the rocket just as the feed cut out. (not everyone saw this last part, perhaps due to Windows Media Player caching?)
I also thought it was odd when the ring around the base of the rocket nozzle fell off (just before fairing separation). It didn't look like that was supposed to happen. Anyone know more about that?
Microsoft Research has always done great things. Check out their graphics research or their Singularity OS. Microsoft Research is almost like a completely independent entity.
In related news, there is also a plan to free the world from tooth decay by introducing a GM strain of mouth bacteria that out-competes existing strains yet doesn't produce the acids which damage teeth. It's an interesting technique with a lot of promise, but also a lot of risk.
The Mozilla developers aren't enthused about XPCOM either. They're stuck with it as it's deeply entwined with the foundations of Mozilla, but if you read around Bugzilla you'll hear them talking about "deCOMtamination" work they are doing.
The only legitimate ISP traffic modification, IMHO, is to intervene when a customer's connection is being used to maliciously degrade the service of others, by flooding, operating as a spam relay, or distributing viruses. However, the real solution to these problems is not in the network, but at the client.
ISPs should notify their customers of malicious behavior, and if it is egregious, they should completely disconnect that customer from the Internet to prevent further damage and to provoke action. Customers whose computers were taken over would then actually *realize* it, and start taking measures to improve their security. This could only be good for the Internet. Maybe consumers would even wise up and start demanding improved security from their operating system vendor.
Anyway, if the final legislation did not include some kind of exception for malicious behavior, I would be very surprised.
No need for two GPS receivers. If you are moving, the GPS can easily tell which direction you are going, which is more important than the direction you are facing anyway (especially on a boat or plane where they might be different without an easy way to tell).
I don't know if OpenGL suffers from the same phenomenon. My guess is that it does to some degree, but I can't imagine that it's as bad as DirectX.
The geometry shader is actually a cool concept. It fits into the pipeline *before* the vertex shader, and it has the ability to create and delete vertices and polygons, which vertex shaders cannot do. This helps free up PCI bandwidth and CPU time by generating complex geometry completely on the graphics card. Applications using stencil shadow volumes and particle systems should benefit immediately, and in the future I expect a move toward lots more procedural generation of geometry. Today's graphics cards can render so many triangles that most applications just can't send them enough to keep them occupied, so having the card generate its own triangles makes sense. For example, you could send the card a list of points on the ground and it could generate a field of unique leafy plants swaying in the wind, one for each point. If the plants are complex then the bandwidth saved by generating that vertex data on the card instead of transferring it over the PCI bus from main memory could be huge.
AFAIK, the code you write in Visual Studio runs on your computer, not the lego RCX. Your RCX has to remain pointed at the IR transmitter attached to your computer at all times so it can be controlled, which is pretty lame. If you really want to do something interesting with an RCX, you'd be better off with "Not Quite C" which allows you to write high-level code that runs on the RCX brick autonomously.
It really doesn't make sense for ATI or NVIDIA to open-source their drivers, but you can actually make a good business case for S3.
The service is $60/month unlimited on a 2-year contract if your cell service is also through Verizon, and IMHO it's worth it if you can cancel your home broadband. My biggest concern is that the Terms of Service are retarded; they basically prohibit doing anything but checking your email and viewing HTML over HTTP. Video of any kind is expressly prohibited, as are games, and they even forbid using it as a "replacement for a wired broadband connection". They don't seem to actually attempt to enforce any of it. Hopefully competition from Sprint will force them to drop those clauses, as Sprint doesn't have them AFAIK.
Something else to consider is that cell carriers are going to be quickly moving to EV-DO Revision A, and then Revision B in a year or two, so a laptop with hardware built in may not be the best choice upgradability wise, especially when the PC cards are free with a contract. I haven't seen information anywhere about whether current EV-DO hardware will be software-upgradable to Revision A or B; I'm thinking likely not. Revision A will provide massively improved uplink and doubled downlink, along with improved latency likely usable for VoIP and even games. Revision B will boast peak speeds of 70/25 Mbps down/up, and if Verizon/Sprint actually sell those speeds there's hardly any point in a wired connection at all. Finally, competition in the broadband market!
No robot body has yet come within a light-year of the elegant structure of the human musculo-skeletal system which allows us to move so flexibly and fluidly while being quite damage-resistant and lightweight. No energy storage device can even come close to the human body's ability to go for weeks without fuel. No motor or artificial muscle offers the excellent performance characteristics and efficiency of biological muscle. Our senses of touch, smell, and taste have not been replicated in hardware; though specialized sensors exist they don't perform equivalently. And the long-term durability and automatic self-repair of the human body is completely unmatched in the mechanical world.
I wish we had a pirate party here; they'd get my vote. But in the absence of that, we can still help Sweden's pirate party by donating part of the money they need to participate in their elections. Perhaps with their success we can start a real debate in other countries and eventually bring the US around.
Doesn't really affect your argument, which I agree with wholeheartedly.
You underestimate the impatience of the consumer. We go to movies because we can't wait six months for the DVD. We buy video games at full price even though we know in six months the price will be halved. We buy hardcover books because we can't wait for the paperback or the library waiting list. We want to keep ahead of the Joneses so we can stay at the top of the watercooler gossip, and we're plenty willing to pay. Five years is IMHO plenty, perhaps even too much.
If there's a game out there more suited to being played with the Revolution controller, I'm not aware of it.
I don't think you could send enough juice to drive a reliable release mechanism over a distance of multiple inches. Anyway, the system they're talking about in the article is activated from tens of meters away, which means that the release energy is definitely stored in the fastener somehow. I just don't see how these could possibly be reliable to release on command, reliable to *not* spontaneously release, reuseable, long-lasting, and also cheap enough to replace screws. Any one of those would be hard; all five is unlikely.
Sure, RFID tags don't need batteries but RFID tags don't move.
Don't these require batteries which will eventually go dead, rendering them unable to be released remotely, and possibly difficult to remove at all? Also, if anyone believes these things are truly hack-proof, they must be pretty gullible.
Exploits for IE 7 will maybe not be able to install viruses (if the sandbox holds up to real attack, and that's a *big* if), but they will still be able to read all your history and cookies, spoof secure sites, even become memory-resident and steal any subsequently entered bank passwords or credit card numbers. You can't prevent them from doing anything that IE itself can do.
Some of your wishes are obsolete! Firefox 1.5 already includes Javascript image creation in the form of the canvas element (more, more, more). PNG compression is included. And of course there's also SVG. In the future, there may even be OpenGL...
Even if the attorney general did decide to take some action, it would undoubtedly be some slap-on-the-wrist fine or equally ineffective measure. Nobody seems to ever consider doing something that might be effective. In this case, the problem is at its root caused by the government-granted monopoly of copyright. No copyright, no problems! If the government is unhappy with the copyright monopolies they have created, why not strike the problem at its root and weaken the copyrights of those who abuse them?
This would work not just on music companies but on any business built on copyright; for example software businesses such as Microsoft. Instead of a fine, simply slash the duration of copyright on the company's assets, or even release some portion of them to the public domain immediately. This would not only serve as a deterrent to future abuses; it would actually reduce their *ability* to commit abuses in the present, and it would measurably benefit the public as well.