Well, this just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over that Amazon.com just wants to do the right thing and has their customer at heart.
(snigger)
Forget Amazon -- I go to CDNow for CD's, especially if I'm looking for a hard-to-find album. Do a search on it. If it's not there, come back in a week or so -- it will be. They seem to be paying a lot of attention to the "misses" on their database. Now THEY want to satify their customers!
When a microwave photon hits a molecule of water and gets absorbed, that molecule is suddenly ionized with great force. Sure, this doesn't amount to much heat in a material, but if this molecule happens to be in a sensitive position, it can cause trouble. Look at bread heated in a microwave. Why does it get hard when it cools? Because the dissolved sugars in the bread were subjected to great energies at the molecular level, and carmelized.
Cancer can happen when a DNA strand is damaged in one of a few particular locations, turning off the growth-regulation in a cell. The cell starts to divide uncontrolled, eventually making millions of copies of itself and forming a tumor.
One microwave photon can cause this if it happens to hit the right spot. The force of the ionization of that water molecule is like a tiny explosion occuring within the DNA strand. More powerful transmissions just increase the chance that this will happen.
DNA isn't the only sensitive molecule in our bodies. There are many important proteins and ions that can be badly damaged by a stray photon at the right energy. We can't possibly stop all naturally-occuring radiation damage to our systems, but we certainly shouldn't add to it.
Universities seem to be treating their students as just another asset these days to squeeze out more money. First they let the credit card people in, now this. What's next?
Universities should be protecting their students from this crap, not encouraging it. So many students get into big trouble, even being forced to go into bankruptcy, because of the shady credit card companies. Students don't have this much money to spend!
Most student don't yet know how to manage their own assets, however small, and these businesses will take advantage of them. The universities know students are living on a tight budget, given the outrageous tuition and fees these days, yet they seem to conveniently forget this fact when it comes to these questionable business deals, as long as money is involved.
Our society will quickly develop past this "noisy" stage where we are leaking radio patterns into space. Our communication will become more efficient and indistinguishable from noise to anybody else. Likewise, we can't expect to detect any other civilization who happens to be in a similar "noisy" stage -- it's just too short and the universe is very old.
We will gain control of our technology, after having some very close calls with mishandling it. We will use it to enhance our lives and ourselves, and learn to leave the planet alone. Our intelligence, knowledge, and power over matter and energy will expand. Our understanding and ethics will continue grow. Eventually we will master interstellar space travel.
The civilization that is already out there that can travel through interstellar space is extremely advanced beyond our comprehension. This civilization consists of massive intelligence and the ability to form energy and matter into anything it needs at a whim. It is very organized and disciplined, unlike our own present raw immaturity.
The worst we'd see from them is not the total destruction of our society like in countless alien movies. They have no reason to waste this much energy on us. Instead, they're probably watching us, taking samples, etc. to get a detailed idea of where we stand. All we notice is the rare "tagging" of our planet (crop circles, etc.) for whatever reasons they may have, and the unconfirmable stories of UFO sightings and abductions.
The point is that they definitely don't want to disturb us. Our civilization is still in its infancy. We might become something interesting and useful when we grow up. When we do grow up, we'll probably know by then that they are there already and say, "Hello, we think we're ready!" Then we can be expected to be treated like a know-it-all teenager.
Of course, this is all opinion, and it is going to change in the future...
If this works, we could bring back many of the species that we drove into extinction through our ignorance. We are destroying the Earth with our technology -- we're learning this the hard way. We need to start using the technology to reverse the damage we have done, while learning how to eliminate the effects of our new knowledge on the environment. This is one start among many.
Hey, one of the local radio stations here (Boston area) broadcast an interview with the survivor of Survivor around the time that the show started being aired. I didn't pay much attention, and soon switched stations, but now I wish I at least memorized the name! I don't watch the show, but I'm surprised that no-one seems to know who it is, given this broadcast. Was anybody else listening to this interview?
Wow, this thing is beautiful. It's only 8x8x10 inches! This is a computer that you don't shove under your desk, but place it on top of your desk (next to one of Apple's LCD displays), so everybody can look at it.
Notice that there are no PCI slots in there. They'd have to have a fan and make it a bigger box. You're supposed to be able to add any peripheral you want through the USB and FireWire connections, anyway. What about a second display? If you can afford the Apple Cinema display, you don't need it.
Did they license the optical mouse technology from Microsoft? Or did Apple and Microsoft license it from someone else? This is the mouse that doesn't need a special pad. You can use it on your desk, on your knee, or on your forehead. Good bye puck!
If you look carefully at the light refraction within the plastic, you can see that at least the plastic case is a real object in a photograph. Even minor imperfections in the shape of the plastic are magnified by the refraction of light within the material. These cannot be simulated in 3-D rendering programs, since these programs tend to achieve too-perfect results. Simulating these in a paint application is extremely time-consuming and so hard not to mess up. It's a lot of work to make complex refraction look "real" with all of the imperfections in real-life objects, and I can see no evidence of tampering within these refractions.
For example, look at the front top edge of the plastic. Within it you can see where the front slot penetrates the top plastic. Even an expert Photoshop user probbaly would not have thought of this, and most likely would not have known how to handle it properly if he had. The light reflections inside this section are too irregular to have been generated by a 3-D program. Looking at other areas within the case, and at the two camera angles provided, all of the refractions and shading are consistant with a real object under real lighting.
On a side note: In my opinion, these "slots" look like DVD and CD-RW slots, which are becoming an increasingly popular drive pairing in today's machines, not retractable handles or stacking slots.
I signed up with the FIN, too, to tell my representatives exactly what I thought... nothing that MS would have liked. The e-mails DID get sent. I know, because one of the government's e-mail servers returned an error for one of the addresses. I had to re-send the letter to that senator through the "snail mail" option.
Here is my letter. I used the FIN to send MY opinion of the whole mess all right...
Dear Senator:
I want you to know that I support the judge's decision to penalize Microsoft for its predatory and oppressive actions to grow and maintain its software monopoly.
Microsoft claims that it wishes to keep its freedom to innovate, yet in practice it is guilty of squashing this very freedom. Many innovative ideas and software products have died at Microsoft's hand. Most small software companies are afraid that Microsoft might "notice" them and either duplicate their ideas, or buy them out. This isn't just fear of competition; this is fear of unstoppable industrial conquest. Many technologies bought by Microsoft have just been scrapped to kill them off.
Netscape is a prime example of Microsoft's predatory practices. Navigator was the top browser technology, until Microsoft decided to try to take over the industry. Using their inside knowledge of the Windows OS, Microsoft made a superior browser that is intimately tied to the Windows operating system. I should know -- I'm a programmer who has to use this technology. Netscape is now a royal pain to develop for, since the company doesn't have the power (fueled by income) any more to develop and maintain it properly.
Microsoft has a finger in almost every software pie. What other company can do this and survive without the revenue from the only practical OS out there and the intimate knowledge of that OS's inner workings? They have a definite, unfair advantage, and they are using it. Sure, there are other OS's out there, but which do you run your business with? Which is installed on your home computer? Does your office use MS Office?
Sure, Microsoft has done some great things. Getting Windows to actually work on the inferior PC hardware is nearly a miracle. The technology is outstanding (if not solid). But a monopoly has the resources and power to do this. They can afford to create a browser that is well integrated into the OS and give it away for free. They can afford to get into the risky set-top-box business, because everybody who buys one will be paying a royalty for the only OS that will be installed on it. The royalties from all PC sales (which come with Windows preinstalled) are more than enough to support the R&D.
All of this power concentrated in one place is dangerous. I'd gladly see this amount of power go to see some real competition spring up. We'll see some real innovation then, as smaller companies see that they really have a chance to do something great, and Microsoft is forced to make its products better to compete.
Microsoft's products have become ungainly and buggy. A monopoly can allow this to happen, because what is anybody going to do about it except accept it? If there were some real competition out there, Microsoft would be forced to work more on the quality of their software. The base OS shouldn't need a whopping 128 MB of memory. An e-mail application shouldn't need 10 MB more. The computer shouldn't have to be restarted when the internet browser crashes. The internet browser shouldn't crash so much, in the first place. The computer should be fast, not bogged down with unnecessary hard drive access.
I've seen the public-opinion polls. Most people don't want to see the breakup. There are many reasons for this. First, Microsoft's public-relations engine is very big and very good. Does the government have a PR engine? How about the small companies that have been hurt? Where's their story?
Second, most people are used to Microsoft's products. They don't want to deal with competing products any more. This is scary. If a bird is raised in a cage, it does not want to come out. The consumer has become used to living within the cage built by Microsoft. They are afraid that the walls are going to be taken away, and they will have get used to dealing with other corporations. Such is the price of freedom.
If nothing is done about this, Microsoft is only going to become bigger and more formidable. Their attitude at the beginning of this trial was almost, "So what? We're big enough to take you, the government, on!" Innovation will decline along with quality as competition disappears. Corporate fear will increase.
Innovation is not fueled by industrial predation and technological warfare -- it is best served through friendly competition, partnerships and cooperation, and the sharing of information. Unfortunately, Microsoft chose the former behavior, and-like any bully-now needs to be dealt with. Set the industry free from this tyrant--set it free to innovate!
Sincerely, [Me]
[Okay, I got a little carried away with that last sentence, but you get the drift]
I want one for a pet! Mice have great personalities and are generally friendly. Imagine pet stores selling bigger, smarter mice. Cool!
Like any pet, however, some will probably escape or be set loose, and then we'll be overrun with smart, big, feral mice. I don't know if I want those running around the neighborhood. They'd give the feral cats something to think about, and the sewer rats some competition.
Wireless media and data transmission in the future may put aside the artificial boundaries of frequency and bandwidth allocation, and use a more effective pulse/repeater network to transmit any data worldwide. This is scary new technology to the FCC and those entrenched in the field, so the going is slow. See Time Domain who is actively pushing and developing the underlying technology.
(To avoid some confusion, I'm going to use one definition of bandwidth: How many bits you can squeeze into a certain amount of time. The concept of a frequency band becomes somewhat moot...)
This technology could be used to create sort of an ultra-high-bandwidth wireless world wide web. There would really be no need for any other form of radio transmission, since other formats are less efficient by nature. Once fully developed, the bandwidth would be astonishing. (But then, when is anything really fully developed?) Think of it -- instead of hogging up one whole frequency band (or more), your transmitter only uses nanoseconds of time to transmit bits into a local area, only when it needs it. Transmitters share the space. This is a lot like how a LAN works, but with much more bandwidth.
Here's the kicker: Unlike a LAN, collisions become near impossible, because receivers use the transmitter's location to weed the signal out from the noise of other sources. Even if two transmitters send a pulse at the exact same time, the receiver only pays attention to the portion of the signal that is coming from the transmitter that it is listening to. Of course, sometimes another signal will overwhelm everything else, (like a lightning strike nearby) but these are rare.
This is like listening to a person talking on a subway. You can hear them clearly over the noise because your brain singles out not only the sound but the location of the speaker. You can selectively ignore other sounds coming from different locations, even if many people are talking.
This technology covers a local area -- one transmitter can't send a signal across the world. It's great for low-power transmissions between two nearby devices (feet or miles). To move data further, a repeater could pick up the signals and send them where necessary. Nobody will need to license anything, just get a box to hook up or a device with it built-in, and either join some local connections or pay a service provider for access to the global net. Heck, the devices themselves could act as repeaters, who needs ISP's?
This is scary technology to many because a lot of people will lose money if it becomes established. It has the potential to place wireless technology directly into the hands of the people, cutting out the middleman.
On a lighter note... This type of transmission is indistinguishable from noise, if you don't have the right receiver that "knows" the transmitter that it's listening to. I have a good idea why SETI hasn't been able to hear anything...:>8-)
The folks at Power Technology have already done this in software. DFX is a plug-in for WinAmp (and also Real Player and Media Player) that reconstructs the high-frequency harmonics from existing harmonics.
Really, the technology is sound (no pun intended), if not perfect. For streaming audio, DFX really sounds great. For 128-K MP3 files, the improvement is only noticeable on good sound systems or headphones. It sounds really good!
They threw in some other DSP's, such as 3-D sound, Dynamic Range enhancement, and Ambience. These extras tend to make low bitrate streams sound muddy and worsen the "underwater" effect, however. I tend to turn these off, and just use the "Fidelity" enhancement (which is worth the low price all by itself.)
The extra overhead on your CPU is not very much -- about half of what it takes to play an MP3 file.
I looked at the Sony Mavica FD-81, and was ready to buy it, but first I wanted to see the image quality. Yuck! I bought an Olympus 610 instead - much harder to use, but sweet images!
Sony's camera UI and features are great - easy to use, lots of things to tweak, great zoom, great light level response - but they seem to have trouble with the storage medium. Floppys are cheap and convenient, and the 4X drive is nice and fast, but the image quality is too lousy.
Other solutions? Memory sticks are too proprietary and deficient. CD-R? Why not reusable CD-RW? Why not another storage medium that is smaller and more shock-resistant? SuperDisk, Zip, Iomega's "Clik"... oh yeah, not Sony. Minidisc... there's the shock problem again. DAT... killed off by Big Music. IBM's mini-drive... not Sony again.
Sony needs to get over their proprietary formats (they did "invent" the 3.5" floppy drive), and adopt something more useable in a digital camera. That issue solved, combined with their great camera designs, would be hard to beat.
Oh, yeah, don't CD-R's eat electricity for lunch? Get plenty of spare batteries!
This is another example of Microsoft taking someone else's idea, calling it their own innovation, and making a big fuss over it. Really this guy has been pushing this technology for quite a while before Microsoft picked it up.
The Apple II doesn't really do this. It uses the properties of the NTSC colorburst signal to create color from a synchronized high-resolution monochrome signal. The physical "subpixels" on the CRT can't be aligned to this signal, and the end result is fuzziness, not clarity. The R,G,B phosphors on the screen are not directly addressed.
CRT's and even analog LCD's don't gain anything from this, as this technology needs direct access to the R,G,B elements of the display to create antialiased text that is as sharp as possible. It even needs to know the order of the RGB elements. This done through wholly digital displays that directly address the color pixels on the display, such as an LCD on a laptop. The next step would be to make this independent of the display type, with tuning tools or profiles for individual display devices.
Television does this naturally, being a wholly analog system. Point a color camera at some text, and the edges of the text will fall on the color elements within the camera, irregardless of arbitrary pixel boundaries. If you magnify a still image on a TV set, you'll notice that any sharp edges are defined independantly of the positions of the color elements, and they are "smooth". In contrast, any computer-generated edges show a bias toward pixels, causing some jagginess in even the best anti-aliased graphic. Of course, if the source camera and the receiving TV set have different color element geometries, the result will be a little off.
Whatever you call it, this is antialiasing taken to the max. I'm glad that someone is taking it seriously, even if it's Microsoft. CG for television should take notice, too, to try to simulate the natural look of purely analog signals.
And Big Music is wondering why pirating MP3's is so popular. Sheesh! Wake up and smell the consumer disgust! They're disgusted with the whole system. I'd love to download only the music I want, and pay $1 for each song DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST.
There are too many middlemen who are getting too rich, while the artists get sucked into unfair contracts. Let them sell CD-burners, MP3 devices, and music download services instead, and see if they can survive REAL competition. This is where the future lies.
If you really dig into the WWN tabloid or web site, you will eventually find the fine print that WWN is "for entertainment use only". That is, everything reported is pure fiction and is only for fun. (But any/. reader already knows that this story is just a joke.)
More holes than my kitchen strainer. <rant> Doesn't anybody ever think to pull the plug? Nahh... too easy! What system loses both the data and the program when it is shut down? Backup, what backup? What is this special kill-word crap? Would you play that game? Lame! It looked more like one of those videodisc games than VR (and those were better.) Did you notice that they were fiddling with the drive power cables in a little PC minitower when they were trying to "bypass"?</rant> I could go on and on and on... This was totally unrealistic and plot-free. It wasn't really even fun to watch, either (except for that one in the skimpy clothing - a typical cheap thrill.)
Being physically "sucked into" a virtual environment is totally ludicrous. When will they get this? They are trying to blur the line between the real, physical world and VR. Sure, there are fuzzy areas that we need to address, but these are all psychological, not physical.
They attempted to show some of the culture behind these games, but could have done more. There was the worshipped game guru, who didn't have one line, except "ahhhh!" There was some attempt to explain these games' attraction, but not much. The "deathmatch" craze wasn't even touched.
So, how did a VR entity do so much physical damage? Sure, X-Files could have done something paranormal with this to explain it, but they didn't even try. Even some sort of psychosomatic thread might have worked. The "ghost in the machine" turned out to be an impossible program gone wrong; that's it. The virtual world took on a physicality all by itself; accept it. Not!
Hollywood really needs to get some writers who have a clue when it comes to computers. I've learned quite a bit of restraint when watching these shows -- yelling at the screen certainly doesn't help the TV show, and is not an option at the movie theater. When are they going to hire some real geeks for their technical advisors? Hey, the Y2K people are looking for work, now.
Since Jobs took over, Apple has been running a very tight ship - no leaks. Hence, rumor sites have had no reliable source of information, and read more like the Weekly World News, where everything is made up. Don't believe it.
Has anybody noticed that the advancement of technology is accelerating? We invent tools not just toward the improvement of our lives, but toward the creation of more tools. The computer falls under both of these categories. As the computer becomes more powerful, and our research, design, and manufacturing processes evolve and become more potent, technological advancements come in larger leaps and in greater frequency.
Every year, computers become more embedded into this process, and we rely on them more and more to automate tasks and enhance capabilities. The overall process is essentially self-improving. As it gains power and knowledge, it can improve in greater leaps and bounds. We, along with our computers and our other tools, are driving this advancement.
Centuries ago, little planning was done on projects, because the technology was not available. A drawing of the final product was created by an artist, and then it was built by a contractor. Getting the item to work was a matter of trial and error and previous experience. Many projects were flawed or failed completely because they just couldn't work. (Programmers - does this sound familiar?)
We learned a lot from these mistakes, and modern science and design practices were created as a result to avoid the same mistakes in the future. It was a painful process that took centuries to get to its current state.
This century, a designer would draw up a plan on paper and create models from hand. All calculations behind this design were done with paper and pencil. The designer was fully familiar with the tools of math and physics available. Once the plan was complete, it was a rather simple process to put together the final product without surprises, and it worked. Mass-production of products in factories is a rather recent development.
Just within ust the past few decades, computers have drastically changed the design process. Corporate designers can now create a design with a CAD tool, send a command, and the machine builds a real, physical, sometimes even working, model. They don't need to know as much about physics, because the computer handles that data. They are free to create more complex and imaginitive designs with little worry about whether the design will work or not, because the computer can test this, too. Once the design is complete and tested, the factory is retooled, and it can be sent to the factory floor for mass production.
Imagine the day in the not-too-far future when we can ask an even more advanced system to give us something, and it pops out of a slot? We just tell the computer what we want the item to do and what it should look like. The computer would display a simulation of the item that we could test and modify. Once satisfied, it would go ahead and construct it.
As for the future -- prepare for a bumpy ride. This isn't going to be easy...
RK will destroy your night vision, because the modifications to the cornea only help you see better when your pupil is small, during the day. At night, your pupil expands beyond the small area in the center of the cornea that was modified with the surgery. This causes the "sharp" image from the center to mix with the "blurry" image from the edges, causing wierd halos and distortion around objects.
This is why RK will keep you out of the armed services, and why no astronomer will even consider RK. Anybody who depends on seeing clearly in the dark should not do it.
I've colorized the full-resolution photo in Photoshop (simple level adjustments). It's great for desktops, if you've got the horsepower to cut it up. If anybody's got an FTP server that can hold and serve a 14.5 MB JPEG image, send me an e-mail. I'll upload it *once* and post the URL...
I also have 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1280 pieces of the image that I cut out for my three monitors.
(No, I can't cut or process anything else for anybody; I have to get back to work.)
I did this to turn a tiny portable TV into a 14" screen. Don't expect great image quality, as you are magnifying the monitor's defects and limitations, too. The viewing angle is very narrow. Maybe two (very friendly) people can watch the screen without seeing an edge get cut off. The circular pattern, extra glare, and extra blurriness can give some people a headache, too.
This company invented the LCD, but has anybody heard anything about the ultraviolet LCD? This technology uses a UV backlight, an LCD array, and color phosphors instead of color filters.
It's supposed to be much more efficient than standard LCDs, since you aren't throwing away so much light through color filters, and UV passes through the liquid crystals more effectively. The phospors make the display look like a CRT, and the viewing-angle problem goes away.
I haven't been able to find any more news about this technology since first hearing about it through some news source... Has anybody else heard anything about this?
To clear up some confusion, the article states that the virtual image can be adjusted to where you want it. The field of view is about 15 degrees, so the image gets larger as you make it more distant. I'd guess this would be like a 17" monitor at 2 1/2 feet.
When this technology matures and gets into mass manufacturing, it should get real cheap. Tiny LCD's are a lot less expensive than the big ones. If this gets cheaper than the old CRT, then we may even see CRT's go away. Imagine if the "wearable computer" displaced the desktop? This display might be the key.
This would look kinda funky -- a lot of people just sitting or standing there, staring at nothing, fiddling with some input device. We'll learn easily enough how to tell when someone is "on-line" or "off", not by the equipment they have (because it might be all but invisible), but just by looking at their manner.
It's great that this display doesn't block your view. It will definitely be used to enhance it. The only problem is if you just want to look at the display, you would have to stare at a wall or something.
Things for the future: TWO displays, one for each eye. Motion and position detection so the display moves as you do. Combine this with the "pulse" technology reported here previously, and imagine having your own personal radar. "See" through the fog, dark and even trees, brush, and walls while you drive. This could all happen within the next decade, and be had rather cheaply.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over that Amazon.com just wants to do the right thing and has their customer at heart.
(snigger)
Forget Amazon -- I go to CDNow for CD's, especially if I'm looking for a hard-to-find album. Do a search on it. If it's not there, come back in a week or so -- it will be. They seem to be paying a lot of attention to the "misses" on their database. Now THEY want to satify their customers!
When a microwave photon hits a molecule of water and gets absorbed, that molecule is suddenly ionized with great force. Sure, this doesn't amount to much heat in a material, but if this molecule happens to be in a sensitive position, it can cause trouble. Look at bread heated in a microwave. Why does it get hard when it cools? Because the dissolved sugars in the bread were subjected to great energies at the molecular level, and carmelized.
Cancer can happen when a DNA strand is damaged in one of a few particular locations, turning off the growth-regulation in a cell. The cell starts to divide uncontrolled, eventually making millions of copies of itself and forming a tumor.
One microwave photon can cause this if it happens to hit the right spot. The force of the ionization of that water molecule is like a tiny explosion occuring within the DNA strand. More powerful transmissions just increase the chance that this will happen.
DNA isn't the only sensitive molecule in our bodies. There are many important proteins and ions that can be badly damaged by a stray photon at the right energy. We can't possibly stop all naturally-occuring radiation damage to our systems, but we certainly shouldn't add to it.
Universities seem to be treating their students as just another asset these days to squeeze out more money. First they let the credit card people in, now this. What's next?
Universities should be protecting their students from this crap, not encouraging it. So many students get into big trouble, even being forced to go into bankruptcy, because of the shady credit card companies. Students don't have this much money to spend!
Most student don't yet know how to manage their own assets, however small, and these businesses will take advantage of them. The universities know students are living on a tight budget, given the outrageous tuition and fees these days, yet they seem to conveniently forget this fact when it comes to these questionable business deals, as long as money is involved.
Our society will quickly develop past this "noisy" stage where we are leaking radio patterns into space. Our communication will become more efficient and indistinguishable from noise to anybody else. Likewise, we can't expect to detect any other civilization who happens to be in a similar "noisy" stage -- it's just too short and the universe is very old.
We will gain control of our technology, after having some very close calls with mishandling it. We will use it to enhance our lives and ourselves, and learn to leave the planet alone. Our intelligence, knowledge, and power over matter and energy will expand. Our understanding and ethics will continue grow. Eventually we will master interstellar space travel.
The civilization that is already out there that can travel through interstellar space is extremely advanced beyond our comprehension. This civilization consists of massive intelligence and the ability to form energy and matter into anything it needs at a whim. It is very organized and disciplined, unlike our own present raw immaturity.
The worst we'd see from them is not the total destruction of our society like in countless alien movies. They have no reason to waste this much energy on us. Instead, they're probably watching us, taking samples, etc. to get a detailed idea of where we stand. All we notice is the rare "tagging" of our planet (crop circles, etc.) for whatever reasons they may have, and the unconfirmable stories of UFO sightings and abductions.
The point is that they definitely don't want to disturb us. Our civilization is still in its infancy. We might become something interesting and useful when we grow up. When we do grow up, we'll probably know by then that they are there already and say, "Hello, we think we're ready!" Then we can be expected to be treated like a know-it-all teenager.
Of course, this is all opinion, and it is going to change in the future...
If this works, we could bring back many of the species that we drove into extinction through our ignorance. We are destroying the Earth with our technology -- we're learning this the hard way. We need to start using the technology to reverse the damage we have done, while learning how to eliminate the effects of our new knowledge on the environment. This is one start among many.
Hey, one of the local radio stations here (Boston area) broadcast an interview with the survivor of Survivor around the time that the show started being aired. I didn't pay much attention, and soon switched stations, but now I wish I at least memorized the name! I don't watch the show, but I'm surprised that no-one seems to know who it is, given this broadcast. Was anybody else listening to this interview?
Wow, this thing is beautiful. It's only 8x8x10 inches! This is a computer that you don't shove under your desk, but place it on top of your desk (next to one of Apple's LCD displays), so everybody can look at it.
Notice that there are no PCI slots in there. They'd have to have a fan and make it a bigger box. You're supposed to be able to add any peripheral you want through the USB and FireWire connections, anyway. What about a second display? If you can afford the Apple Cinema display, you don't need it.
Did they license the optical mouse technology from Microsoft? Or did Apple and Microsoft license it from someone else? This is the mouse that doesn't need a special pad. You can use it on your desk, on your knee, or on your forehead. Good bye puck!
If you look carefully at the light refraction within the plastic, you can see that at least the plastic case is a real object in a photograph. Even minor imperfections in the shape of the plastic are magnified by the refraction of light within the material. These cannot be simulated in 3-D rendering programs, since these programs tend to achieve too-perfect results. Simulating these in a paint application is extremely time-consuming and so hard not to mess up. It's a lot of work to make complex refraction look "real" with all of the imperfections in real-life objects, and I can see no evidence of tampering within these refractions.
For example, look at the front top edge of the plastic. Within it you can see where the front slot penetrates the top plastic. Even an expert Photoshop user probbaly would not have thought of this, and most likely would not have known how to handle it properly if he had. The light reflections inside this section are too irregular to have been generated by a 3-D program. Looking at other areas within the case, and at the two camera angles provided, all of the refractions and shading are consistant with a real object under real lighting.
On a side note: In my opinion, these "slots" look like DVD and CD-RW slots, which are becoming an increasingly popular drive pairing in today's machines, not retractable handles or stacking slots.
Here is my letter. I used the FIN to send MY opinion of the whole mess all right...
Dear Senator:
I want you to know that I support the judge's decision to penalize Microsoft for its predatory and oppressive actions to grow and maintain its software monopoly.
Microsoft claims that it wishes to keep its freedom to innovate, yet in practice it is guilty of squashing this very freedom. Many innovative ideas and software products have died at Microsoft's hand. Most small software companies are afraid that Microsoft might "notice" them and either duplicate their ideas, or buy them out. This isn't just fear of competition; this is fear of unstoppable industrial conquest. Many technologies bought by Microsoft have just been scrapped to kill them off.
Netscape is a prime example of Microsoft's predatory practices. Navigator was the top browser technology, until Microsoft decided to try to take over the industry. Using their inside knowledge of the Windows OS, Microsoft made a superior browser that is intimately tied to the Windows operating system. I should know -- I'm a programmer who has to use this technology. Netscape is now a royal pain to develop for, since the company doesn't have the power (fueled by income) any more to develop and maintain it properly.
Microsoft has a finger in almost every software pie. What other company can do this and survive without the revenue from the only practical OS out there and the intimate knowledge of that OS's inner workings? They have a definite, unfair advantage, and they are using it. Sure, there are other OS's out there, but which do you run your business with? Which is installed on your home computer? Does your office use MS Office?
Sure, Microsoft has done some great things. Getting Windows to actually work on the inferior PC hardware is nearly a miracle. The technology is outstanding (if not solid). But a monopoly has the resources and power to do this. They can afford to create a browser that is well integrated into the OS and give it away for free. They can afford to get into the risky set-top-box business, because everybody who buys one will be paying a royalty for the only OS that will be installed on it. The royalties from all PC sales (which come with Windows preinstalled) are more than enough to support the R&D.
All of this power concentrated in one place is dangerous. I'd gladly see this amount of power go to see some real competition spring up. We'll see some real innovation then, as smaller companies see that they really have a chance to do something great, and Microsoft is forced to make its products better to compete.
Microsoft's products have become ungainly and buggy. A monopoly can allow this to happen, because what is anybody going to do about it except accept it? If there were some real competition out there, Microsoft would be forced to work more on the quality of their software. The base OS shouldn't need a whopping 128 MB of memory. An e-mail application shouldn't need 10 MB more. The computer shouldn't have to be restarted when the internet browser crashes. The internet browser shouldn't crash so much, in the first place. The computer should be fast, not bogged down with unnecessary hard drive access.
I've seen the public-opinion polls. Most people don't want to see the breakup. There are many reasons for this. First, Microsoft's public-relations engine is very big and very good. Does the government have a PR engine? How about the small companies that have been hurt? Where's their story?
Second, most people are used to Microsoft's products. They don't want to deal with competing products any more. This is scary. If a bird is raised in a cage, it does not want to come out. The consumer has become used to living within the cage built by Microsoft. They are afraid that the walls are going to be taken away, and they will have get used to dealing with other corporations. Such is the price of freedom.
If nothing is done about this, Microsoft is only going to become bigger and more formidable. Their attitude at the beginning of this trial was almost, "So what? We're big enough to take you, the government, on!" Innovation will decline along with quality as competition disappears. Corporate fear will increase.
Innovation is not fueled by industrial predation and technological warfare -- it is best served through friendly competition, partnerships and cooperation, and the sharing of information. Unfortunately, Microsoft chose the former behavior, and-like any bully-now needs to be dealt with. Set the industry free from this tyrant--set it free to innovate!
Sincerely,
[Me]
[Okay, I got a little carried away with that last sentence, but you get the drift]
Like any pet, however, some will probably escape or be set loose, and then we'll be overrun with smart, big, feral mice. I don't know if I want those running around the neighborhood. They'd give the feral cats something to think about, and the sewer rats some competition.
(To avoid some confusion, I'm going to use one definition of bandwidth: How many bits you can squeeze into a certain amount of time. The concept of a frequency band becomes somewhat moot...)
This technology could be used to create sort of an ultra-high-bandwidth wireless world wide web. There would really be no need for any other form of radio transmission, since other formats are less efficient by nature. Once fully developed, the bandwidth would be astonishing. (But then, when is anything really fully developed?) Think of it -- instead of hogging up one whole frequency band (or more), your transmitter only uses nanoseconds of time to transmit bits into a local area, only when it needs it. Transmitters share the space. This is a lot like how a LAN works, but with much more bandwidth.
Here's the kicker: Unlike a LAN, collisions become near impossible, because receivers use the transmitter's location to weed the signal out from the noise of other sources. Even if two transmitters send a pulse at the exact same time, the receiver only pays attention to the portion of the signal that is coming from the transmitter that it is listening to. Of course, sometimes another signal will overwhelm everything else, (like a lightning strike nearby) but these are rare.
This is like listening to a person talking on a subway. You can hear them clearly over the noise because your brain singles out not only the sound but the location of the speaker. You can selectively ignore other sounds coming from different locations, even if many people are talking.
This technology covers a local area -- one transmitter can't send a signal across the world. It's great for low-power transmissions between two nearby devices (feet or miles). To move data further, a repeater could pick up the signals and send them where necessary. Nobody will need to license anything, just get a box to hook up or a device with it built-in, and either join some local connections or pay a service provider for access to the global net. Heck, the devices themselves could act as repeaters, who needs ISP's?
This is scary technology to many because a lot of people will lose money if it becomes established. It has the potential to place wireless technology directly into the hands of the people, cutting out the middleman.
On a lighter note... This type of transmission is indistinguishable from noise, if you don't have the right receiver that "knows" the transmitter that it's listening to. I have a good idea why SETI hasn't been able to hear anything... :>8-)
Really, the technology is sound (no pun intended), if not perfect. For streaming audio, DFX really sounds great. For 128-K MP3 files, the improvement is only noticeable on good sound systems or headphones. It sounds really good!
They threw in some other DSP's, such as 3-D sound, Dynamic Range enhancement, and Ambience. These extras tend to make low bitrate streams sound muddy and worsen the "underwater" effect, however. I tend to turn these off, and just use the "Fidelity" enhancement (which is worth the low price all by itself.)
The extra overhead on your CPU is not very much -- about half of what it takes to play an MP3 file.
Sony's camera UI and features are great - easy to use, lots of things to tweak, great zoom, great light level response - but they seem to have trouble with the storage medium. Floppys are cheap and convenient, and the 4X drive is nice and fast, but the image quality is too lousy.
Other solutions? Memory sticks are too proprietary and deficient. CD-R? Why not reusable CD-RW? Why not another storage medium that is smaller and more shock-resistant? SuperDisk, Zip, Iomega's "Clik"... oh yeah, not Sony. Minidisc... there's the shock problem again. DAT... killed off by Big Music. IBM's mini-drive... not Sony again.
Sony needs to get over their proprietary formats (they did "invent" the 3.5" floppy drive), and adopt something more useable in a digital camera. That issue solved, combined with their great camera designs, would be hard to beat.
Oh, yeah, don't CD-R's eat electricity for lunch? Get plenty of spare batteries!
The Apple II doesn't really do this. It uses the properties of the NTSC colorburst signal to create color from a synchronized high-resolution monochrome signal. The physical "subpixels" on the CRT can't be aligned to this signal, and the end result is fuzziness, not clarity. The R,G,B phosphors on the screen are not directly addressed.
CRT's and even analog LCD's don't gain anything from this, as this technology needs direct access to the R,G,B elements of the display to create antialiased text that is as sharp as possible. It even needs to know the order of the RGB elements. This done through wholly digital displays that directly address the color pixels on the display, such as an LCD on a laptop. The next step would be to make this independent of the display type, with tuning tools or profiles for individual display devices.
Television does this naturally, being a wholly analog system. Point a color camera at some text, and the edges of the text will fall on the color elements within the camera, irregardless of arbitrary pixel boundaries. If you magnify a still image on a TV set, you'll notice that any sharp edges are defined independantly of the positions of the color elements, and they are "smooth". In contrast, any computer-generated edges show a bias toward pixels, causing some jagginess in even the best anti-aliased graphic. Of course, if the source camera and the receiving TV set have different color element geometries, the result will be a little off.
Whatever you call it, this is antialiasing taken to the max. I'm glad that someone is taking it seriously, even if it's Microsoft. CG for television should take notice, too, to try to simulate the natural look of purely analog signals.
And Big Music is wondering why pirating MP3's is so popular. Sheesh! Wake up and smell the consumer disgust! They're disgusted with the whole system. I'd love to download only the music I want, and pay $1 for each song DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST.
There are too many middlemen who are getting too rich, while the artists get sucked into unfair contracts. Let them sell CD-burners, MP3 devices, and music download services instead, and see if they can survive REAL competition. This is where the future lies.
If you really dig into the WWN tabloid or web site, you will eventually find the fine print that WWN is "for entertainment use only". That is, everything reported is pure fiction and is only for fun. (But any /. reader already knows that this story is just a joke.)
Being physically "sucked into" a virtual environment is totally ludicrous. When will they get this? They are trying to blur the line between the real, physical world and VR. Sure, there are fuzzy areas that we need to address, but these are all psychological, not physical.
They attempted to show some of the culture behind these games, but could have done more. There was the worshipped game guru, who didn't have one line, except "ahhhh!" There was some attempt to explain these games' attraction, but not much. The "deathmatch" craze wasn't even touched.
So, how did a VR entity do so much physical damage? Sure, X-Files could have done something paranormal with this to explain it, but they didn't even try. Even some sort of psychosomatic thread might have worked. The "ghost in the machine" turned out to be an impossible program gone wrong; that's it. The virtual world took on a physicality all by itself; accept it. Not!
Hollywood really needs to get some writers who have a clue when it comes to computers. I've learned quite a bit of restraint when watching these shows -- yelling at the screen certainly doesn't help the TV show, and is not an option at the movie theater. When are they going to hire some real geeks for their technical advisors? Hey, the Y2K people are looking for work, now.
Since Jobs took over, Apple has been running a very tight ship - no leaks. Hence, rumor sites have had no reliable source of information, and read more like the Weekly World News, where everything is made up. Don't believe it.
Hmm... I submitted this one a couple of weeks ago...
Has anybody noticed that the advancement of technology is accelerating? We invent tools not just toward the improvement of our lives, but toward the creation of more tools. The computer falls under both of these categories. As the computer becomes more powerful, and our research, design, and manufacturing processes evolve and become more potent, technological advancements come in larger leaps and in greater frequency.
Every year, computers become more embedded into this process, and we rely on them more and more to automate tasks and enhance capabilities. The overall process is essentially self-improving. As it gains power and knowledge, it can improve in greater leaps and bounds. We, along with our computers and our other tools, are driving this advancement.
Centuries ago, little planning was done on projects, because the technology was not available. A drawing of the final product was created by an artist, and then it was built by a contractor. Getting the item to work was a matter of trial and error and previous experience. Many projects were flawed or failed completely because they just couldn't work. (Programmers - does this sound familiar?)
We learned a lot from these mistakes, and modern science and design practices were created as a result to avoid the same mistakes in the future. It was a painful process that took centuries to get to its current state.
This century, a designer would draw up a plan on paper and create models from hand. All calculations behind this design were done with paper and pencil. The designer was fully familiar with the tools of math and physics available. Once the plan was complete, it was a rather simple process to put together the final product without surprises, and it worked. Mass-production of products in factories is a rather recent development.
Just within ust the past few decades, computers have drastically changed the design process. Corporate designers can now create a design with a CAD tool, send a command, and the machine builds a real, physical, sometimes even working, model. They don't need to know as much about physics, because the computer handles that data. They are free to create more complex and imaginitive designs with little worry about whether the design will work or not, because the computer can test this, too. Once the design is complete and tested, the factory is retooled, and it can be sent to the factory floor for mass production.
Imagine the day in the not-too-far future when we can ask an even more advanced system to give us something, and it pops out of a slot? We just tell the computer what we want the item to do and what it should look like. The computer would display a simulation of the item that we could test and modify. Once satisfied, it would go ahead and construct it.
As for the future -- prepare for a bumpy ride. This isn't going to be easy...
RK will destroy your night vision, because the modifications to the cornea only help you see better when your pupil is small, during the day. At night, your pupil expands beyond the small area in the center of the cornea that was modified with the surgery. This causes the "sharp" image from the center to mix with the "blurry" image from the edges, causing wierd halos and distortion around objects.
This is why RK will keep you out of the armed services, and why no astronomer will even consider RK. Anybody who depends on seeing clearly in the dark should not do it.
I've colorized the full-resolution photo in Photoshop (simple level adjustments). It's great for desktops, if you've got the horsepower to cut it up. If anybody's got an FTP server that can hold and serve a 14.5 MB JPEG image, send me an e-mail. I'll upload it *once* and post the URL...
I also have 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1280 pieces of the image that I cut out for my three monitors.
(No, I can't cut or process anything else for anybody; I have to get back to work.)
I did this to turn a tiny portable TV into a 14" screen. Don't expect great image quality, as you are magnifying the monitor's defects and limitations, too. The viewing angle is very narrow. Maybe two (very friendly) people can watch the screen without seeing an edge get cut off. The circular pattern, extra glare, and extra blurriness can give some people a headache, too.
This company invented the LCD, but has anybody heard anything about the ultraviolet LCD? This technology uses a UV backlight, an LCD array, and color phosphors instead of color filters.
It's supposed to be much more efficient than standard LCDs, since you aren't throwing away so much light through color filters, and UV passes through the liquid crystals more effectively. The phospors make the display look like a CRT, and the viewing-angle problem goes away.
I haven't been able to find any more news about this technology since first hearing about it through some news source... Has anybody else heard anything about this?
To clear up some confusion, the article states that the virtual image can be adjusted to where you want it. The field of view is about 15 degrees, so the image gets larger as you make it more distant. I'd guess this would be like a 17" monitor at 2 1/2 feet.
When this technology matures and gets into mass manufacturing, it should get real cheap. Tiny LCD's are a lot less expensive than the big ones. If this gets cheaper than the old CRT, then we may even see CRT's go away. Imagine if the "wearable computer" displaced the desktop? This display might be the key.
This would look kinda funky -- a lot of people just sitting or standing there, staring at nothing, fiddling with some input device. We'll learn easily enough how to tell when someone is "on-line" or "off", not by the equipment they have (because it might be all but invisible), but just by looking at their manner.
It's great that this display doesn't block your view. It will definitely be used to enhance it. The only problem is if you just want to look at the display, you would have to stare at a wall or something.
Things for the future: TWO displays, one for each eye. Motion and position detection so the display moves as you do. Combine this with the "pulse" technology reported here previously, and imagine having your own personal radar. "See" through the fog, dark and even trees, brush, and walls while you drive. This could all happen within the next decade, and be had rather cheaply.