However, I even find 'notebook' arguable. If the difference between a notebook and a desktop machine is a built-in display, keyboard and pointing device - then sure, it's a notebook. If the difference is that a notebook is meant to be able to be relocated with sufficent ease that it can be frequently done- i.e. between home, work, off-site locations - then I would say this isn't even a notebook; just a desktop machine with built-in display, keyboard and pointing device. I can't imagine anybody wanting to lug this beast around even if it would be just twice a day, 5 days a week.
This makes me wonder - is the Google Santa positioning the same as NORAD's ? And if not - why not ? Yes, I know.. it's Santa... he can be in two places at one time. Still, it would be nice if they could keep these consistent:)
My pet maltese will happily "sit", "speak", (lay) "down" and "roll over" whenever my girlfriend calls and I set my phone on speakerphone ('crappy' GSM combined with uberscreech of a small speaker).
It may be true in general, but there's exceptions as always.
That said, she also looks oddly at the phone and will savagely attack it if I let it go on for too long;)
Ditto here in NL... the phones are typically around 80-100 euros and offer... - 4-5 pre-set (not changeable by the kids, supposedly) numbers. E.g. mom, dad, grandparents, 112 (911) - the ability to be called - the ability to be silently called and automatically answer (i.e. the phone picks up, and the parents can listen in on whatever, without the kid knowing)
and some models do indeed also have GPS, though I'm not 100% sure how that works - call, and you can temporarily track the kid online ? or do you get an SMS (text message) with the street name and maybe house number they're in?
Not thinly veiled at all - and I see them selling like hotcakes.
So wait.. you're saying that by doing away with that - we would be: - fighting monopolism - promoting individualism - help out the mom&pop shops that everybody's lamenting about disappearing - helping get rid of the *marts that everybody claims to hate and, best of all - promote family planning and - promote physical exercise
No, yes, yes, yes in that order - I suggest the basic socioeconomic courses we get here in high school - they're a bit less concerned with the "omgwtf we rule 'cos we have CARS! F*ck public transport! YEEE-HAW!!!" history and a bit more with the "holy crap did we ever screw ourselves over by placing all shopping facilities including groceries at least 5 miles from any sane living spot just because we have cars that can take us there - now we're all frequently stuck in gridlock despite 5-lane highways, have less parking spots than we have cars, see more traffic-related injuries and death than the vast majority of other countries and are paying up the wazoo* for gas!"
(* ignoring that it's much more expensive in most other areas of the world - though it's much cheaper in Venezuela, of course;) )
I'd be interested in the 'what the future likely holds' bit, though - back when I had the course in high school, the future held this: more cars even more, wider, highways more land making way for parking plots (they even predicted that parking garages would never become popular - despite taking up less space. right they were.. after all, how would you drive an Excursion around in what would have been the then-typical parking garage?) more distance between shopping and living 'islands' for shopping, rather than lanes.
In other words, the downward spiral continued.
So yes, I'd be interested in that bit - see if that's been revised since then. *eyes greyhounds and such, currently* somehow I doubt it:)
Your car's registration includes the base color of your car (I'm not sure what percentage is required - but basically if it is perceived as blue, then your car is registered as being blue, even if you've got yellow and red flames on the hood).
If you have your car painted another color, you have to declare this and get your registration updated.
If the color doesn't match what the registration says, you can be fined.
A car which would change color frequently, such as due to temperature, would thus more than likely get you into trouble - at least until legislation allows for the registration to note two colors, under specific conditions, or something like that... or that bit gets dropped entirely, which is unlikely; law enforcement for example will be on the look-out for a car of a certain model in a certain color
...that you're basically describing public transport, right ?
If you're sucking on a giant icecream cone - don't be surprised if you're not allowed onto the bus. The bus only goes where the government decides it should go. It only goes when the government decides it should go. And, lo and behold, along the route the government decides it to go.
There's just one thing... almost everywhere except for the U.S., public transport -works-, and works *so* well that there are millions who not only see it as a viable alternative to their car (if they even have one), but they prefer it.
The car is not a symbol of freedom - it's a mode of transportation which is regulated like any other, except that you have even more responsibilty. And, sadly, there are many who do -not- drive their cars responsibly, making it possible for these types of limitations to be implemented. It's a shame that a few should 'ruin' it for the rest. But, do tell, what bit of not being allowed to speed is ruining exactly what ?
Now if, on the other hand, you're pondering the gov't always knowing where you are... I wholly agree:) -that- is none of their business. How fast I drive, however, is very much their business. How fast you drive when you're coming up behind me is also very much my business.
This is for the more extreme people who share your view... Roll back a few decades to when seatbelts became law... would you also have said "Before this is over, we'll think we're the luckiest people in the world just to be allowed IN the damn car..." etc. ? Did 'the slippery slope' start there ? Or do some measures actually just make sense ?
I understand that there are methods to get them smaller - I use the IrfanView plugin PNGOUT from time to time to do so.
My comment was with regards to quality. As it is a lossless format, there is no higher quality between one PNG and another, assuming the same bits per channel.
If the quality comment was intended to refer to extra data - OK, but that appears to be addressed. If the quality comment was intended to refer to paletted PNGS - OK, but that's a lack of support, not a lack of quality.
"PNG support is also much better, it produces smaller, better quality files than Photoshop manages to."
That's odd... short of saving at 16bits/channel (which maybe Photoshop can't do - I don't touch that thing), I don't think there are any quality settings with PNG per se; it is a lossless format, after all.
That's what bugged me about the Wikipedia article. It's traditionally a religious festive day, is it not ? But the "relig" (religion, religious, etc.) doesn't even appear on the wiki page.
Now, I know it's probably not viewed as a religious festive day anymore, and more of a social/family gathering thing. But what do people here think ? Thanksgiving Day is a religiuous festive day - yes or no ?
Wouldn't it be technically possible to detect such a device being attached, and subsequently 'loading' the proper firmware ? The device says it's okay, but a while later (perhaps as soon as the device is detached) the naughty firmware is loaded back ?
If it's not technically possible to detect such a device - I take it the machines need to be opened up, at least. Wouldn't it be possible for whoever opens it up to give off an RF signal to tell the machine to load a different firmware ?
Ditto these voting machines... they could give perfectly correct code all throughout testing - and then on election day (by means of a date check elsewhere in the machine) load code that 'oopses' a few times and makes one candidate have more votes than they should, and another less votes than -they- should.
Does it simply employ much faster memory ? Extra-fast memory that acts as a buffer ? Does it do away with things like integrity checks - taking a bet that their memory is fine, and the writes are fine ?
I'm going to guess the manufacturer won't tell us:)
If you feel that the 'problem' is that there is a depth of field.. then yes, a pinhole camera will do the trick - to a point, as the pinhole gets too small you get diffractive issues - but that's another topic.
However, you can never -change- the focus on a pinhole camera image properly. The reason for this is that you have no depth information whatsoever. The best you can do is manually mask out bits of the image and (gaussian) blur it to your liking.
This technology, however, allows you to create perfect focus all over... or just on what's near, or just on what's far. You can even, as they show in the video, change the point of view - if you so desired. Or perhaps increase / decrease the perspective (simulate a closer distance with a larger field of view / a larger distance with a smaller view of view)
So if you don't find unfocused parts in itself a problem, just the distance at which the focused part is, the tech is for you. If you just want near-100% sharp pictures... use a camera with a 'fast' lens, large sensor and a high an f-stop (small an aperture) as you can get it. Or, also use this tech, with a much cheaper sensor/etc.
When the gas tank gets low, it's a few minutes at the station to refuel. With batteries you're looking at a few hours to recharge.
Actually, a common counter-argument to this is not to re-charge by 'plugging in' - unless you're doing so at home/work (yes, rules/etc. will have to be established for that).
Instead, you'd go to the 'gas station' equivalent, drop off your battery and pick up a fully charged one. 'Your' battery then gets recharged at the station, ready to be picked up by whoever needs it then.
There's some problems with this.. for one, batteries would need to be standardized (not an issue, I think - you can still have a larger battery by linking several in serial/parallel - depending on yuor needs), and for two - weight. Batteries can be heavy.. so is 30l of gasoline, of course, but that doesn't have to be moved in a single go. But as noted above, you could have several smaller batteries that you can handle easily and just 'slot into' the battery compartment.
This only works if the company that's providing this support/documentation/etc. is
1. the same company producing the software and 2. is producing support/documentation/etc. that is qualitatively / quantitatively better than freely available resources.
For practically all open source products available there exist publically available Forums where anybody can ask a question and get a reasonably quality or even high quality reply. In addition, for the majority of open source products there are many resources available with regards to documentation, tutorials, etc.
So the only way you're going to make money off of support/etc. is if you can 'beat' those freely available resources - and I'm not entirely convinced that works for 'any' open source software. I feel like that is reserved to some of the larger and more 'difficult' open source projects such as Apache (plenty of free resources out there, but also plenty of companies providing dedicated support/etc. for it).
--
And of course with regards to #1... if you code a piece of open source software, and you try and sell it, and it's not selling.. and you don't have the time/resources to even try to make money off of support/etc. then you're still not going to make money off of your open source software - but others might.
Why are you so afraid that Google might tell (potential patrons that there are better prices available nearby - when you, too, could be making use of this technology ?
As soon as you spot a better price nearby, drop your prices at that location - now YOU have the better price.
Sincerely,
Common Sense
-----
Not entirely off-topic... there was a grocery store chain here in The Netherlands that would set up a mobile grocery store bus right outside a competing grocery store and let patrons of that store compare prices for the articles they had just bought by scanning the bar code. That way, they could easily tell people how much they could have saved by comparing the register stubs. More on-topic with what I wrote: *if* a product would actually have been cheaper at the store they're parked outside of, they would pass this on to corporate HQ. They, then, could issue an update to all their registers across the nation to bill that product more cheaply - the goal being to be cheaper than the competition once again.
I knew the movie was going to end the way it did... however...
A good bit before the end, humanity (in the form of Tom Cruise - egads!) *DID* find another method to at least destroy the walkers. I had thought they would at least explore this a bit more, show a few more walkers getting destroyed, etc. But alas, it wasn't to be. However, I believe they still set up the possibility that humanity *could* defeat the invasion on their own - and the ending as it was, was just a "Hah.. well whaddayaknow.. 'guess we won't have to bother at all:D" happy-go-lucky-with-a-twist-of-thought-provoking ending as standard in any War of the Worlds retelling.
Oh, and I rather enjoyed the movie for what it was:)
We have been using IRC at my recommendation for many years now - quite successfully. To an extent where at one of the previous Siggraphs some of the reporters were almost more interested in our doing our communications that way than in our actual product! (oops)
It's used for internal communications, communications with betatesters, support guys, etc. We're all over the globe, so in-person meetings are just unfeasible. It's also used for our clients as a live support medium - over any third party dedicated solutions which typically require a dedicated client, and over IM solutions ( because we prefer not to be bugged in our private tim;) ). It also easily facilitates hooking things up to other services - such as keeping a transcript, having that sent to a client, entering it in a e-mail based ticketing system, etc. And, of course, just as a general place for people to hang out and chat - be it about our product, or their cat's latest hairball.
Although it can't really replace in-person conferencing when really, really required, overall I think it's a near-perfect solution for what we needed it for - and I have no doubt that we'll be expanding on it in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
well.. totally off-topic, but I followed an ad from that site to http://www.dynamism.com/ , and from there to http://www.dynamism.com/gp2x/
Sounds like a potentially cute device.. already runs linux, the developers have a wiki, they embrace open source and tinkering.. hmm(!)
at best it's a Notebook. For some of the differences, see an earlier post of mine: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14205 8&cid=11906247
However, I even find 'notebook' arguable. If the difference between a notebook and a desktop machine is a built-in display, keyboard and pointing device - then sure, it's a notebook.
If the difference is that a notebook is meant to be able to be relocated with sufficent ease that it can be frequently done- i.e. between home, work, off-site locations - then I would say this isn't even a notebook; just a desktop machine with built-in display, keyboard and pointing device. I can't imagine anybody wanting to lug this beast around even if it would be just twice a day, 5 days a week.
Just confirming this... a directory with two WMF files.. one .wmf, the other .jpg - previews both just fine, generates thumbnais for both just fine.
In fact, NORAD has been tracking Santa for ages.
:)
This makes me wonder - is the Google Santa positioning the same as NORAD's ? And if not - why not ?
Yes, I know.. it's Santa... he can be in two places at one time. Still, it would be nice if they could keep these consistent
Considering it would be okay to put a sticker reading "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" on books that inform about evolution ...
How would people feel if one were to go around slapping stickers on Bibles, reading "Creationism is a theory, not a fact"?
My pet maltese will happily "sit", "speak", (lay) "down" and "roll over" whenever my girlfriend calls and I set my phone on speakerphone ('crappy' GSM combined with uberscreech of a small speaker).
;)
It may be true in general, but there's exceptions as always.
That said, she also looks oddly at the phone and will savagely attack it if I let it go on for too long
Ditto here in NL... the phones are typically around 80-100 euros and offer...
- 4-5 pre-set (not changeable by the kids, supposedly) numbers. E.g. mom, dad, grandparents, 112 (911)
- the ability to be called
- the ability to be silently called and automatically answer (i.e. the phone picks up, and the parents can listen in on whatever, without the kid knowing)
and some models do indeed also have GPS, though I'm not 100% sure how that works - call, and you can temporarily track the kid online ? or do you get an SMS (text message) with the street name and maybe house number they're in?
Not thinly veiled at all - and I see them selling like hotcakes.
So wait.. you're saying that by doing away with that - we would be:
- fighting monopolism
- promoting individualism
- help out the mom&pop shops that everybody's lamenting about disappearing
- helping get rid of the *marts that everybody claims to hate
and, best of all
- promote family planning
and
- promote physical exercise
Remind me what the down sides are
No, yes, yes, yes in that order - I suggest the basic socioeconomic courses we get here in high school - they're a bit less concerned with the "omgwtf we rule 'cos we have CARS! F*ck public transport! YEEE-HAW!!!" history and a bit more with the "holy crap did we ever screw ourselves over by placing all shopping facilities including groceries at least 5 miles from any sane living spot just because we have cars that can take us there - now we're all frequently stuck in gridlock despite 5-lane highways, have less parking spots than we have cars, see more traffic-related injuries and death than the vast majority of other countries and are paying up the wazoo* for gas!"
;) )
:)
(* ignoring that it's much more expensive in most other areas of the world - though it's much cheaper in Venezuela, of course
I'd be interested in the 'what the future likely holds' bit, though - back when I had the course in high school, the future held this:
more cars
even more, wider, highways
more land making way for parking plots (they even predicted that parking garages would never become popular - despite taking up less space. right they were.. after all, how would you drive an Excursion around in what would have been the then-typical parking garage?)
more distance between shopping and living
'islands' for shopping, rather than lanes.
In other words, the downward spiral continued.
So yes, I'd be interested in that bit - see if that's been revised since then. *eyes greyhounds and such, currently* somehow I doubt it
Your car's registration includes the base color of your car (I'm not sure what percentage is required - but basically if it is perceived as blue, then your car is registered as being blue, even if you've got yellow and red flames on the hood).
If you have your car painted another color, you have to declare this and get your registration updated.
If the color doesn't match what the registration says, you can be fined.
A car which would change color frequently, such as due to temperature, would thus more than likely get you into trouble - at least until legislation allows for the registration to note two colors, under specific conditions, or something like that... or that bit gets dropped entirely, which is unlikely; law enforcement for example will be on the look-out for a car of a certain model in a certain color
...that you're basically describing public transport, right ?
:) -that- is none of their business. How fast I drive, however, is very much their business. How fast you drive when you're coming up behind me is also very much my business.
If you're sucking on a giant icecream cone - don't be surprised if you're not allowed onto the bus.
The bus only goes where the government decides it should go.
It only goes when the government decides it should go.
And, lo and behold, along the route the government decides it to go.
There's just one thing... almost everywhere except for the U.S., public transport -works-, and works *so* well that there are millions who not only see it as a viable alternative to their car (if they even have one), but they prefer it.
The car is not a symbol of freedom - it's a mode of transportation which is regulated like any other, except that you have even more responsibilty. And, sadly, there are many who do -not- drive their cars responsibly, making it possible for these types of limitations to be implemented. It's a shame that a few should 'ruin' it for the rest. But, do tell, what bit of not being allowed to speed is ruining exactly what ?
Now if, on the other hand, you're pondering the gov't always knowing where you are... I wholly agree
This is for the more extreme people who share your view...
Roll back a few decades to when seatbelts became law... would you also have said "Before this is over, we'll think we're the luckiest people in the world just to be allowed IN the damn car..." etc. ? Did 'the slippery slope' start there ? Or do some measures actually just make sense ?
I understand that there are methods to get them smaller - I use the IrfanView plugin PNGOUT from time to time to do so.
My comment was with regards to quality. As it is a lossless format, there is no higher quality between one PNG and another, assuming the same bits per channel.
If the quality comment was intended to refer to extra data - OK, but that appears to be addressed.
If the quality comment was intended to refer to paletted PNGS - OK, but that's a lack of support, not a lack of quality.
"PNG support is also much better, it produces smaller, better quality files than Photoshop manages to."
That's odd... short of saving at 16bits/channel (which maybe Photoshop can't do - I don't touch that thing), I don't think there are any quality settings with PNG per se; it is a lossless format, after all.
That's what bugged me about the Wikipedia article. It's traditionally a religious festive day, is it not ?
But the "relig" (religion, religious, etc.) doesn't even appear on the wiki page.
Now, I know it's probably not viewed as a religious festive day anymore, and more of a social/family gathering thing. But what do people here think ? Thanksgiving Day is a religiuous festive day - yes or no ?
I'm curious.. can't this be beat ?
Wouldn't it be technically possible to detect such a device being attached, and subsequently 'loading' the proper firmware ? The device says it's okay, but a while later (perhaps as soon as the device is detached) the naughty firmware is loaded back ?
If it's not technically possible to detect such a device - I take it the machines need to be opened up, at least. Wouldn't it be possible for whoever opens it up to give off an RF signal to tell the machine to load a different firmware ?
Ditto these voting machines... they could give perfectly correct code all throughout testing - and then on election day (by means of a date check elsewhere in the machine) load code that 'oopses' a few times and makes one candidate have more votes than they should, and another less votes than -they- should.
Why is it so much faster than other pen drives ?
:)
Does it simply employ much faster memory ? Extra-fast memory that acts as a buffer ? Does it do away with things like integrity checks - taking a bet that their memory is fine, and the writes are fine ?
I'm going to guess the manufacturer won't tell us
If you feel that the 'problem' is that there is a depth of field.. then yes, a pinhole camera will do the trick - to a point, as the pinhole gets too small you get diffractive issues - but that's another topic.
However, you can never -change- the focus on a pinhole camera image properly. The reason for this is that you have no depth information whatsoever. The best you can do is manually mask out bits of the image and (gaussian) blur it to your liking.
This technology, however, allows you to create perfect focus all over... or just on what's near, or just on what's far. You can even, as they show in the video, change the point of view - if you so desired. Or perhaps increase / decrease the perspective (simulate a closer distance with a larger field of view / a larger distance with a smaller view of view)
So if you don't find unfocused parts in itself a problem, just the distance at which the focused part is, the tech is for you. If you just want near-100% sharp pictures... use a camera with a 'fast' lens, large sensor and a high an f-stop (small an aperture) as you can get it. Or, also use this tech, with a much cheaper sensor/etc.
Thank you, ChocLinux, for not using "Begs the question" where it is has no place
a trick question? ó_ò
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bassa/eclipses/20051003.htm l
When the gas tank gets low, it's a few minutes at the station to refuel. With batteries you're looking at a few hours to recharge.
Actually, a common counter-argument to this is not to re-charge by 'plugging in' - unless you're doing so at home/work (yes, rules/etc. will have to be established for that).
Instead, you'd go to the 'gas station' equivalent, drop off your battery and pick up a fully charged one. 'Your' battery then gets recharged at the station, ready to be picked up by whoever needs it then.
There's some problems with this.. for one, batteries would need to be standardized (not an issue, I think - you can still have a larger battery by linking several in serial/parallel - depending on yuor needs), and for two - weight. Batteries can be heavy.. so is 30l of gasoline, of course, but that doesn't have to be moved in a single go. But as noted above, you could have several smaller batteries that you can handle easily and just 'slot into' the battery compartment.
This only works if the company that's providing this support/documentation/etc. is
1. the same company producing the software
and
2. is producing support/documentation/etc. that is qualitatively / quantitatively better than freely available resources.
For practically all open source products available there exist publically available Forums where anybody can ask a question and get a reasonably quality or even high quality reply.
In addition, for the majority of open source products there are many resources available with regards to documentation, tutorials, etc.
So the only way you're going to make money off of support/etc. is if you can 'beat' those freely available resources - and I'm not entirely convinced that works for 'any' open source software. I feel like that is reserved to some of the larger and more 'difficult' open source projects such as Apache (plenty of free resources out there, but also plenty of companies providing dedicated support/etc. for it).
--
And of course with regards to #1... if you code a piece of open source software, and you try and sell it, and it's not selling.. and you don't have the time/resources to even try to make money off of support/etc. then you're still not going to make money off of your open source software - but others might.
Dear WalMart,
Why are you so afraid that Google might tell (potential patrons that there are better prices available nearby - when you, too, could be making use of this technology ?
As soon as you spot a better price nearby, drop your prices at that location - now YOU have the better price.
Sincerely,
Common Sense
-----
Not entirely off-topic... there was a grocery store chain here in The Netherlands that would set up a mobile grocery store bus right outside a competing grocery store and let patrons of that store compare prices for the articles they had just bought by scanning the bar code. That way, they could easily tell people how much they could have saved by comparing the register stubs. More on-topic with what I wrote: *if* a product would actually have been cheaper at the store they're parked outside of, they would pass this on to corporate HQ. They, then, could issue an update to all their registers across the nation to bill that product more cheaply - the goal being to be cheaper than the competition once again.
I knew the movie was going to end the way it did... however...
:D" happy-go-lucky-with-a-twist-of-thought-provoking ending as standard in any War of the Worlds retelling.
:)
A good bit before the end, humanity (in the form of Tom Cruise - egads!) *DID* find another method to at least destroy the walkers. I had thought they would at least explore this a bit more, show a few more walkers getting destroyed, etc. But alas, it wasn't to be.
However, I believe they still set up the possibility that humanity *could* defeat the invasion on their own - and the ending as it was, was just a "Hah.. well whaddayaknow.. 'guess we won't have to bother at all
Oh, and I rather enjoyed the movie for what it was
yeah, that's all...
;) ). It also easily facilitates hooking things up to other services - such as keeping a transcript, having that sent to a client, entering it in a e-mail based ticketing system, etc.
We have been using IRC at my recommendation for many years now - quite successfully. To an extent where at one of the previous Siggraphs some of the reporters were almost more interested in our doing our communications that way than in our actual product! (oops)
It's used for internal communications, communications with betatesters, support guys, etc. We're all over the globe, so in-person meetings are just unfeasible.
It's also used for our clients as a live support medium - over any third party dedicated solutions which typically require a dedicated client, and over IM solutions ( because we prefer not to be bugged in our private tim
And, of course, just as a general place for people to hang out and chat - be it about our product, or their cat's latest hairball.
Although it can't really replace in-person conferencing when really, really required, overall I think it's a near-perfect solution for what we needed it for - and I have no doubt that we'll be expanding on it in the future.