I never said that the Electoral College doesn't serve a useful purpose - its purpose was arguably to prevent "tyranny by the majority" (ie, what happens in a true democracy - which thankfully we don't have). The point I was trying to make is that our representatives don't represent us - they are no longer Statesmen. This doesn't mean the concept of an Electoral College, or any of the other portions of our representative republic should be thrown out - but that other areas are broken, and are causing these areas to break as well.
Sometimes I wonder if it is capitalism which is causing the breakage - after all, capitalism works because of self-serving and greed, both attributes of career politicians who are fucking the system up for us. However, I don't have a solution beyond capitalism (ie, what economic system could replace capitalism and still interact well with a democratic, representative republic political system?). Part of the problem may be also because we don't have a truely free market in America, but one which is heavily regulated and controlled by our government (such as the recent airline bailout - the government should have let them fail, and let more nimble airline companies take over - Amtrak is another one).
I am not saying there shouldn't be government control and regulations - for certain industries and practices, this is needed (for environmental and other reasons that protect the public) - but the government has no reason to bail out a company failing to make money - that isn't part of the free market.
I agree with you on most parts - but the idea that John Q. Public doesn't use home-built STMs is absurd - there have been several posted/. stories in the past about homebrewed STM's - a quick google will turn up a bunch more. In fact, it is almost trivial to build an STM - the main problems faced are resolution (hard to homebrew a fine tip for the STM) and vibration isolation (much tougher nut to crack), but advances are being made on the homebrew arena.
There are already indications of hackers playing with biotech - is it that big of a leap to think nanotech won't be played with either?
No-one has an intrinsic right to drive a car. They pollute, take up a lot of space, do damage to public property and in the vast majority of uses (in big cities at least), are completely un-needed.
Perhaps - but don't truely free people have the right to travel?
In Britain, this might be a different case, but in America, it is a different story. Part of it lies with how automobiles are purchased, part of lies with licensing, and part of it lies within our Constitution.
There is both a Constitutionally and case law recognized "right to travel". It is rare that you find someone in court over this right - looking at various cases that have been fought and won (some involving the idea that automobile licensing violates the "right to travel") clearly show that our lawmakers *hate* this little inconvenience - they would rather that we be penned up like sheep for slaughter, it would seem.
Vehicle licensing seeks to restrict this "right to travel" by invoking the ideas of taxation for road usage (the poor have no right to travel?), or safety reasons (yeah, a license really shows you are a safe driver - hah!). Furthermore, the way we purchase our vehicles also affects this - because most buy vehicles on credit, and the original copy of the MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin), which is the actual manufacturer's receipt to you to show you own the property - goes to the licensing department of your state - you are supposed to get it back when you finish paying your loan - but you never do, at best you get a copy, if that. The only time you could ever see your MSO for your car would be if you bought it with cash from the manufacturer directly (*not* through a dealer). But then your licensing bureau (MDV, MVD, etc) would still want it so you can get a license. In the end you don't own your car - the state (or a combo of the state and the bank if you are still paying on a loan) does. It has long been recognised that free men are allowed to own property - but not property that allows them the right to travel?
One could still make the argument that "this doesn't violate your right to travel" - you still have your feet, or a bicycle, or a horse, or something (ie, how did early settlers travel?) - but even this isn't possible today in America, and probably not in many other parts of the world where free travel is allowed. Why?
Because in most areas, it is illegal (for many reasons, some of them good) to walk or bike along interstate throughfares. It is impossible in many cases to avoid these roads, simply because to do so you are likely trespassing on somebody's land (the states or Feds paid money to the private landowners for easements for the roadways). No matter what you do, it seems, you are breaking the law if you try to exercise your right to travel free of the restrictions imposed upon you by the State.
Can a free man be truely free if he can't travel freely (or own the property that enables him to travel)? Is a society composed of these supposedly "free" members truely free?
Ever since reading about the "uncanny valley" a while back, and knowing what I know about Asperger's, in that those with the condition do not react (depending on the level of their condition) to facial expressions - I wonder if there is any relation or correllation?
If many (most?) geeks have some level of Asperger's, do they react differently to human representations (even those close to, or in, the "uncanny valley") than those who do not have Asperger's? Do they react more favorably to these images, less, or the same - as toward real-life humans? Do "artistic geeks" with Asperger's create "Asperger-like" CGI human representations (that is, does a person with Asperger, who is also a CGI artist, project their viewpoint onto their CGI humanoid constructs)?
I get this sense that they do - some here are proclaiming that "this doesn't look right, that doesn't, etc" (like discussion over FF:The Movie) while other geeks are saying "OMFG, it is beautiful, so well done - w00t!" (ok, that was a little over the top) - why the difference? Was the former non-Asperger's, and the latter was? Thus, that individual is better able to relate to the imperfect CGI? Furthermore, how does this relate to other examples of the "uncanny valley" - do individuals who purchase Real Dolls (for either sex, "dress-up", or collecting - yeah, there are collectors, strangely enough) have a higher incidence of Asperger's?
I believe that in the beginning, and for a long time after that, the idea of the Electoral College (and Electoral Votes) was a good idea. I had a place, but only so long as our representatives were statesmen, and really represented the people.
The idea was that the people might vote popularly for a candidate that really wasn't in their best interest - maybe that candidate had undue influence due to religious ties, or some other sort of influence, to cause the citizens to "lose their senses" and vote for them, when that candidate had some other scheme in mind.
Back then, the population didn't have the education or the connectivity to information that we have gained over the last hundred years or so - so it made sense to have these representatives, who actually represented the people, and who were typically better educated and informationally aware (either due to their position, their friends, or where they lived as representatives), be able to cast votes as they see fit, for the best of the people they represented.
Today, we have the situation where our representatives no longer represent us (and definitely do not deserve the title of "statesman") - instead, at best, they look after their own interests, and damn the citizenry! They are corrupt, and this has changed the game significantly.
Now, they vote for the person that best benefits them (or those few in their states - corporations) alone - even if the people selected the "better" of the two candidates (assumming that one candidate was better for the people than the other, that one had the people's interests at heart, and not that of corporations or other influences - HAH!).
This change is 180 degrees opposite from what was intended. I suppose we should be glad it only (only...) applies to the Presidency, and not to all levels of government (though one could argue that point, too)...
We already have *tons* of advanced solar-electric panel and cell designs available - hell, we have designs currently that can *screen print* solar cells onto plastic and glass substrates for pennies per cell!
So, why are prices for solar cells still so high, and demand for them still so low?
Prices are still high because the demand isn't there - if solar cells were being demanded as much as computer chips, everything would be solar powered. So, why is demand so low?
One could say it is because prices are high (and hence run into a circular trap), but that isn't the whole story - the demand isn't there because the cost is still too high for people, because they want to live and use as much electricity as they currently do, and to provide that with solar cells is still very expensive. What do I mean by that?
Well, a lot of people use a lot of electricity per month - looking at my last bill, I used about 1500 kWh. My house is older, but even new houses still use around 1000 kWh. To supply that with solar electricity could easily set you back $15-20,000 for a new system (and then per-year maintenance cost on batteries and such). Most people cannot afford a system like this, unless they roll it into their loan or something as an "up front" cost of living. But where is all that energy going to, anyhow?
Most of it is for cooling and heating - mainly air-conditioning and hot water heating. The next big chunk comes from refrigeration (for food storage) and cooking.
We need to change how we live - then we would see that solar electricity (and other solar technologies) are actually *very* feasible.
What if instead of boxes, our houses were instead domes? One third the outside surface area (for the sun to fall on, or for heat to radiate away from in the winter) for the equivalent amount of square footage. Cheaply built using monolithic shotcrete construction, "R" values through the roof. At this point, solar water heating could efficiently heat the house (via in-slab thermal heating systems) and the water for washing/bathing. Bury a pipe system six feet down, and take advantage of air cooling via earth mass (and get a cool basement to boot!). Right there I just knocked a huge chunk of electricity costs out for very little money (in fact, the cost of the house plus the solar cooling/heating system described would probably be equal to a typical same-sized house). A much smaller solar electric panel array could be installed for much less to supply the electricity needs (use LED or flourescent lighting as well - in the daytime, solatubes or heliostat arrays could pipe light via fiber optics to where it was needed - use the electric for lights only at night).
Solar panels generate more power the more sun you can concentrate on them - but as they get hotter, their efficiency drops. So, if you could concentrate the sun on them (via mirrors or fresnel lenses), and remove the heat, you can get much more out of them - so how to remove the heat, but use it?
Well, integrate it as part of the solar water heating system - thermal epoxy the cells to alluminum water-block style heat sinks, and pipe the water through to heat it up. Increase your electricity output, as well as get the heat in the water.
What about at night - that hot water is sitting in storage - when you aren't using it (for washing or heating) - what can be done with it?
How about using the heat in the water, coupled with night-sky radiant energy - to drive a Stirling engine running a generator! Sure, the efficiency wouldn't be the greatest - but it is free energy, so anything you can get out of it would be better than nothing!
Finally - what about cooking? Well - you could run the solar hot water around an oven box, and have a solar oven (if you can get it to 100+ C - slow cooking is easy). I have seen solar concentrator designs with tracking systems that focus the light onto indoor hotplates as well (for tradition "stove-top" cooking techniques). I could imagine a solar concentrator heating up bricks or so
Interesting...
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OpenGL in PHP
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Let me first say I know this is client-side and not server-side.
I have recently been playing around with Python, PyGame and OpenGL (I love the NeHe tutorial conversions done for PyGame) - I have been pretty pleased with the speed (OpenGL does all the heavy lifting - with a proper culling algorithm and scene graph implementation, speed could go up more with more complex scenes), especially on the machine I am using, which is low-end by many people's definition (P-3/450 w/GeForce 2 - definitely not a gaming machine, but works well enough for me).
Now, I don't know much about OpenGL yet, but is it possible to render to a file instead of the graphics buffer? If it were, then this thing could (in theory) go server-side (provided the server has the proper APIs and DLL, of course) - then render to a file for display by a web server.
Such a system could be useful for online data visualization services or other similar systems (mapping, network visualization, etc)...
"Damn near impossible" is not the same as "impossible" - buying from another company is certainly a possible way around the issue. This of course assumes Sony doesn't license/sell/give away the technology in the first place. Actually, it assumes that whoever Sony buys its chipsets from doesn't sell to other consumer product manufacturers as well.
It also assumes that Sony doesn't lobby for (and get passed) legislation (an amendment to the DMCA, perhaps?) that requires this functionality in all digital recording devices (whether camcorders, digital still cameras, MP3 recorders, or any other digital recording device - laptops, PDAs, etc). I can easily see a future where bootleg concert audio recordings are a thing of the past...
Sony, in addition to film and audio distribution, also make camcorders. How much you want to bet that they are simply going to integrate into their camcorders some kind of wireless "switch", and sell transmitters to the theaters? They could then license this technology to all the other camcorder manufacturers (or if the problem is big enough, give it away?). You might say "Well, I will just bypass it, like with mod chips" - if integrated at some low chip level, without external antennas (or using the "ground" plane as an antenna) - and more powerful transmitter (to make up for the embeddedness) - it would probably be damn near impossible to bypass it (although nothing is a "sure thing")...
If you are that concerned, consider seeing an opthamologist or something - but likely there is nothing wrong with your eyes.
I was not raised on a steady diet of 3D - yeah, I played around with it - still do. My first computer, at age 10, was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with 16K - so that gives you a hint at my age, and where I was with dot stereographs, etc.
That doesn't mean I didn't play around with such things, I did. I have seen the same effects as you have (ie, repeating patterns of items, like wallpaper or a stretch phone cord - that when I look at them on occasion will cross and create a "pseudo-3D" effect) - but I think this is really a natural tendancy of the eye-brain, and not anything having to do with prior 3D exposure. There is also the special "chromograph" 3D system (cool colors, like blue recede, hot colors, like orange, pop forward - used mainly in the "Solar: Man of the Atom" series of 3D comic books) that normally needs glasses, but at times I see the 3D effect without them. However, this isn't anything new - artists have known about this for many years, and have used the effect in their art for precisely this purpose (the glasses on add to the effect).
That isn't to say that VR HMDs and such aren't bad for the eyes, etc - some of the older HMDs (heck, even some current ones) are focused wierd, and your eyes would focus on the plane of the LCD (even if it looked further away), which was typically only a few inches from your eyes. The better HMDs are focused "at infinity" which alleviates this somewhat, but they still aren't good to wear for long periods of time (> 30 mins is considered bad). It is also known that altering perception of things over very long periods (ie, if you wore special glasses to flip everything upside down for a week) will change how the brain processes the information (in the above example, it was found your brain eventually flips everything over right side up - then, after a week of being like this, they took the glasses off the volunteers, and everything was upside down - took another week for it to go back to normal - crazy!) - but, as noted, it takes a long period for it to happen...
While I can't explain the page 666 reference on the "ferris wheel o' death" image, I can vouch that the images are likely accurate.
I have many old Popular Mechanix and Popular Science (and a few old Popular Electronics, etc) from the 30's-60's - and the old issues most certainly had wacky imagery on the covers - I have one showing these huge planes (like, Spruce Goose size or larger!) getting a "boost" for launching by rolling down a very tall and big "ski jump"-type ramp, catupulting off it into the sky! I have another issue, which at least looks more real, but is scary in the image it portrays (Science and Mechanics, April 1963): "Wonderful Machine That Stops Parkinson's Disease" - shows this guy laying on the table with these probes in his head (no "halo" or anything like you would see in a real radiographic surgery today - don't twitch!) - the crazy thing is while this is an illustration, the inside article shows the real thing, and no halo there either! Supposedly developed at the "State University of Iowa Hospital", the equipment being developed by the "University of Illinois" - it supposedly worked via ultrasound. This is a real article, real pictures - enough information for you to follow it up if you so wished (makes you wonder if it worked?)...
The image published of the "Ion Propelled Aircraft" (Popular Mechanics, Aug 1964) - that is a real issue, I am looking at it on my desk right now (cost me $5.00 to buy the issue, originally priced at 35 cents!). What is interesting about this article (if you read the actual article), you would see what was being demonstrated are actually what we/.'ers know as "Lifter" technology (I had to sneak in a JNL ref!) - do a google on "lifter", "jnl", and "Major de Seversky" for more info - all real stuff, he was demoing this long before the internet (but still no progress made toward a real craft) - the article is fun though - Seversky's crafts look no better or worse constructed than "modern" versions (likely he used nearly the same materials - balsa wood and tinfoil).
Finally, yes, these magazines were dedicated to helping the common man learn about science and technology, and the impact they had on the normal joe's life. In most of them (the good ones), there were many "do-it-yourself" artciles on building all manner of devices and such, from simple barbeque grills, to more complex devices (answering machines, garage door openers, electric edgers, helicopters, small planes, small cars, both gas and electric, etc). At the time, people were more willing to build such devices (people also were less stupid - and less litigious - probably because TV wasn't as prevalent) - many items shown were either not available for the homeowner, or only at a great cost (many articles showed how to build things that could be bought for much more, out of stuff most people would throw away - for example, the electric sidewalk edger I mentioned used a discarded vacuum cleaner motor for power). All of this "do-it-yourself" stuff declined rapidly throughout the 70's-80's, and these magazines all dropped off, or changed radically from what they once were - leaving the husks of "Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics" as they are today.
Sad, really - and reflects an even sadder state for the people of today's society - who couldn't "DIY" to save their life, it seems...
Maybe "more connected" is going to be the next big area.
You have likely hit the nail on the head - we are likely to see more and better applications of network theory (along with attendent refinement of the theory). It is becoming clear that just about every robust and fault-tolerant (note I did not say "faultless") system involves or is a network (or a network of networks, such as the human body). These discoveries and others are likely to shape a lot of the coming century.
If you (or anyone else) are interested in this trend, you cannot go wrong by reading "Linked" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (ISBN 0-452-28439-2).
Of course, this, like every other prediction, could be wrong. We are seeing the application of network theory in a number of areas currently (social networking tools like orkut and friendster are the ones in the spotlight) - whether it is simply a fad or whether it will truely yield new insights, though, is anyone's guess...
Imagine a human-like mind that can, while thinking, remember every fact with equal clarity.
The more we learn about brain functions, the more we realize how much the brain "fabricates" information from what it already "knows" - to the point where those fabrications are as real to it as an actual experience.
There have been numerous forms of experiments tried showing this, from simple "swap" type experiments (while the subject under test is distracted, sometimes), to experiments of "suggestion", leading the subject to believed they liked or disliked something in their past, when in fact they likely had not contact with the item in question at all! But they believe differently!
Some researchers theorize that the brain does this to fill in "holes" in knowledge, or to make sense out of otherwise non-sensical knowledge gained from a variety of sources. I don't know if it is a theory or not (it probably is somewhere), but if the neural-net model of the brain is taken as fact, then these "false memories" might actually be because of the network of neurons stimulating overlapping paths of information "stored" in the neural map. Some of this reasoning can explain why and how we dream.
I have also heard that the brain may do all of this because it needs to do it - ie, it has to "forget" or "re-integrate" knowledge, otherwise some form of "madness" or other psychological issue would quickly set in...
In other words, before our computers will become "self-aware" or otherwise "intelligent", they may *need* less-than-perfect memory in order for this to happen (and if this is true, and Lenat's Cyc becomes "self-aware" at a later date, will it turn psychotic?)...
You would like to think that you are "safe" when you are at a hospital or in some other medical care, but you would be wrong.
If you want to read a good book on why this is, read "Internal Bleeding (The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes)" by Robert M. Wachter, MD and Kaveh G. Shojania, MD (ISBN 1-59071-016-9). In this book, the authors relate various true stories of medical mistakes (indeed, they open with their own personal mistakes), what went wrong, why, and how to fix the issue. In some cases, a computer system would have helped. In other cases, computer systems actually helped to cause the harm!
As you read the book, what you will see (if you have every studied networks and emergent systems) is that it isn't the technology or lack of tech causing problems - it is the system and attitudes about medical care (by both doctors, nurses, and patients) causing misdiagnosis, misplacement (of drugs and patients!), and general failures - leading to at best embarassment, and at worse, death.
This isn't to say that there shouldn't be more computers involved in medicine and healthcare - in deed, the authors make a strong case that there isn't enough (and why more is needed, as well as how to bring the users into the fold of designing the system well so that they use it!). These new systems will need to be hardened and protected against viruses.
In the end, though - it all comes down to people and the overall system they work in. The authors of "Internal Bleeding" make a strong case that it is this system (of people, attitudes, knowledge, technology, etc) that is broken - and that it need fixing, and soon.
Some years ago, there was an episode of "That's Incredible" on which was displayed a system that showed 3D on regular TVs, without glasses, and the crazy thing was that you could close one eye, and still see the 3D effect! It was a box, that sat between the camera and the recording/broadcast equipment, and the resulting image was interesting, but it worked!
The image shown would "vibrate", it moved wonky, but there definitely was depth to the image. You could record the image, and play it back, and it was still there - a form of 3D that required no changes in broadcast or recording equipment, no glasses needed to view, and no special viewing system to watch - in short, it allowed 3D to be created by anyone, to be viewed by anyone (as long as they had one working eyeball!), on any standard video equipment. I have never seen this technology demonstrated anywhere else, nor did the company which presented its work (along with video clips that were fun to watch) go on to produce these boxes for sale - the technology and the company just seemed to "vanish" (is it any wonder?).
The closest I have been able to find about how this technology works can be seen here. Please note that the site has "not safe for work" imagery on it...
This site's images, along with another poster's (below) comments about "temporal 3D" via running two movies out of sync, basically gives me a clue as to what they were originally doing:
I believe (now) that the box was somehow delaying the signal, every other frame, then interpolating those frames in/among the regular video frames and sending them down the wire. This isn't a very good explanation - basically, they were doing a combination of the temporal viewing with the "flicker GIF" of two stereo views (but without stereo, just time between the two frames) to generate the image. At the time, it must have been really expensive (for the RAM to buffer the image, etc) - although I wonder if they could have been de-interlacing frames and sending/reconstituting the frames by double-lacing the de-interlaced frames to make up the lost pixels, then showing each one (because each field of the frame would be out of sync by 1/15 second - maybe enough time to do the temporal 3D? - and it wouldn't require more than simple electronics rather than RAM buffering).
Aside from the flicker 3D images on the web (ie, those two different angle 3D animated GIF's like I noted above) - does anybody else remember seeing that episode of "That's Incredible", or anything else about the device? The episode was on in the mid-1980's or so...
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I wonder if it is capitalism which is causing the breakage - after all, capitalism works because of self-serving and greed, both attributes of career politicians who are fucking the system up for us. However, I don't have a solution beyond capitalism (ie, what economic system could replace capitalism and still interact well with a democratic, representative republic political system?). Part of the problem may be also because we don't have a truely free market in America, but one which is heavily regulated and controlled by our government (such as the recent airline bailout - the government should have let them fail, and let more nimble airline companies take over - Amtrak is another one).
I am not saying there shouldn't be government control and regulations - for certain industries and practices, this is needed (for environmental and other reasons that protect the public) - but the government has no reason to bail out a company failing to make money - that isn't part of the free market.
There are already indications of hackers playing with biotech - is it that big of a leap to think nanotech won't be played with either?
Perhaps - but don't truely free people have the right to travel?
In Britain, this might be a different case, but in America, it is a different story. Part of it lies with how automobiles are purchased, part of lies with licensing, and part of it lies within our Constitution.
There is both a Constitutionally and case law recognized "right to travel". It is rare that you find someone in court over this right - looking at various cases that have been fought and won (some involving the idea that automobile licensing violates the "right to travel") clearly show that our lawmakers *hate* this little inconvenience - they would rather that we be penned up like sheep for slaughter, it would seem.
Vehicle licensing seeks to restrict this "right to travel" by invoking the ideas of taxation for road usage (the poor have no right to travel?), or safety reasons (yeah, a license really shows you are a safe driver - hah!). Furthermore, the way we purchase our vehicles also affects this - because most buy vehicles on credit, and the original copy of the MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin), which is the actual manufacturer's receipt to you to show you own the property - goes to the licensing department of your state - you are supposed to get it back when you finish paying your loan - but you never do, at best you get a copy, if that. The only time you could ever see your MSO for your car would be if you bought it with cash from the manufacturer directly (*not* through a dealer). But then your licensing bureau (MDV, MVD, etc) would still want it so you can get a license. In the end you don't own your car - the state (or a combo of the state and the bank if you are still paying on a loan) does. It has long been recognised that free men are allowed to own property - but not property that allows them the right to travel?
One could still make the argument that "this doesn't violate your right to travel" - you still have your feet, or a bicycle, or a horse, or something (ie, how did early settlers travel?) - but even this isn't possible today in America, and probably not in many other parts of the world where free travel is allowed. Why?
Because in most areas, it is illegal (for many reasons, some of them good) to walk or bike along interstate throughfares. It is impossible in many cases to avoid these roads, simply because to do so you are likely trespassing on somebody's land (the states or Feds paid money to the private landowners for easements for the roadways). No matter what you do, it seems, you are breaking the law if you try to exercise your right to travel free of the restrictions imposed upon you by the State.
Can a free man be truely free if he can't travel freely (or own the property that enables him to travel)? Is a society composed of these supposedly "free" members truely free?
If many (most?) geeks have some level of Asperger's, do they react differently to human representations (even those close to, or in, the "uncanny valley") than those who do not have Asperger's? Do they react more favorably to these images, less, or the same - as toward real-life humans? Do "artistic geeks" with Asperger's create "Asperger-like" CGI human representations (that is, does a person with Asperger, who is also a CGI artist, project their viewpoint onto their CGI humanoid constructs)?
I get this sense that they do - some here are proclaiming that "this doesn't look right, that doesn't, etc" (like discussion over FF:The Movie) while other geeks are saying "OMFG, it is beautiful, so well done - w00t!" (ok, that was a little over the top) - why the difference? Was the former non-Asperger's, and the latter was? Thus, that individual is better able to relate to the imperfect CGI? Furthermore, how does this relate to other examples of the "uncanny valley" - do individuals who purchase Real Dolls (for either sex, "dress-up", or collecting - yeah, there are collectors, strangely enough) have a higher incidence of Asperger's?
Thoughts...?
The idea was that the people might vote popularly for a candidate that really wasn't in their best interest - maybe that candidate had undue influence due to religious ties, or some other sort of influence, to cause the citizens to "lose their senses" and vote for them, when that candidate had some other scheme in mind.
Back then, the population didn't have the education or the connectivity to information that we have gained over the last hundred years or so - so it made sense to have these representatives, who actually represented the people, and who were typically better educated and informationally aware (either due to their position, their friends, or where they lived as representatives), be able to cast votes as they see fit, for the best of the people they represented.
Today, we have the situation where our representatives no longer represent us (and definitely do not deserve the title of "statesman") - instead, at best, they look after their own interests, and damn the citizenry! They are corrupt, and this has changed the game significantly.
Now, they vote for the person that best benefits them (or those few in their states - corporations) alone - even if the people selected the "better" of the two candidates (assumming that one candidate was better for the people than the other, that one had the people's interests at heart, and not that of corporations or other influences - HAH!).
This change is 180 degrees opposite from what was intended. I suppose we should be glad it only (only...) applies to the Presidency, and not to all levels of government (though one could argue that point, too)...
Gah - I want off this planet...
Ewww....
If Wolfram's ideas in ANKOS is to be believed, this would outlaw the universe itself!
...oligarchy, perhaps?
So, why are prices for solar cells still so high, and demand for them still so low?
Prices are still high because the demand isn't there - if solar cells were being demanded as much as computer chips, everything would be solar powered. So, why is demand so low?
One could say it is because prices are high (and hence run into a circular trap), but that isn't the whole story - the demand isn't there because the cost is still too high for people, because they want to live and use as much electricity as they currently do, and to provide that with solar cells is still very expensive. What do I mean by that?
Well, a lot of people use a lot of electricity per month - looking at my last bill, I used about 1500 kWh. My house is older, but even new houses still use around 1000 kWh. To supply that with solar electricity could easily set you back $15-20,000 for a new system (and then per-year maintenance cost on batteries and such). Most people cannot afford a system like this, unless they roll it into their loan or something as an "up front" cost of living. But where is all that energy going to, anyhow?
Most of it is for cooling and heating - mainly air-conditioning and hot water heating. The next big chunk comes from refrigeration (for food storage) and cooking.
We need to change how we live - then we would see that solar electricity (and other solar technologies) are actually *very* feasible.
What if instead of boxes, our houses were instead domes? One third the outside surface area (for the sun to fall on, or for heat to radiate away from in the winter) for the equivalent amount of square footage. Cheaply built using monolithic shotcrete construction, "R" values through the roof. At this point, solar water heating could efficiently heat the house (via in-slab thermal heating systems) and the water for washing/bathing. Bury a pipe system six feet down, and take advantage of air cooling via earth mass (and get a cool basement to boot!). Right there I just knocked a huge chunk of electricity costs out for very little money (in fact, the cost of the house plus the solar cooling/heating system described would probably be equal to a typical same-sized house). A much smaller solar electric panel array could be installed for much less to supply the electricity needs (use LED or flourescent lighting as well - in the daytime, solatubes or heliostat arrays could pipe light via fiber optics to where it was needed - use the electric for lights only at night).
Solar panels generate more power the more sun you can concentrate on them - but as they get hotter, their efficiency drops. So, if you could concentrate the sun on them (via mirrors or fresnel lenses), and remove the heat, you can get much more out of them - so how to remove the heat, but use it?
Well, integrate it as part of the solar water heating system - thermal epoxy the cells to alluminum water-block style heat sinks, and pipe the water through to heat it up. Increase your electricity output, as well as get the heat in the water.
What about at night - that hot water is sitting in storage - when you aren't using it (for washing or heating) - what can be done with it?
How about using the heat in the water, coupled with night-sky radiant energy - to drive a Stirling engine running a generator! Sure, the efficiency wouldn't be the greatest - but it is free energy, so anything you can get out of it would be better than nothing!
Finally - what about cooking? Well - you could run the solar hot water around an oven box, and have a solar oven (if you can get it to 100+ C - slow cooking is easy). I have seen solar concentrator designs with tracking systems that focus the light onto indoor hotplates as well (for tradition "stove-top" cooking techniques). I could imagine a solar concentrator heating up bricks or so
I have recently been playing around with Python, PyGame and OpenGL (I love the NeHe tutorial conversions done for PyGame) - I have been pretty pleased with the speed (OpenGL does all the heavy lifting - with a proper culling algorithm and scene graph implementation, speed could go up more with more complex scenes), especially on the machine I am using, which is low-end by many people's definition (P-3/450 w/GeForce 2 - definitely not a gaming machine, but works well enough for me).
Now, I don't know much about OpenGL yet, but is it possible to render to a file instead of the graphics buffer? If it were, then this thing could (in theory) go server-side (provided the server has the proper APIs and DLL, of course) - then render to a file for display by a web server.
Such a system could be useful for online data visualization services or other similar systems (mapping, network visualization, etc)...
Even the robot has been done - used to be an ASEA or some kind of industrial arm in AU you could control via a Java interface from a web page...
Um, yes it did...
I believe Dimitri Sklyarov (and a whole host of others) would beg to differ...
It also assumes that Sony doesn't lobby for (and get passed) legislation (an amendment to the DMCA, perhaps?) that requires this functionality in all digital recording devices (whether camcorders, digital still cameras, MP3 recorders, or any other digital recording device - laptops, PDAs, etc). I can easily see a future where bootleg concert audio recordings are a thing of the past...
Sony, in addition to film and audio distribution, also make camcorders. How much you want to bet that they are simply going to integrate into their camcorders some kind of wireless "switch", and sell transmitters to the theaters? They could then license this technology to all the other camcorder manufacturers (or if the problem is big enough, give it away?). You might say "Well, I will just bypass it, like with mod chips" - if integrated at some low chip level, without external antennas (or using the "ground" plane as an antenna) - and more powerful transmitter (to make up for the embeddedness) - it would probably be damn near impossible to bypass it (although nothing is a "sure thing")...
I was not raised on a steady diet of 3D - yeah, I played around with it - still do. My first computer, at age 10, was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with 16K - so that gives you a hint at my age, and where I was with dot stereographs, etc.
That doesn't mean I didn't play around with such things, I did. I have seen the same effects as you have (ie, repeating patterns of items, like wallpaper or a stretch phone cord - that when I look at them on occasion will cross and create a "pseudo-3D" effect) - but I think this is really a natural tendancy of the eye-brain, and not anything having to do with prior 3D exposure. There is also the special "chromograph" 3D system (cool colors, like blue recede, hot colors, like orange, pop forward - used mainly in the "Solar: Man of the Atom" series of 3D comic books) that normally needs glasses, but at times I see the 3D effect without them. However, this isn't anything new - artists have known about this for many years, and have used the effect in their art for precisely this purpose (the glasses on add to the effect).
That isn't to say that VR HMDs and such aren't bad for the eyes, etc - some of the older HMDs (heck, even some current ones) are focused wierd, and your eyes would focus on the plane of the LCD (even if it looked further away), which was typically only a few inches from your eyes. The better HMDs are focused "at infinity" which alleviates this somewhat, but they still aren't good to wear for long periods of time (> 30 mins is considered bad). It is also known that altering perception of things over very long periods (ie, if you wore special glasses to flip everything upside down for a week) will change how the brain processes the information (in the above example, it was found your brain eventually flips everything over right side up - then, after a week of being like this, they took the glasses off the volunteers, and everything was upside down - took another week for it to go back to normal - crazy!) - but, as noted, it takes a long period for it to happen...
Konrad Zuse, anyone?
Contact this guy...
I have many old Popular Mechanix and Popular Science (and a few old Popular Electronics, etc) from the 30's-60's - and the old issues most certainly had wacky imagery on the covers - I have one showing these huge planes (like, Spruce Goose size or larger!) getting a "boost" for launching by rolling down a very tall and big "ski jump"-type ramp, catupulting off it into the sky! I have another issue, which at least looks more real, but is scary in the image it portrays (Science and Mechanics, April 1963): "Wonderful Machine That Stops Parkinson's Disease" - shows this guy laying on the table with these probes in his head (no "halo" or anything like you would see in a real radiographic surgery today - don't twitch!) - the crazy thing is while this is an illustration, the inside article shows the real thing, and no halo there either! Supposedly developed at the "State University of Iowa Hospital", the equipment being developed by the "University of Illinois" - it supposedly worked via ultrasound. This is a real article, real pictures - enough information for you to follow it up if you so wished (makes you wonder if it worked?)...
The image published of the "Ion Propelled Aircraft" (Popular Mechanics, Aug 1964) - that is a real issue, I am looking at it on my desk right now (cost me $5.00 to buy the issue, originally priced at 35 cents!). What is interesting about this article (if you read the actual article), you would see what was being demonstrated are actually what we /.'ers know as "Lifter" technology (I had to sneak in a JNL ref!) - do a google on "lifter", "jnl", and "Major de Seversky" for more info - all real stuff, he was demoing this long before the internet (but still no progress made toward a real craft) - the article is fun though - Seversky's crafts look no better or worse constructed than "modern" versions (likely he used nearly the same materials - balsa wood and tinfoil).
Finally, yes, these magazines were dedicated to helping the common man learn about science and technology, and the impact they had on the normal joe's life. In most of them (the good ones), there were many "do-it-yourself" artciles on building all manner of devices and such, from simple barbeque grills, to more complex devices (answering machines, garage door openers, electric edgers, helicopters, small planes, small cars, both gas and electric, etc). At the time, people were more willing to build such devices (people also were less stupid - and less litigious - probably because TV wasn't as prevalent) - many items shown were either not available for the homeowner, or only at a great cost (many articles showed how to build things that could be bought for much more, out of stuff most people would throw away - for example, the electric sidewalk edger I mentioned used a discarded vacuum cleaner motor for power). All of this "do-it-yourself" stuff declined rapidly throughout the 70's-80's, and these magazines all dropped off, or changed radically from what they once were - leaving the husks of "Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics" as they are today.
Sad, really - and reflects an even sadder state for the people of today's society - who couldn't "DIY" to save their life, it seems...
You have likely hit the nail on the head - we are likely to see more and better applications of network theory (along with attendent refinement of the theory). It is becoming clear that just about every robust and fault-tolerant (note I did not say "faultless") system involves or is a network (or a network of networks, such as the human body). These discoveries and others are likely to shape a lot of the coming century.
If you (or anyone else) are interested in this trend, you cannot go wrong by reading "Linked" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (ISBN 0-452-28439-2).
Of course, this, like every other prediction, could be wrong. We are seeing the application of network theory in a number of areas currently (social networking tools like orkut and friendster are the ones in the spotlight) - whether it is simply a fad or whether it will truely yield new insights, though, is anyone's guess...
The more we learn about brain functions, the more we realize how much the brain "fabricates" information from what it already "knows" - to the point where those fabrications are as real to it as an actual experience.
There have been numerous forms of experiments tried showing this, from simple "swap" type experiments (while the subject under test is distracted, sometimes), to experiments of "suggestion", leading the subject to believed they liked or disliked something in their past, when in fact they likely had not contact with the item in question at all! But they believe differently!
Some researchers theorize that the brain does this to fill in "holes" in knowledge, or to make sense out of otherwise non-sensical knowledge gained from a variety of sources. I don't know if it is a theory or not (it probably is somewhere), but if the neural-net model of the brain is taken as fact, then these "false memories" might actually be because of the network of neurons stimulating overlapping paths of information "stored" in the neural map. Some of this reasoning can explain why and how we dream.
I have also heard that the brain may do all of this because it needs to do it - ie, it has to "forget" or "re-integrate" knowledge, otherwise some form of "madness" or other psychological issue would quickly set in...
In other words, before our computers will become "self-aware" or otherwise "intelligent", they may *need* less-than-perfect memory in order for this to happen (and if this is true, and Lenat's Cyc becomes "self-aware" at a later date, will it turn psychotic?)...
...will hold every pr0n movie, image, and soundtrack (yes, there are a few) ever published...w00t!!!
Great music (listening to the tail of Morning Becomes Eclectic) - thanks for the link...
If you want to read a good book on why this is, read "Internal Bleeding (The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes)" by Robert M. Wachter, MD and Kaveh G. Shojania, MD (ISBN 1-59071-016-9). In this book, the authors relate various true stories of medical mistakes (indeed, they open with their own personal mistakes), what went wrong, why, and how to fix the issue. In some cases, a computer system would have helped. In other cases, computer systems actually helped to cause the harm!
As you read the book, what you will see (if you have every studied networks and emergent systems) is that it isn't the technology or lack of tech causing problems - it is the system and attitudes about medical care (by both doctors, nurses, and patients) causing misdiagnosis, misplacement (of drugs and patients!), and general failures - leading to at best embarassment, and at worse, death.
This isn't to say that there shouldn't be more computers involved in medicine and healthcare - in deed, the authors make a strong case that there isn't enough (and why more is needed, as well as how to bring the users into the fold of designing the system well so that they use it!). These new systems will need to be hardened and protected against viruses.
In the end, though - it all comes down to people and the overall system they work in. The authors of "Internal Bleeding" make a strong case that it is this system (of people, attitudes, knowledge, technology, etc) that is broken - and that it need fixing, and soon.
The image shown would "vibrate", it moved wonky, but there definitely was depth to the image. You could record the image, and play it back, and it was still there - a form of 3D that required no changes in broadcast or recording equipment, no glasses needed to view, and no special viewing system to watch - in short, it allowed 3D to be created by anyone, to be viewed by anyone (as long as they had one working eyeball!), on any standard video equipment. I have never seen this technology demonstrated anywhere else, nor did the company which presented its work (along with video clips that were fun to watch) go on to produce these boxes for sale - the technology and the company just seemed to "vanish" (is it any wonder?).
The closest I have been able to find about how this technology works can be seen here. Please note that the site has "not safe for work" imagery on it...
This site's images, along with another poster's (below) comments about "temporal 3D" via running two movies out of sync, basically gives me a clue as to what they were originally doing:
I believe (now) that the box was somehow delaying the signal, every other frame, then interpolating those frames in/among the regular video frames and sending them down the wire. This isn't a very good explanation - basically, they were doing a combination of the temporal viewing with the "flicker GIF" of two stereo views (but without stereo, just time between the two frames) to generate the image. At the time, it must have been really expensive (for the RAM to buffer the image, etc) - although I wonder if they could have been de-interlacing frames and sending/reconstituting the frames by double-lacing the de-interlaced frames to make up the lost pixels, then showing each one (because each field of the frame would be out of sync by 1/15 second - maybe enough time to do the temporal 3D? - and it wouldn't require more than simple electronics rather than RAM buffering).
Aside from the flicker 3D images on the web (ie, those two different angle 3D animated GIF's like I noted above) - does anybody else remember seeing that episode of "That's Incredible", or anything else about the device? The episode was on in the mid-1980's or so...