Nope, it's because the cheap ones have really weird color spectra. If they could just as easily make them look good to most people at the same price, it would be a no-brainer to do so.
But I'm sure better ones will come along pretty soon.
Failing to succeed hardly proves that it is imposible, especially not in the light of someone else succeedeing (although at too short a distance to constitute hard evidence).
I really can't see what is so hard to belie about this. It is pretty obvious that if you can make reasonably good mirrors (which the greeks had. Highly polished bronze may have a litle tint, but it's still pretty bright), and you can aim them (practical techniques exist, and Archimedes would have been able to figure them out), it's treally just a question of scaling the number and/or size of mirrors. It's not like we're talking about the stone age, here, or that noone has ever ignited anything with a curved mirror.
There was just an accidental house fire here in Norway caused by one of those little round mirrors. OK, at only a few yards range, but then it was a mirror of very small surface area.
If you don't have a diverse testing population, you aren't going to produce meaningful results
Rubbish. If you find a usability problem, and it doesn't look like one that would only be a problem to complete freaks (the testers are allowed to use their brains on the results before implementing fixes), how can it not be meaningful to find it and correct it?
Sure, bigger and better sampled test populations give you more confidence that you'va actually covered a significant part of the potential problem space. But even testing on a single user (who doesn't know thr system from before) is way better than testing on none.
As a programmer, it's sometimes difficult to know how ordinary people with no technical experience are reacting to your software.
How about "always completly fscking impossible" for more precision.
Not that there's nothing to gain from training and experience in usability design. Far from it: it will let you skip many obvious problems, and help you resolve others that users find for you in better and more efficient ways. But until your interface is tested on "real people" in at least a couple of iterations, there is no way in hell you can call it "good", "finished", or anything of the sort. If you don't agree, you've probably never done any real usability trials. There are always surprises. Often really big ones.
Your fine tuned detail somewhere may work just as plannned, but it will easily be swamped by problems stemming from inadvertent signals the interface is sending which never occurred to you, or from assumptions you never questioned or even spotted, which utlim ately make people (rightfully!) misunderstand the whole metaphor and do the wrong thing.
There are good news though: If you are willing to really really accept that the user is right (the way people percieve your product is in fact the way they perceive it, and you won't be around to explain to them that their thinking is wrong), and have set aside reasonable time to correct the problems you will find, - usability trials are fun!
Seriously. Fun, enlightening, and humbling (but in feelgood way), and they will broaden your horizons by illustrating just how differently from your daily assumptions it is not just possible but common to think. Do them. You'll like it.
Just resist the urge to explain the problem to the subject (except to be able to move on to test other things). Write down the problem in stead. The trial is for your instruction, not theirs.
Yes, you can read them fine. The problem appears when you open a.doc in one of the OSS apps, edit and save it, and then try to work on it in MS Office. Shudder. Hopefully the new format will alleviate this sort of thing a bit.
you seem to overlook some facts. The USA is the only super power left. I think that means they have shown a great ability to do something right and thus competence.
Becoming a superpower does not demonstrate competence in creating peace and democracy in other nations. Chaos and conflict in and between your rivals is much more useful for dominating the world. Not saying that that is a conscious strategy; just that a position of power doesn't demonstrate anything but the ability to get power.
And have you spoken with those deported from the United Kingdom, about their view of the UK government?
No, but friends who have been to iran say they got the impression that the priests represent the minority, and most people would prefer to just have a normal democratically elected government. And it is not exactly a shocking view in international politcs either. It is well known that the revolution was driven primarily by a desire to depose the sjah, and that a lot of its supporters woke up to asurprise when they discovered whom that revolution enabled to take power.
This is ridiculous. That the US is once again trying to meddle in its affairs does not make the Iranian regime benign, or remotely popular with the masses. I have spoken with several exiled iranians; they hate the the ruling priests, and in equal measure they hate the US (for their previous disatrous interference which has screwed them over several times before), and have no faith whatsoever in American intentions or competence to fix anything at all (come to think of it, who does?). It's not a question of wanting the americans or the priests, but wanting a proper, peaceful, democratic iranian rule.
A great many americans consider Fox to be neutral, and CNN to be quite liberal
And to all other westerners that claim is utterly hilarious. First of all, there is no such thing as neutral. Secondly: by the standards of media in other democracies (which I'm sure you'll agree is a relevant one, at least more so than the alternatives), FOX is a ridiculously extreme far-right/nationalist freakshow, and CNN is pretty damn conservative (though the european broadcasts is mildened down a bit so us furreners might not notice and think it's objective).
Reduce page count from 1200 to 400 by removing redundant and self aggrandizing material. Retract claims that Wolfram is singlehandely going to change the course of human history
I remember thinking along the same lines when reading the book, but planning it more concretely: literally edit it down to an ultra-compact version that contains _all_ the substance of the original, and publish it anonymously on the net. Partly just to see/demonstrate how much smaller it would be, but also to spread the interesting parts to people who wouldn't stand wading through all the opinionated and self-aggrandizing dreck in it.
Disclaimer: I think some of the grander ideas in it do have some revolutionising potential in several fields, but the crackpot wrapping doesn't exactly help it get anywhere.
With the right gait and typical walking surface, the body is already pretty good at regenerating a energy through "spring-action"-like effects in the legs and elsewhere, unlike the normal car brake where it is all instantly converted to heat (one of the reasons the gait of CG-animated characters and robots often looks "unnatural" is if they haven't taken energy efficiency and regeneration into accont, like evolution of real creatures usually has).
Siphoning off kinetic energy from the system will be noticeable, probably a bit similar to walking in sand (though less drastic), which foils the normal regeneration strategies not just through slippage, but also by simply absorbing your impact and reflecting virtually none of it for you to "recycle".
But as I said, it may still be a good tradeoff if you can reduce the weight carried, and TFA said that impact on energy expenditure was less than expected, so it's still a very good and interesting result.
each man to bring 22 litres of water, ammunition and packs that can weigh up to 90 kilograms, along with an M-4 carbine and a 9mm sidearm.
Are you trying to tell me these guys carry about 260 pounds of gear each around the place?
Recycling some of the walking energy
You don't recycle walking energy, you _drain_ extra walking energy, so it will be heavier to wealg, given the same total load. Have you ever ridden a bicycle with a dynamo-driven headlight? That's more or less the idea. Even with just a few watts, you can definitely feel the extra effort you have to exert. But yeah, if it eliminates enough battery mass, it might more than cancel out the cost, and you get a net benefit.
Wow, you're worried about sound quality on the iPod Shuffle? If you're that worried about sound quality, you must be using an audio codec that supports lossless compression, otherwise why bother?
Umm, because hardware with inadequate circuitry to drive your phones can degrade sound a lot more than the lossyness does? Especially if you use a high-quality encoding.
192 may not be perfect, but the difference from 128 is huge.
If you don't think hardware matters when playing lossy audio, why don't you just check the same file/phone combo on different players. I can promise you'll be surprised. And apple hjas tended to come out very well.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
The reviewer was biased and cannot be trusted.
Everyone is biased. A review will always be an opinion. Get over it. Noone is asking you to "trust" him or anyone else.
When you grow up you might learn to filter what you read, and thus become able to glean information even from people you don't agree with. Then maybe you will avoid those embarassing moments of going instantly blind just because your enemy points out that the sun is up.
Most reentry vehicles trade their speed for heat energy by using the atmosphere for braking.
Totally unqualified fabulating follows:
Would it be feasible to do this in the reverse of the normal way: in stead of a shield in front of the vessel, use a drag-anchor behind it with vastly more drag than the vessel itself so the vessel only experiences moderate heating (sort of like a parachute for extremely high speeds, discarded in favor of more comventional braking once the worst risk of lethal heat levels has passed).
The anchor could acceptably become extremely hot and maybe even burn up, because there are no people or equipment inside. I guess creating an attachment mechanism that would hold up might be a problem.
I don't believe you. If your materials cost is so low, the natural thing to do would be to just test them and chuck out the faulty ones. and that would be perfectly OK! It is standard practice for CPUs and lots of other things, and one of the most robust ways to ensure quality: don't trust any production method, make sure your tests are trustworthy, and reject those that fail. And if it's cheaper to reject lots of cheap ones than some few expensive ones; why not?
As long as the tests and tolerances are relevant and the magnets do in fact pass them, then only problem I can see here is the markup, which is what everyone seems to agree upon. But not to the degree that they are willing to change the "shareholder value"-oriented system that makes it so.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, it's because the cheap ones have really weird color spectra. If they could just as easily make them look good to most people at the same price, it would be a no-brainer to do so.
But I'm sure better ones will come along pretty soon.
Failing to succeed hardly proves that it is imposible, especially not in the light of someone else succeedeing (although at too short a distance to constitute hard evidence).
I really can't see what is so hard to belie about this. It is pretty obvious that if you can make reasonably good mirrors (which the greeks had. Highly polished bronze may have a litle tint, but it's still pretty bright), and you can aim them (practical techniques exist, and Archimedes would have been able to figure them out), it's treally just a question of scaling the number and/or size of mirrors. It's not like we're talking about the stone age, here, or that noone has ever ignited anything with a curved mirror.
There was just an accidental house fire here in Norway caused by one of those little round mirrors. OK, at only a few yards range, but then it was a mirror of very small surface area.
If you don't have a diverse testing population, you aren't going to produce meaningful results
Rubbish. If you find a usability problem, and it doesn't look like one that would only be a problem to complete freaks (the testers are allowed to use their brains on the results before implementing fixes), how can it not be meaningful to find it and correct it?
Sure, bigger and better sampled test populations give you more confidence that you'va actually covered a significant part of the potential problem space. But even testing on a single user (who doesn't know thr system from before) is way better than testing on none.
As a programmer, it's sometimes difficult to know how ordinary people with no technical experience are reacting to your software.
How about "always completly fscking impossible" for more precision.
Not that there's nothing to gain from training and experience in usability design. Far from it: it will let you skip many obvious problems, and help you resolve others that users find for you in better and more efficient ways. But until your interface is tested on "real people" in at least a couple of iterations, there is no way in hell you can call it "good", "finished", or anything of the sort. If you don't agree, you've probably never done any real usability trials. There are always surprises. Often really big ones.
Your fine tuned detail somewhere may work just as plannned, but it will easily be swamped by problems stemming from inadvertent signals the interface is sending which never occurred to you, or from assumptions you never questioned or even spotted, which utlim ately make people (rightfully!) misunderstand the whole metaphor and do the wrong thing.
There are good news though: If you are willing to really really accept that the user is right (the way people percieve your product is in fact the way they perceive it, and you won't be around to explain to them that their thinking is wrong), and have set aside reasonable time to correct the problems you will find, - usability trials are fun!
Seriously. Fun, enlightening, and humbling (but in feelgood way), and they will broaden your horizons by illustrating just how differently from your daily assumptions it is not just possible but common to think. Do them. You'll like it.
Just resist the urge to explain the problem to the subject (except to be able to move on to test other things). Write down the problem in stead. The trial is for your instruction, not theirs.
Yup. Next up is tthe "Fireman Project", which is just like this onse, only optimized for pr0n-viewing (i.e. without the adblock).
GPL friendly physicists rule.
Not my country. And to be quite honest, I'm not totally sure I wish they did either.
Yes I make mistakes. Don't we all?
I dno't.
Yes, you can read them fine. The problem appears when you open a .doc in one of the OSS apps, edit and save it, and then try to work on it in MS Office. Shudder. Hopefully the new format will alleviate this sort of thing a bit.
you seem to overlook some facts. The USA is the only super power left. I think that means they have shown a great ability to do something right and thus competence.
Becoming a superpower does not demonstrate competence in creating peace and democracy in other nations. Chaos and conflict in and between your rivals is much more useful for dominating the world. Not saying that that is a conscious strategy; just that a position of power doesn't demonstrate anything but the ability to get power.
And have you spoken with those deported from the United Kingdom, about their view of the UK government?
No, but friends who have been to iran say they got the impression that the priests represent the minority, and most people would prefer to just have a normal democratically elected government. And it is not exactly a shocking view in international politcs either. It is well known that the revolution was driven primarily by a desire to depose the sjah, and that a lot of its supporters woke up to asurprise when they discovered whom that revolution enabled to take power.
This is ridiculous. That the US is once again trying to meddle in its affairs does not make the Iranian regime benign, or remotely popular with the masses. I have spoken with several exiled iranians; they hate the the ruling priests, and in equal measure they hate the US (for their previous disatrous interference which has screwed them over several times before), and have no faith whatsoever in American intentions or competence to fix anything at all (come to think of it, who does?). It's not a question of wanting the americans or the priests, but wanting a proper, peaceful, democratic iranian rule.
A great many americans consider Fox to be neutral, and CNN to be quite liberal
And to all other westerners that claim is utterly hilarious. First of all, there is no such thing as neutral. Secondly: by the standards of media in other democracies (which I'm sure you'll agree is a relevant one, at least more so than the alternatives), FOX is a ridiculously extreme far-right/nationalist freakshow, and CNN is pretty damn conservative (though the european broadcasts is mildened down a bit so us furreners might not notice and think it's objective).
Think "lossy compression", dude. It totally rocks!
This is a pedaphile's ultimate dream.
While there are many, many concerns with registries of personal information, this one I really do not get.
Is it in some way difficult for child-molestors to find victims without a registry?
Are we not trying to control something which is not ment to be controled
Meant? By whom? Meaning and intent are aspects of the mind, and cannot exist without a sentient backer.
If you mean God, we already do thousands of things every day that challenge what we seem to be "meant" to do, judging from our construction.
Reduce page count from 1200 to 400 by removing redundant and self aggrandizing material. Retract claims that Wolfram is singlehandely going to change the course of human history
I remember thinking along the same lines when reading the book, but planning it more concretely: literally edit it down to an ultra-compact version that contains _all_ the substance of the original, and publish it anonymously on the net. Partly just to see/demonstrate how much smaller it would be, but also to spread the interesting parts to people who wouldn't stand wading through all the opinionated and self-aggrandizing dreck in it.
Disclaimer: I think some of the grander ideas in it do have some revolutionising potential in several fields, but the crackpot wrapping doesn't exactly help it get anywhere.
With the right gait and typical walking surface, the body is already pretty good at regenerating a energy through "spring-action"-like effects in the legs and elsewhere, unlike the normal car brake where it is all instantly converted to heat (one of the reasons the gait of CG-animated characters and robots often looks "unnatural" is if they haven't taken energy efficiency and regeneration into accont, like evolution of real creatures usually has).
Siphoning off kinetic energy from the system will be noticeable, probably a bit similar to walking in sand (though less drastic), which foils the normal regeneration strategies not just through slippage, but also by simply absorbing your impact and reflecting virtually none of it for you to "recycle".
But as I said, it may still be a good tradeoff if you can reduce the weight carried, and TFA said that impact on energy expenditure was less than expected, so it's still a very good and interesting result.
each man to bring 22 litres of water, ammunition and packs that can weigh up to 90 kilograms, along with an M-4 carbine and a 9mm sidearm.
Are you trying to tell me these guys carry about 260 pounds of gear each around the place?
Recycling some of the walking energy
You don't recycle walking energy, you _drain_ extra walking energy, so it will be heavier to wealg, given the same total load. Have you ever ridden a bicycle with a dynamo-driven headlight? That's more or less the idea. Even with just a few watts, you can definitely feel the extra effort you have to exert. But yeah, if it eliminates enough battery mass, it might more than cancel out the cost, and you get a net benefit.
Shoudn't you be out getting us som meat, O great Survivor?
Wow, you're worried about sound quality on the iPod Shuffle? If you're that worried about sound quality, you must be using an audio codec that supports lossless compression, otherwise why bother?
Umm, because hardware with inadequate circuitry to drive your phones can degrade sound a lot more than the lossyness does? Especially if you use a high-quality encoding.
192 may not be perfect, but the difference from 128 is huge.
If you don't think hardware matters when playing lossy audio, why don't you just check the same file/phone combo on different players. I can promise you'll be surprised. And apple hjas tended to come out very well.
The reviewer was biased and cannot be trusted.
Everyone is biased. A review will always be an opinion. Get over it. Noone is asking you to "trust" him or anyone else.
When you grow up you might learn to filter what you read, and thus become able to glean information even from people you don't agree with. Then maybe you will avoid those embarassing moments of going instantly blind just because your enemy points out that the sun is up.
Only 2 more years. That is when our new multikilojoule multiPETAWATT laser will come online and fast ignition experiments will begin.
That's going to need one hell of a shark!
Most reentry vehicles trade their speed for heat energy by using the atmosphere for braking.
Totally unqualified fabulating follows:
Would it be feasible to do this in the reverse of the normal way: in stead of a shield in front of the vessel, use a drag-anchor behind it with vastly more drag than the vessel itself so the vessel only experiences moderate heating (sort of like a parachute for extremely high speeds, discarded in favor of more comventional braking once the worst risk of lethal heat levels has passed).
The anchor could acceptably become extremely hot and maybe even burn up, because there are no people or equipment inside. I guess creating an attachment mechanism that would hold up might be a problem.
I don't believe you. If your materials cost is so low, the natural thing to do would be to just test them and chuck out the faulty ones. and that would be perfectly OK! It is standard practice for CPUs and lots of other things, and one of the most robust ways to ensure quality: don't trust any production method, make sure your tests are trustworthy, and reject those that fail. And if it's cheaper to reject lots of cheap ones than some few expensive ones; why not?
As long as the tests and tolerances are relevant and the magnets do in fact pass them, then only problem I can see here is the markup, which is what everyone seems to agree upon. But not to the degree that they are willing to change the "shareholder value"-oriented system that makes it so.
Why would they make one anyway? Doesn't really seem to fit with their current strategy
Take a look at the sidebar that comes with the latest google desktop, and you'll see it fits like a charm.
unless they tie it into gmail somehow.
That would be a natural thnkg to do, yes. And the sidebar would make it a lot easier to do.
Doesn't mean I necessarily believe they are doing this, but I hope so.