It is in fact silly to think that in 8 years, every television will have to be replaced by a HDTV because of a sudden revolution. Why, already a large number of people have broadband internet connections in their home. (At least here in Europe you can easily get 8Mbit for a very reasonable price) So chances are, in 1 or 2 years, some bright mind will start providing for all early adopting tech geeks by streaming HDTV standard compliant video from his website. This would only require an upgrade of whatever media player they'll be using. Soon after people will develop cheap (linux based, ofcourse!) standalone players that only require a monitor and an xDSL connection. A surge in HDTV set sales will be the result. Why should HDTV emerge from the same, centrally directed, mass-oriented cable companies? When did they develop something new? It will happen, but not in the form you're thinking of.
There is a great service for this, and it's free! At home, I have this big grey box, with a lid and handy wheels, for easy transport. Everything goes in there and every mondays and thursdays a truck comes and picks it up, they even do all the hauling for you, no hassle. Although I haven't tried retrieving anything, I'm sure this is equally easy. They told me every town has this nowadays.
Not to mention the European hacking conventions; Scandinavian, German, Dutch. Feds not to welcome there, also local government pretty much not giving a damn.
I can sit in the back of a crowded presentation at work, or in the back of my math class, with a PDA, doing various things, but if I'm seen sitting there using a GBA, that's somehow "disrespectful". Even though either way I'm clearly not paying attention.
You could ofcourse not bother to go to either one if your going to play games anyway, and just use you playtendo instead.
Here in Holland, we develop and produce quite a bit of hightech aerospace equipment. (Think of Stork, former Fokker, think of Estec, a Holland based ESA tech facility) Although, this usually ends up in some other country's high profile project. So it is good to see the Dutch own engineering get some appreciation once in a while. Even if we didn't develop all of the parts ourselves this time.
Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi
on
Is 3G Irrelevant?
·
· Score: 1
But just because these possibilities are added to the mobile networks, doesn't mean you have to use them on your mobile phone. Right now I'm thinking about a GPRS pcmcia card that vodaphone is currently marketing in Europe. It's their philosophy that, when you are using these digital features, you're probably not really using them on your phone. But rather on your laptop, somewhere where WiFi and landlines are scarce. Be it on the road or in the country. The thing about 3 and 4G techniques is that they're much more location independant. Which is what makes them attractive for corporate users, because they want them to simply work, wherever they are. As long as WiFi doesn't form a viable alternative world-wide, which it won't for some time to come, there will be a substantial market for 3G.
Not to mention: 3d) Be sponsored by Coca-Cola while being watched by tens of millions of people worldwide during your maiden voyage. Hasn't anyone here seen Deep Impact? (Ok, can't blame you for that.)
So suppose my banknotes have defect RFIDs. How will the authorities react to this? Will the notes be declared worthless? (Stay clear of strong radio signals!) Or would be simply be taken out of the system after they reach a bank? In the latter case, the whole idea is pretty pointless - as someone pointed out before - since thugs would simply nuke them or take the RFIDs out. This concept might have a chance to succeed when the notes will be registered at every counter and ATM in the world!
Photonic Condensator?
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The researchers worked out that if a photonic crystal is designed in a certain way, incoming light can get trapped at the shock wave boundary, bouncing back and forth between the compressed part of the crystal and the uncompressed part, in a "hall of mirrors" effect.
Could this be the starting point for some sort of photonic condensator? Maybe, this could in turn be used for building a volatile photonic memory system? That would mean a great leap in photo-electronic computer systems, since normally, a lot of the speedup from using optics in systems is lost due to slow(er) memory. But maybe the quality of the signal degrades too fast to be usable, afterall 0.1 nanosecond is hardly usable in most cases. Maybe somebody knows more about photo-electonics to figure this one out?
I do hope that every/. reader at least can discriminate between building life-threatening devices and products that may or may not just fall under some crazy copyright law. It's the user's responsibility not his. They assigned him, they carry the consequences.
It's your way of extreme reasoning that gets us nowhere. We must be reasonable, and it's reasonable to expect that no judge in his right mind would convict anyone for this.
At least all of the Shake compositing was done on Macs and I guess they used Macs for a large portion of the photoshop work too. How you can judge Wintel use from the screen shots is beyond me. (A keen eye for color calibration?)
I'd like using it as a hardware accelerator for POV-Ray [povray.org] or Renderman [pixar.com].
This idea has come up many times before, but unfortunately these programs require a whole different set of operations than these cards provide.
Although opengl previews can get faster with these things, the size of a usual texture file found in professional level 3d quickly exceeds the size of the onboard memory and the memory bandwith even sooner. Cards like the Wildcat series from 3dLabs are much more suited to this.
Cinema or even video quality renders require things like full screen ray-tracing, BIG textures, complex shaders etc. which these cards simply cannot do in one or a few passes.
Having said this, there have - and may still be - dedicated ray-tracer boxes which do this exact thing. And I've heard of some development to break down those complex Renderman shaders into small opengl instructions for a battery of 3d cards to chew on. But I haven't heard of any actual deployment of this idea.
Even single handed keyboards, which -while obviously costing you more presses per character- would allow you to keep your other hand on your mouse all the time. This however, probably wouldn't be much good to a an 'all console, all the time' kind of person.
In the end, changing anything but adding a few buttons or functions to existing buttons, would scare of probably 99% of the existing pc userbase.
Requiring people to learn to type all over again is not a very good market strategy. Alternatives do exist, but they will remain sparse.
Ofcourse, having said that, a 'Fuck it' key would be nice...
What we neeed is an FPGA that can store several "pages" of configurations, and switch between them rapidly.
I was just thinking the exact same thing. When the reconfiguring process speeds up to the point where it loses only a few cycles instead of thousands, it could speed up certain processes considerably. Suppose the FPGA would start out in a 'basic' general purpose config, while a preprocessor would scan ahead and create several circuit schemes based on the code it finds. Something leaning towards compiler based optimisation, but in real-time. This would be a tricky task, but the boost could be significant.
then I don't want that system to go all 'fuzzy logic' on me and make guesses. I want a system that is utterly reliable and predictable, and for my guys on the ground to ask it to fly an utterly predicatble route.
This all sounds fine and would work perfectly all the time, every time, in a completely predictable environment. However, anything as large as a space shuttle in flight can never be fully predicted. It's a matter of controlled chaos. So anytime a situation, however remote, comes up which the programmes have never - and could never - thought of, fuzzy logic would allow the system to react in a more balanced way then the 'nearest match' predicted. So in theory, enhanced computing power could ofcourse add to the safety of systems. It's a matter of system developers being able to oversee the additional complexity of these systems. Afterall, onboard aircraft systems haven't stopped evolving over the years and they too have a pretty good track record. It can only be guessed where those stats would be at for the older systems on the scale of todays air traffic.
Oh, so those Ukranian guys at the station weren't after my money at all, thought that's why they took my laptop...Still, strange to imagine them datamining my HD.
The European Union is making guidelines which will force manufacturers like HP and Epson to make their cartridges refillable and adjustable by 3rd parties, for anti-monopoly reasons. I don't know anything about European copyright acts, but it would seem, this doesn't go well with a, above mentioned, DMCA like law. Anybody got any insights on this?
Exactly. In fact, these hierarchies do not make sense to anyone, encountering them for the first time. There's nothing user friendly about them at all, really. They aren't even alphabetically sorted, which is the least you usually expect from a file cabinet. It's just the simplest way of doing things and it seems logical to you, because you haven't worked with any other kind of file system since you're first computer experience. Admittedly, a keyword driven system would not give you a shorter syntax. But administering a system using thousands of levels of subdirectories would not do that, either. Imagine a database driven file system, combined with near-perfect speech-recognition software. Suddenly the additional keywords required do not matter so much, and the advantages of a system like this could really become obvious.
Why stop there? I mean, with todays technology, it's easy to broaden the scope of this search to all ideas coming from all persons interested. Sure, a lot more thought probably goes into most which is written by real sci-fi authors, but the chance of anything actually usefull coming out of this research seems so small to me, that having people enter their own, personal ideas might even be more productive.
Slashdot Mirror
It is in fact silly to think that in 8 years, every television will have to be replaced by a HDTV because of a sudden revolution.
Why, already a large number of people have broadband internet connections in their home. (At least here in Europe you can easily get 8Mbit for a very reasonable price)
So chances are, in 1 or 2 years, some bright mind will start providing for all early adopting tech geeks by streaming HDTV standard compliant video from his website. This would only require an upgrade of whatever media player they'll be using.
Soon after people will develop cheap (linux based, ofcourse!) standalone players that only require a monitor and an xDSL connection. A surge in HDTV set sales will be the result.
Why should HDTV emerge from the same, centrally directed, mass-oriented cable companies? When did they develop something new? It will happen, but not in the form you're thinking of.
Also, it does help that you guys have, what, three televisions?
There is a great service for this, and it's free!
At home, I have this big grey box, with a lid and handy wheels, for easy transport. Everything goes in there and every mondays and thursdays a truck comes and picks it up, they even do all the hauling for you, no hassle. Although I haven't tried retrieving anything, I'm sure this is equally easy. They told me every town has this nowadays.
Not to mention the European hacking conventions; Scandinavian, German, Dutch. Feds not to welcome there, also local government pretty much not giving a damn.
I can sit in the back of a crowded presentation at work, or in the back of my math class, with a PDA, doing various things, but if I'm seen sitting there using a GBA, that's somehow "disrespectful". Even though either way I'm clearly not paying attention.
You could ofcourse not bother to go to either one if your going to play games anyway, and just use you playtendo instead.
Here in Holland, we develop and produce quite a bit of hightech aerospace equipment. (Think of Stork, former Fokker, think of Estec, a Holland based ESA tech facility) Although, this usually ends up in some other country's high profile project. So it is good to see the Dutch own engineering get some appreciation once in a while. Even if we didn't develop all of the parts ourselves this time.
But just because these possibilities are added to the mobile networks, doesn't mean you have to use them on your mobile phone.
Right now I'm thinking about a GPRS pcmcia card that vodaphone is currently marketing in Europe. It's their philosophy that, when you are using these digital features, you're probably not really using them on your phone. But rather on your laptop, somewhere where WiFi and landlines are scarce. Be it on the road or in the country.
The thing about 3 and 4G techniques is that they're much more location independant. Which is what makes them attractive for corporate users, because they want them to simply work, wherever they are. As long as WiFi doesn't form a viable alternative world-wide, which it won't for some time to come, there will be a substantial market for 3G.
Authors:
-Umberto Eco (translated!)
-Iain Banks
-Michel Houellebecq (translated!)
-Ludlum
-John Cheever
-Chrichton
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Books:
-Life of Pi, Yann Martel
-Watership down, Richard Adams
-The great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
-Microserfs, Douglas Coupland (still nice)
-Future Shock, Alvia Toffler
-any Ripley book, Patricia Highsmith
-1984, Orwell
-Dr. Zhivago, Pasternak
That's about all I could think of now.
Not to mention:
3d) Be sponsored by Coca-Cola while being watched by tens of millions of people worldwide during your maiden voyage. Hasn't anyone here seen Deep Impact? (Ok, can't blame you for that.)
Which is why we have the moderation system...
So suppose my banknotes have defect RFIDs. How will the authorities react to this? Will the notes be declared worthless? (Stay clear of strong radio signals!) Or would be simply be taken out of the system after they reach a bank? In the latter case, the whole idea is pretty pointless - as someone pointed out before - since thugs would simply nuke them or take the RFIDs out. This concept might have a chance to succeed when the notes will be registered at every counter and ATM in the world!
The researchers worked out that if a photonic crystal is designed in a certain way, incoming light can get trapped at the shock wave boundary, bouncing back and forth between the compressed part of the crystal and the uncompressed part, in a "hall of mirrors" effect.
Could this be the starting point for some sort of photonic condensator? Maybe, this could in turn be used for building a volatile photonic memory system?
That would mean a great leap in photo-electronic computer systems, since normally, a lot of the speedup from using optics in systems is lost due to slow(er) memory. But maybe the quality of the signal degrades too fast to be usable, afterall 0.1 nanosecond is hardly usable in most cases. Maybe somebody knows more about photo-electonics to figure this one out?
I do hope that every /. reader at least can discriminate between building life-threatening devices and products that may or may not just fall under some crazy copyright law. It's the user's responsibility not his. They assigned him, they carry the consequences.
It's your way of extreme reasoning that gets us nowhere. We must be reasonable, and it's reasonable to expect that no judge in his right mind would convict anyone for this.
George Harrison, a vice president at Nintendo of America...
So that's what he's been up to. What's next? Ringo Starr leaving Apple Records for Apple Macintosh?
Yes, I know it's lame.
At least all of the Shake compositing was done on Macs and I guess they used Macs for a large portion of the photoshop work too. How you can judge Wintel use from the screen shots is beyond me. (A keen eye for color calibration?)
I'd like using it as a hardware accelerator for POV-Ray [povray.org] or Renderman [pixar.com].
This idea has come up many times before, but unfortunately these programs require a whole different set of operations than these cards provide.
Although opengl previews can get faster with these things, the size of a usual texture file found in professional level 3d quickly exceeds the size of the onboard memory and the memory bandwith even sooner. Cards like the Wildcat series from 3dLabs are much more suited to this.
Cinema or even video quality renders require things like full screen ray-tracing, BIG textures, complex shaders etc. which these cards simply cannot do in one or a few passes.
Having said this, there have - and may still be - dedicated ray-tracer boxes which do this exact thing. And I've heard of some development to break down those complex Renderman shaders into small opengl instructions for a battery of 3d cards to chew on. But I haven't heard of any actual deployment of this idea.
At least all possible sorts of key layouts.
Even single handed keyboards, which -while obviously costing you more presses per character- would allow you to keep your other hand on your mouse all the time. This however, probably wouldn't be much good to a an 'all console, all the time' kind of person.
In the end, changing anything but adding a few buttons or functions to existing buttons, would scare of probably 99% of the existing pc userbase.
Requiring people to learn to type all over again is not a very good market strategy. Alternatives do exist, but they will remain sparse.
Ofcourse, having said that, a 'Fuck it' key would be nice...
What we neeed is an FPGA that can store several "pages" of configurations, and switch between them rapidly.
I was just thinking the exact same thing. When the reconfiguring process speeds up to the point where it loses only a few cycles instead of thousands, it could speed up certain processes considerably. Suppose the FPGA would start out in a 'basic' general purpose config, while a preprocessor would scan ahead and create several circuit schemes based on the code it finds. Something leaning towards compiler based optimisation, but in real-time. This would be a tricky task, but the boost could be significant.
then I don't want that system to go all 'fuzzy logic' on me and make guesses. I want a system that is utterly reliable and predictable, and for my guys on the ground to ask it to fly an utterly predicatble route.
This all sounds fine and would work perfectly all the time, every time, in a completely predictable environment. However, anything as large as a space shuttle in flight can never be fully predicted. It's a matter of controlled chaos. So anytime a situation, however remote, comes up which the programmes have never - and could never - thought of, fuzzy logic would allow the system to react in a more balanced way then the 'nearest match' predicted. So in theory, enhanced computing power could ofcourse add to the safety of systems. It's a matter of system developers being able to oversee the additional complexity of these systems. Afterall, onboard aircraft systems haven't stopped evolving over the years and they too have a pretty good track record. It can only be guessed where those stats would be at for the older systems on the scale of todays air traffic.
Oh, so those Ukranian guys at the station weren't after my money at all, thought that's why they took my laptop...Still, strange to imagine them datamining my HD.
The European Union is making guidelines which will force manufacturers like HP and Epson to make their cartridges refillable and adjustable by 3rd parties, for anti-monopoly reasons.
I don't know anything about European copyright acts, but it would seem, this doesn't go well with a, above mentioned, DMCA like law. Anybody got any insights on this?
For those interested:
Here you go.
my, you should mention that to Red Hat. Because they clearly must be missing the point!
Exactly. In fact, these hierarchies do not make sense to anyone, encountering them for the first time. There's nothing user friendly about them at all, really. They aren't even alphabetically sorted, which is the least you usually expect from a file cabinet. It's just the simplest way of doing things and it seems logical to you, because you haven't worked with any other kind of file system since you're first computer experience. Admittedly, a keyword driven system would not give you a shorter syntax. But administering a system using thousands of levels of subdirectories would not do that, either. Imagine a database driven file system, combined with near-perfect speech-recognition software. Suddenly the additional keywords required do not matter so much, and the advantages of a system like this could really become obvious.
Why stop there? I mean, with todays technology, it's easy to broaden the scope of this search to all ideas coming from all persons interested.
Sure, a lot more thought probably goes into most which is written by real sci-fi authors, but the chance of anything actually usefull coming out of this research seems so small to me, that having people enter their own, personal ideas might even be more productive.