Well i don't know -- i think this is more futurism-wish-fulfillment than actual good design. There are several downsides to the tablet form factor:
1. Suddenly your input area costs beaucoup power, since it's a display.
2. handwriting, at its fastest, is still very slow compared to typing.
3. almost every child knows how to use a qwerty keyboard already -- who are we appeasing by removing the keyboard, except possibly boomers who haven't had to type since college?
4. display is always exposed to elements, rough handling, etc.
5. ergonomics are terrible; this thing will need to be peered down at and then written on. Will the user put it at a diagonal? will it have some sort of stand?
I'm sure y'all can think of others. The prime benefit, i guess, is being able to use a stylus directly on the surface you're viewing. Doesn't sound worth it to me, a Faustian bargain at best.
The fact that Hollings is behind this bill should be the first clue about the real agenda it serves. Hollings is also a sponsor of the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA, formerly known as the SSSCA), a bill that requires all new computers and other digital information devices to come with copy protection software and/or hardware installed on them. It would also outlaw any effort to reverse-engineer or disable any copy-protection format -- a measure that some observers believe will cripple software development -- particularly in the open-source and free-software communities.
. . .
It is masquerading as pro-consumer when in fact it is pro-business. The new legislation is similar to laws passed in Europe that divide your personal information into two types. The first is "sensitive" information, such as your financial and medical history, race, lifestyle, religion, political affiliation, and sex life. The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.
According to Salon, the purpose of the act is to condone spyware by regulating it, and thus setting a precedent for its continued use. No fan of Lott am I, but that Holling guy don't sound too great either.
This is impressive... the next step is to open the album to free downloads after the initial purchase, and publish the sheet music. Then you could potentially create open source music. The key would be the model for funding it. The "presales" would in this case be patrons, sort of like pledging to PBS. Their money would only be taken if some key threshold was met. Live performances would then be funded in the conventional style. Think people would do that? Pledge 10 bucks for a new album of their favorite band to be opened up to the public? I bet they would. Memetics in action.
build them a gadget which will put them on everquest or some such thing, and allow them to easily trade with each other. It'll get them good and ready to step up to the plate and make their country competitive.
I hear a lot of skepticism arising from the fact that this thing won't climb stairs. Well, when was the last time you had to climb stairs in an office setting? Because of ADA, handicapped ramps are designed into most public spaces, which means that most urban spaces can be navigated by wheeled vehicles. (although I sort of feel sorry for the handicapped people who will suddenly have to share their ramp with gingerers)
I would say the greatest hurdles facing this are range and social acceptance. 15 miles is a pretty sucky range, and I hope that a more potent fuel cell model is devised. If these things become acceptible to ride within malls and office buildings and on campuses, then they've got a shot. Hence the archetectural challenge of devising public spaces which accomodate a middle ground between car / strip design and pedestrian / mall/arcade design. Unfortunately, these things will have to become popular and widespread BEFORE people start changing archetecture, so it will be an interesting ride for the first few years. So to speak.
When Ford started to democratize the combustion engine, his intent was to bring people from the city back to rural settings, and in fact the automobile spurred suburban sprawl. I wonder if the intent of bringing people from the suburbs back to the city may be shanghai'd by some unforseen consequence of tripling human walking speed.
Or, it could just be a fad, like CBs and hula hoops.
Well, it's really just to create organ banks, not to create a bunch of hanna barbera characters. You could argue that it's a slippery slope, but i think there's a pretty goddamned big plateau between growing a human kidney in a pig and the isle of dr. moreau.
Still, nasty as it may seem, i think it would be more ethical (if not necessarily feasible) to do the brainless human body in a jar thing they sometimes talk about than to create brained pigs and then kill them for a kidney, and not even eat them.
I can just see a head IRC moderator lowering his head and saying... "I just had a terrible feeling.. as if millions of subscribers screamed in terror and were soon silenced"....
This issue is addressed in the radio broadcast of science friday.
To sum up: hydrogen in the hindenberg was being used as a lifting gas, so had much, *much* more hydrogen than would be necessary to propel a jet any distance on earth. Plus, many of the people on the hindenberg survived.
The problem with jet fuel is that it's sticky and heavy, like napalm, because of the carbon. Had a hydrogen-powered plane hit the WTC, it surely would've killed all aboard, and whoever was in the immediate area of the collision within the building. BUT the explosion would be instantaneous and quickly burn itself out. The buildings would still be standing.
i see the obvious flaw here, in a number that great there would be zillions of numbers that satisfy the checksum. So the actual "test" data would have to be some subset of the film that cannot be satisfied by *ANYTHING* except that exact stream of bits. Which means that you'd still need the minimum number of bits that would specify that number, which is the greatest degree of non-lossy compression. Thermodynamics wins again.
This is not much more than a brain fart, but it occurs to me that if any movie can be described as a single HUUUUGE number (which it can because it's a stream of bits), then a quantum computer with that number of qubits should be able to "decompress" the movie with the bit length and a checksum. Since a quantum computer can exist in all of its states at once, it would simply be a matter of filtering that huge number of bits for the only solution to the checksum.
It would be much like testing a PGP encrypted message with every possible message of that bit-length, until something clicks. But Stephen Hawking I'm not, so i'm hoping someone out there will confirm or disconfirm this theory for me.
And i am ***NOT*** by any means proposing that this is what these guys have done. I think they're probably just bullshit artists.
That is SO COOL. It lands like SPECTRE's rocket in You Only Live Twice so i think it's apropos that the Japanese made it. Talk about getting smaller, faster and cheaper! No gurney, just a glow on the field.
I didn't think the dudes at the end were supposed to be aliens, despite what several disgusted reviewers said. I thought they were supposed to be sort of nth generation post-humans, built by machines built by machines and so on. This explains their deep fascination with humans (which mirrors david's fascination with his mother)
I still thought the end was a bit treacley, with the "you only get one day" bizness. Anyway that's my two cents.
vote quimby. AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
I had carpal for about three weeks. Numb as all hell in the left hand (the WASD hand). Came from extended NOLF sessions. Inflammation went down on its own. I'm sure there are worse cases than mine, however. AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
Oh that's the answer to the ultimate question... my bad.
Seriously though, this reminds me slightly of soda constructor (which, if you haven't checked out, do so now, do not pass go, do not collect 200, yada yada) The idea being that a small amount of random (or in soda's case, rhythmic) motion locked against contraints can produce constructive behavior.
As for the "secret of life" stuff, that sounds a little like what Minsky would call a "suitcase word". There's probably no one secret, just a lot of basic physical concepts subtly interplaying with each other. But I suppose McGuffins make for better copy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well i don't know -- i think this is more futurism-wish-fulfillment than actual good design. There are several downsides to the tablet form factor:
1. Suddenly your input area costs beaucoup power, since it's a display.
2. handwriting, at its fastest, is still very slow compared to typing.
3. almost every child knows how to use a qwerty keyboard already -- who are we appeasing by removing the keyboard, except possibly boomers who haven't had to type since college?
4. display is always exposed to elements, rough handling, etc.
5. ergonomics are terrible; this thing will need to be peered down at and then written on. Will the user put it at a diagonal? will it have some sort of stand?
I'm sure y'all can think of others. The prime benefit, i guess, is being able to use a stylus directly on the surface you're viewing. Doesn't sound worth it to me, a Faustian bargain at best.
This is impressive... the next step is to open the album to free downloads after the initial purchase, and publish the sheet music. Then you could potentially create open source music. The key would be the model for funding it. The "presales" would in this case be patrons, sort of like pledging to PBS. Their money would only be taken if some key threshold was met. Live performances would then be funded in the conventional style. Think people would do that? Pledge 10 bucks for a new album of their favorite band to be opened up to the public? I bet they would. Memetics in action.
They would've had this 15 years ago, but val kilmer foiled walter peck.
THE COCA-COLA RECIPE
1 oz. citrate caffeine
1 oz. vanilla
2½ oz. flavoring *
4 oz. fluid extract of coca
3 oz. citric acid
1 qt. lime juice
30 lbs. sugar
gal. water
caramel
* orange, lemon, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, neroli oils, alcohol
rather than splitting the petitioning crowd in two, how about just sending UPN an email after the fact to show how many people want it kept on?
build them a gadget which will put them on everquest or some such thing, and allow them to easily trade with each other. It'll get them good and ready to step up to the plate and make their country competitive.
Mrs. Skinner: Put it all in one bag. And I don't want the bag to be any heavier.
Teenage Bagboy: I don't think that's possible...
Mrs. Skinner: What are you, the possible police?
I hear a lot of skepticism arising from the fact that this thing won't climb stairs. Well, when was the last time you had to climb stairs in an office setting? Because of ADA, handicapped ramps are designed into most public spaces, which means that most urban spaces can be navigated by wheeled vehicles. (although I sort of feel sorry for the handicapped people who will suddenly have to share their ramp with gingerers)
/arcade design. Unfortunately, these things will have to become popular and widespread BEFORE people start changing archetecture, so it will be an interesting ride for the first few years. So to speak.
I would say the greatest hurdles facing this are range and social acceptance. 15 miles is a pretty sucky range, and I hope that a more potent fuel cell model is devised. If these things become acceptible to ride within malls and office buildings and on campuses, then they've got a shot. Hence the archetectural challenge of devising public spaces which accomodate a middle ground between car / strip design and pedestrian / mall
When Ford started to democratize the combustion engine, his intent was to bring people from the city back to rural settings, and in fact the automobile spurred suburban sprawl. I wonder if the intent of bringing people from the suburbs back to the city may be shanghai'd by some unforseen consequence of tripling human walking speed.
Or, it could just be a fad, like CBs and hula hoops.
Well, it's really just to create organ banks, not to create a bunch of hanna barbera characters. You could argue that it's a slippery slope, but i think there's a pretty goddamned big plateau between growing a human kidney in a pig and the isle of dr. moreau.
Still, nasty as it may seem, i think it would be more ethical (if not necessarily feasible) to do the brainless human body in a jar thing they sometimes talk about than to create brained pigs and then kill them for a kidney, and not even eat them.
I think it's a cha-cha for mankind... better to dance with science then get stuck doing the spiritual hokey pokey.
Finally, a creature with the body of a crab and the head of a social worker!
I can just see a head IRC moderator lowering his head and saying... "I just had a terrible feeling.. as if millions of subscribers screamed in terror and were soon silenced"....
by this logic we should be opening attachments in outlook again.
so does this mean we can go back to opening attachments in microsoft outlook? they wouldn't exploit the same security holes twice, would they?
This issue is addressed in the radio broadcast of science friday.
To sum up: hydrogen in the hindenberg was being used as a lifting gas, so had much, *much* more hydrogen than would be necessary to propel a jet any distance on earth. Plus, many of the people on the hindenberg survived.
The problem with jet fuel is that it's sticky and heavy, like napalm, because of the carbon. Had a hydrogen-powered plane hit the WTC, it surely would've killed all aboard, and whoever was in the immediate area of the collision within the building. BUT the explosion would be instantaneous and quickly burn itself out. The buildings would still be standing.
I combined these two images, taken from eagle rock in New Jersey, into a flash dissolve, which gives an idea of the scale of the damage.
http://www.amberdigital.com/wtc/
i see the obvious flaw here, in a number that great there would be zillions of numbers that satisfy the checksum. So the actual "test" data would have to be some subset of the film that cannot be satisfied by *ANYTHING* except that exact stream of bits. Which means that you'd still need the minimum number of bits that would specify that number, which is the greatest degree of non-lossy compression. Thermodynamics wins again.
This is not much more than a brain fart, but it occurs to me that if any movie can be described as a single HUUUUGE number (which it can because it's a stream of bits), then a quantum computer with that number of qubits should be able to "decompress" the movie with the bit length and a checksum. Since a quantum computer can exist in all of its states at once, it would simply be a matter of filtering that huge number of bits for the only solution to the checksum.
It would be much like testing a PGP encrypted message with every possible message of that bit-length, until something clicks. But Stephen Hawking I'm not, so i'm hoping someone out there will confirm or disconfirm this theory for me.
And i am ***NOT*** by any means proposing that this is what these guys have done. I think they're probably just bullshit artists.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
That is SO COOL. It lands like SPECTRE's rocket in You Only Live Twice so i think it's apropos that the Japanese made it. Talk about getting smaller, faster and cheaper! No gurney, just a glow on the field.
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
I KNEW IT! those damned greedy europeans, always putting money before health and welfare. :)
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
SPOILER BELOW:
I didn't think the dudes at the end were supposed to be aliens, despite what several disgusted reviewers said. I thought they were supposed to be sort of nth generation post-humans, built by machines built by machines and so on. This explains their deep fascination with humans (which mirrors david's fascination with his mother)
I still thought the end was a bit treacley, with the "you only get one day" bizness. Anyway that's my two cents.
vote quimby.
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
I had carpal for about three weeks. Numb as all hell in the left hand (the WASD hand). Came from extended NOLF sessions. Inflammation went down on its own. I'm sure there are worse cases than mine, however.
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
Oh that's the answer to the ultimate question... my bad.
Seriously though, this reminds me slightly of soda constructor (which, if you haven't checked out, do so now, do not pass go, do not collect 200, yada yada) The idea being that a small amount of random (or in soda's case, rhythmic) motion locked against contraints can produce constructive behavior.
As for the "secret of life" stuff, that sounds a little like what Minsky would call a "suitcase word". There's probably no one secret, just a lot of basic physical concepts subtly interplaying with each other. But I suppose McGuffins make for better copy.
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?
now that's a breath of fresh air
AD: what's so unpleasant about being drunk?