This Gateway patent is pretty much a superset of the Interlink patent, and the original application predates the Interlink first patent. The Interlink patent should never have been granted.
Congratulations, sir; well-found!
(Of course, now we wonder if Gateway will sue Nintendo?)
Well, the nail described in TFA has a ring shank. What if you just make the rings out of one spiral instead of many parallel rings? Then perhaps shape the head in such a way that a tool could engage and twist it?
They're called accelerometers because that's what they measure.
If you hold them still, then they measure acceleration due to gravity. That is, they "point down," thus measuring tilt.
If you wave them about, then it measures the applied force plus acceleration due to gravity. If you know which way is down, then you can subtract out gravity and just measure the applied force. If you don't, well, then, good luck.
"1) Standard DVD's look like crap on 55" screens. This is subjective, sure, but if you really believe this, you will *never* need HD because you're blind. Standard DVD's leave tons of compression artifacts in dark scenes (even title credits!) which are very visible. Tell me, would you run a 21" computer monitor at 640x480 -- with uncompressed video data? No? Then why do you think that *very* lossy compression of 640x480 looks good at 55"?"
You can call people blind all you want, but the fact is that standard DVDs give generally pretty good picture quality, yes, even on large screens. Sure, you can point out examples where the bit rate just isn't up to it. That doesn't change the fact that it usually looks pretty good. (And if you're enjoying the movie, you're probably not busy looking for the artifacts.)
Your comparison with a computer monitor is not really valid at all. The fact is that nearly all the video data you do see on your computer monitor is indeed from a 640x480 or lower source. You don't run the monitor at 640x480 for the same reason you don't run your HDTV at 480i or 480p: it looks better when you properly interpolate to the higher resolution that the device is capable of.
(And don't give us any BS about comparing desktop resolution for computer applications to movie resolutions: they are completely different types of content. You're not reading fine print detail in your movies (except perhaps in the credits), and movies are highly antialiased in time and space, very much decreasing the need for higher resolution. Even video games could look decent at 640x480 if you maxed out the antialiasing - with the exception of the imagery that was designed for high detail.)
Remember: you are just one data point. What matters to the market are the masses, and most of them are not like you. They don't see (or don't care about) the visual difference, and they do care about the price difference (and the convenience difference).
Until your neighborhood video store starts renting new releases in HD formats, the masses will avoid it.
60 W * 1 Kg / 13.8 KWh = 4.3 g/h
60 W * 1 Kg / 8.3 KWh = 7.2 g/h
So let's say about 6 g/h.
2. hours light bulb is used per day:
Let's say 8 hours. Total consumption = 48 g
3. rate of fuel used by car:
Let's say 20 miles per gallon.
4. how much car is driven daily:
Let's say 30 miles. Total consumption = 1.5 gal
1.5 gal * 6 lb/gal * 454 g/lb = 4086 g
So 1 car is 4086/48 = 85 light bulbs. This is assuming 100% efficiency savings. Given that the new bulb still uses about 10W or so, you can fudge the figures around for the same answer.
I don't think your calculations are applicable to the quote.
The article talks about the savings in terms of "oil not burned" and "cars taken off the road". To compute this, wouldn't you have to figure out:
1. the rate of oil consumption to power the light bulbs 2. how much the light bulb is used daily 3. the rate of gas consumption for the car 4. how much the car is driven daily
There's a few differences between the Tivo case and the classic patent troll case.
First off, Tivo makes a competing product. They're not just an IP company, like the worst trollers out there.
Second, Tivo did initially negotiate with Dish to make a Tivo PVR for Dish. Dish decided to end the negotiations and make their own PVR. One can argue from this that Dish knew they were "stealing" Tivo's technology.
I've wondered if it would be a good idea if Wiki never deleted anything. Instead, all revisions of an article would be kept, and you could choose which you wanted to see. Then, to make this worthwhile, you need a system of rating which revisions are the "best". This is the hard part, of course. A voting system seems like a good idea, but you need a way to keep the vote meaningful. Knowledge is not a democracy; it doesn't matter if the majority of people think the world is flat. Basically, you want to limit the voting to people who are "qualified", meaning that they are knowledgeable and neutral (heh, if only we could do the same for public elections). Now, how do we decide who's qualified? I suppose you need some kind of karma system. Hmm, this is all starting to sound a bit familiar...
Depending upon how they are made, LCDs will be either light-blocking or light-passing when they aren't being powered. So it might not be so interesting after all...
I believe that predatory pricing concerns the price of one item RELATIVE TO its competition or to its price in another market. Given that the Xbox 360 will sell for about the same expected price as the PS3 (and similarly across different regions), this doesn't seem to apply here.
Now, if MS were to sell the Xbox 360 for $100, I think there'd be a case.
It's easy to call PS2 -> PS1 backwards compatibility a non-issue today, but you'll have to go back and remember when the PS2 came out. At the time, good PS1 games were still coming out, and the first batch of PS2 games was rather unimpressive. It made sense to build a bridge for PS1 fans back then; a PS2 could displace a PS1 without losing any capability.
Backwards compatibility for Xbox makes sense too. Sure, you could put both an Xbox 1 and an Xbox 360 in your entertainment center, but then where would you put your 5.1 receiver & your Tivo?:-)
BluRay will be the "hook" for the PS3, just like DVD was initially the hook for the PS2. When the PS2 came out, DVD drives cost about the same or more than the PS2. People wanted DVD drives, so the PS2 seemed like a bargain. I suspect something similar will happen for the PS3, at least initially. (It is a different landscape, though, today; cheap Chinese copies of electronics show up darn fast these days!)
You might recall that Sony said the same thing for the Emotion Engine (CPU for the PS2). Did it happen? No. Nobody wanted to program for it unless they had to. There's no reason to put a Cell chip into most embedded applications; current chips do the job just fine, are much easier to program, have a wide array of support tools, and are already commodities.
No, you need to look at the Merrill Lynch (Next-Gen) article more closely.
They list only a few major parts from the system. This subset is under $400, but that's irrelevant since it's only a subset. They fail to include the cost of the motherboard, power supply, heatsinks, casings, fans, controllers, cables, and more.
I'd be much more likely to believe the iSupply report, given that reports like these are their profession.
At 305 meters (1000 feet) in diameter, the radio telescope at Aricebo is still the world's largest (* with a single main surface).
(I wonder what the largest antenna array amounts to, area-wise?)
I also wonder if Aricebo couldn't be fitted out for optical imagery somehow. I expect that having a light-reflective surface could cause problems during certain times of the day (like perhaps melting part of the overhead structure when the sun hits it right). But perhaps they could engineer tiles that flip over, providing a light-reflective surface during the night, and a not-so-shiny surface for daytime use?
Slashdot Mirror
Do you want to HARM your data or do you want to HAMR it?
Frankly, neither one sounds very appealing to me.
For the others who might be wondering:
u re
MEP = Mean Effective Pressure
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_effective_press
Ding ding ding ding!!! We have a winner.
This Gateway patent is pretty much a superset of the Interlink patent, and the original application predates the Interlink first patent. The Interlink patent should never have been granted.
Congratulations, sir; well-found!
(Of course, now we wonder if Gateway will sue Nintendo?)
Well, the nail described in TFA has a ring shank. What if you just make the rings out of one spiral instead of many parallel rings? Then perhaps shape the head in such a way that a tool could engage and twist it?
Hmm, maybe I should patent this.
Well, the PS3 certainly looks much more expensive than the Wii.
The Wii looks impressive because it does so much with so little.
I hope he can put up with people calling him "Wesley" :)
They're called accelerometers because that's what they measure.
If you hold them still, then they measure acceleration due to gravity. That is, they "point down," thus measuring tilt.
If you wave them about, then it measures the applied force plus acceleration due to gravity. If you know which way is down, then you can subtract out gravity and just measure the applied force. If you don't, well, then, good luck.
I only started watching Rocketboom more recently.
I think Joanne Colan is fantastic!
Must watch more Rocketboom...
Here's an analogy that I think is appropriate to the situation:
It's like publishing a book wherein the table of contents describes pages 1-50 only, and being surprised when someone turns to page 51.
You wrote:
"1) Standard DVD's look like crap on 55" screens. This is subjective, sure, but if you really believe this, you will *never* need HD because you're blind. Standard DVD's leave tons of compression artifacts in dark scenes (even title credits!) which are very visible. Tell me, would you run a 21" computer monitor at 640x480 -- with uncompressed video data? No? Then why do you think that *very* lossy compression of 640x480 looks good at 55"?"
You can call people blind all you want, but the fact is that standard DVDs give generally pretty good picture quality, yes, even on large screens. Sure, you can point out examples where the bit rate just isn't up to it. That doesn't change the fact that it usually looks pretty good. (And if you're enjoying the movie, you're probably not busy looking for the artifacts.)
Your comparison with a computer monitor is not really valid at all. The fact is that nearly all the video data you do see on your computer monitor is indeed from a 640x480 or lower source. You don't run the monitor at 640x480 for the same reason you don't run your HDTV at 480i or 480p: it looks better when you properly interpolate to the higher resolution that the device is capable of.
(And don't give us any BS about comparing desktop resolution for computer applications to movie resolutions: they are completely different types of content. You're not reading fine print detail in your movies (except perhaps in the credits), and movies are highly antialiased in time and space, very much decreasing the need for higher resolution. Even video games could look decent at 640x480 if you maxed out the antialiasing - with the exception of the imagery that was designed for high detail.)
Remember: you are just one data point. What matters to the market are the masses, and most of them are not like you. They don't see (or don't care about) the visual difference, and they do care about the price difference (and the convenience difference).
Until your neighborhood video store starts renting new releases in HD formats, the masses will avoid it.
Okay, good, so now we can compute:
1. rate of fuel consumption for light bulb:
60 W * 1 Kg / 13.8 KWh = 4.3 g/h
60 W * 1 Kg / 8.3 KWh = 7.2 g/h
So let's say about 6 g/h.
2. hours light bulb is used per day:
Let's say 8 hours. Total consumption = 48 g
3. rate of fuel used by car:
Let's say 20 miles per gallon.
4. how much car is driven daily:
Let's say 30 miles. Total consumption = 1.5 gal
1.5 gal * 6 lb/gal * 454 g/lb = 4086 g
So 1 car is 4086/48 = 85 light bulbs.
This is assuming 100% efficiency savings.
Given that the new bulb still uses about 10W or so,
you can fudge the figures around for the same answer.
I don't think your calculations are applicable to the quote.
The article talks about the savings in terms of "oil not burned" and "cars taken off the road".
To compute this, wouldn't you have to figure out:
1. the rate of oil consumption to power the light bulbs
2. how much the light bulb is used daily
3. the rate of gas consumption for the car
4. how much the car is driven daily
We can guess at 2-4. What's a good value for 1?
There's a few differences between the Tivo case and the classic patent troll case.
First off, Tivo makes a competing product. They're not just an IP company, like the worst trollers out there.
Second, Tivo did initially negotiate with Dish to make a Tivo PVR for Dish. Dish decided to end the negotiations and make their own PVR. One can argue from this that Dish knew they were "stealing" Tivo's technology.
A better option? Sure: don't use them!
Copy them all to hard disk, then store them away.
If you want media with plastic on both sides, use DVDs instead.
I've wondered if it would be a good idea if Wiki never deleted anything. Instead, all revisions of an article would be kept, and you could choose which you wanted to see. Then, to make this worthwhile, you need a system of rating which revisions are the "best". This is the hard part, of course. A voting system seems like a good idea, but you need a way to keep the vote meaningful. Knowledge is not a democracy; it doesn't matter if the majority of people think the world is flat. Basically, you want to limit the voting to people who are "qualified", meaning that they are knowledgeable and neutral (heh, if only we could do the same for public elections). Now, how do we decide who's qualified? I suppose you need some kind of karma system. Hmm, this is all starting to sound a bit familiar...
Hey, that's what I thought of too, when I considered where this could lead to...
(would require quite a bit more genetic modification, though).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series)
Depending upon how they are made, LCDs will be either light-blocking or light-passing when they aren't being powered. So it might not be so interesting after all...
I believe that predatory pricing concerns the price of one item RELATIVE TO its competition or to its price in another market. Given that the Xbox 360 will sell for about the same expected price as the PS3 (and similarly across different regions), this doesn't seem to apply here.
Now, if MS were to sell the Xbox 360 for $100, I think there'd be a case.
It's easy to call PS2 -> PS1 backwards compatibility a non-issue today, but you'll have to go back and remember when the PS2 came out. At the time, good PS1 games were still coming out, and the first batch of PS2 games was rather unimpressive. It made sense to build a bridge for PS1 fans back then; a PS2 could displace a PS1 without losing any capability.
:-)
Backwards compatibility for Xbox makes sense too. Sure, you could put both an Xbox 1 and an Xbox 360 in your entertainment center, but then where would you put your 5.1 receiver & your Tivo?
BluRay will be the "hook" for the PS3, just like DVD was initially the hook for the PS2. When the PS2 came out, DVD drives cost about the same or more than the PS2. People wanted DVD drives, so the PS2 seemed like a bargain. I suspect something similar will happen for the PS3, at least initially. (It is a different landscape, though, today; cheap Chinese copies of electronics show up darn fast these days!)
MS is using a one (3-core) chip. Sony is using one (1 big + 8 small) core chip.
I believe the Sony chip is larger and more complex.
You might recall that Sony said the same thing for the Emotion Engine (CPU for the PS2). Did it happen? No. Nobody wanted to program for it unless they had to. There's no reason to put a Cell chip into most embedded applications; current chips do the job just fine, are much easier to program, have a wide array of support tools, and are already commodities.
No, you need to look at the Merrill Lynch (Next-Gen) article more closely.
They list only a few major parts from the system. This subset is under $400, but that's irrelevant since it's only a subset. They fail to include the cost of the motherboard, power supply, heatsinks, casings, fans, controllers, cables, and more.
I'd be much more likely to believe the iSupply report, given that reports like these are their profession.
At 305 meters (1000 feet) in diameter, the radio telescope at Aricebo is still the world's largest (* with a single main surface).
(I wonder what the largest antenna array amounts to, area-wise?)
I also wonder if Aricebo couldn't be fitted out for optical imagery somehow. I expect that having a light-reflective surface could cause problems during certain times of the day (like perhaps melting part of the overhead structure when the sun hits it right). But perhaps they could engineer tiles that flip over, providing a light-reflective surface during the night, and a not-so-shiny surface for daytime use?
Aricebo info: http://www.naic.edu/public/the_telescope.htm
(Also seems like it would make a great sporting arena; perhaps in the post-apocalyptic era...)