I was thinking about this the last time I was flying transatlantic; there's no way I can justify the added expense of business class - so no power. That means you're lucky to get a notebook to run the whole way. Nevermind you might be hopping off one plane and onto another one for another six hours. It's HARD to beat paper. HARD. It's cheap, disposable, recycable, everywhere, and you can easily print on it at rediculous interruptions. No biggie if it's lost or damaged. Infinate battery life. Great capacity (look at a newspaper).
All of these ebooks have the power problem, and the price problem - even if they've finally come up with an attractive display.
I'm convinced the only thing that would make e-books possible would be if the Federal Government stepped in and issued one of these to every person in the country for a nominal - like $20 or less - fee. That would create a defacto platform. It still wouldn't solve the power problem - I think you'd almost have to be able to run the thing off self-contained solar cells...then you need to make it damn near indestructible, and no thicker than a small pad of paper.
It's a tough problem.
I'd be tempted to pick up one of these if it came in 8.5x11 form factor in paper resolution for reading technical manuals and PDF's - right now I have three monitors, and at any one time, one of them has a specification sheet for a semiconductor open on it.
As far as an ipod for books goes, maybe that's the ticket, if the next ipod has a large screen. It still is a hell of a lot smaller than a copy of wired.. and a lot more expensive.
Radio Shack should pounce on microcontrollers
on
RadioShack CEO Resigns
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There's a H U G E market for cheap 8 bit microcontrollers now that you can get a little computer for the price of a latte', and you can do a lot of near things with them very easily. There's loads of related things like robotics that they missed out on too - how many people have any idea where to get a motion controller, or a servo motor?
Makes you think.
Then there's the whole embedded linux thing!
Radio Shack turned their back on hobbiests; I probably owe my EE degree to Forrest Mimms and his great books that radio shack distributed in the 80's. Now they sell cheap crap from China and Cell Phones.
A newsstand copy of wired magazine is about the same.. I don't see $7/mo for one opinion.
I'd pay $7/mo for a collection of professionally produced podcasts or recorded talk radio though.. maybe there's an opportunity for someone who's enterprising to cherry pick the best and give then a cheque every month for managing the details. (podchats? heh)
I'd bet that your "two very old machines" don't have a PF anywhere near 0.85.
Nope, that's why they're in the inductor donor bin.:)
I agree with you, but I'm just saying a cheap meter is good enough for an indication one way or the other - for example, what's the difference between folding@home and idle. The $30 meter ends up being a lot more for someone like me who isn't in a major center OR the USA.
Most switching power supplies are very efficient and take power factor into consideration. There are some high-end units that approach ~0.99+. I would imagine most to be around ~0.85.
My point being for $10 you can get an acceptable measure of your computer's power draw. Do be careful, though.:)
I was running two very old machines for fileservering and routing/firewall duties. My estimate put these machines at about ~$30-40/mo to run depending on what I was doing. I was able to drop this down by about half moving to a mini ITX board with the via C3 processor, and it only cost about $150. I could have spent less, but I upgraded the power supplies as well.
You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.
Unfortunately, those are political problems - not engineering ones. Sadly I only have experience fixing the later, and problems understanding the former.
[i] To them I say.. Sure. Fine. But just remember that our great and global civilization wont be the first to have underestimated their effect on nature. History has shown that civilizations CAN affect the environment around them to the point that their civilization becomes unsustainable. Look up the end of the Mayan civilization. Actually even the Easter Islands belong to this category. [/i]
The Mayan's and the Easter Islanders didn't have nuclear power.. and nuclear weapons. We're not going back to the stone age anytime soon unless we want to. That's another debate.
If I have enough energy, I can grow my own food, make my own air, purify my own water. The only thing needed is energy, and lots of it. The realistic fact is there is enough coal and nuclear energy to sustain western civilization for the next 100 years or more; there is unlimited solar power available; and there's the fusion wildcard. There's potential for new energy sources from the quantum vacuum itself. (see: casimir effect)
The knowledge to work with modern engineering is duplicated in every university in the world.
It's a shame the planet is going to suffer. But you know what? We're products of this planet. We're part of nature. If it gets bad enough outside, I'll live in my air conditioned, dehumified cave. Sucking energy out of the wind along the way.
If you want to do something postive for the planet, don't have children, or only have one. That will have a more far-reaching impact than anything else.
These advertisements were openly mocked when I was in school, and I can just imagine how badly they'll be laughed at. I find it interesting that they focus on peer-to-peer networks though. What about the evils of sharing music with your friends?..what about countries where it's legal to do that? Will they talk about countries that don't have any copyright law?
How about some history, or will that be re-written? Many developing countries didn't always hold foreign patent protection in the highest regard.
I actually don't have a problem with this in schools, so long as it's facts and not biased, legally processed corporate driven being presented.
I wonder what the price tag of these picees of software will be. Probabably beyond what's feasible to raise.
One can only imagine the impact that an open source Delphi or C++ Builder would have. It'd be a nice gesture given the loyal developers who stuck with Borland. I still haven't found a C++ RAD tool as efficient as Builder.
Some advice from someone who's done this.. two or three times now.
Get your prototype or demo working (well). That's phase 1.
Write up a ~5-10 page document that explains;
- Who you are; - What you've done before; - What you want to do; - How you plan to do what you want to do; - How you plan to make money and.. - how much money you can make;
To see if the idea is even worth pursuing. Once you've convinced yourself of that, go talk to some local investors. You're not going to get the attention of a VC unless you have connections, and if you had those connections, you wouldn't be asking on slashdot.
If you can't convince the local investment community to risk a few bucks, then your idea is probably not as good as you think it is. Most communities of any size have some (usually wealthy) people who will risk some money on local firms. You need to network with those people and see what they think. Once you get that far, THEN you need to think about a business plan. Until you get to that point, that basic document I described above is all you need.
No Windows XP, no online play. Nevermind with a hack, the game runs perfectly in Windows 2000. I've got no plans to move my home system from 2000, let alone to Vista!
I guess my copy of Halo 2 will sit up there next to my copy of AOE3. Oh, wait..
I'm a big SGI fan. One of the first "real" computers I ever used was a SGI Indigo.
It's kind of shocking that they haven't found a way to leverage the huge brand recognition they have amoung the graphics geeks out there. Notice that slashdot still uses the old logo? That's the old SGI that has the brand recognition. The one run by engineers. I don't know what SGI does now - live of of legacy defense contracts? Remember they were first with that beautful, wide-aspect LCD?
SGI broke my heart the way HP did. HP used to make the best scopes, the best function generators, the best calculators. No compromises, for engineers, by engineers. Now they make plastic, disposable, mass produced, "me too", junk. SGI went from being a company on the edge to getting demolished by cheap commodity hardware - they lost sight of what made them special IMHO.
SGI should make a high-end x86 workstation that doesn't suck, and work on things like OpenGL based software APIs do to things the next generation of software and scientific apps are going to need. Things like vision recognition, 3D world building, massive 3D simulations. Work with nvidia or ATI to make some new, exotic cards. Push hard on not just full rates and shaders, but raw computational geometry - pushing millions of verticies around.
No vision, no company, no SGI. Maybe Apple can buy them and make a SGIpod.:o
We're not talking about claiming the moon landing is a hoax.
The government is perfectly capable of keeping classified materials that way forever.
Specifics about the internals of, say, a neutron device or stress concentrations in turbines used in the stealth bomber? That's a different matter altogether.
There's too many good games that aren't old yet ATM.
I have a reasonably high-end system, and I buy maybe 2-3 games a year. But it takes me awhile to get through them, and there's been a backlog of games and too little time to enjoy them all. I know I'll be looking for new stuff in the fall or winter, but that's a long way off. Many of the crop of games don't take full advantage of the current generation hardware.
I got Quake 4 for Xmas, and it's still sitting on top of the PC in the shrink wrap.
The only game I'm really anxious for is TOCA3, because EA has gone a horrible job with the F1 franchise games that they should hang their head in shame. It's been awhile since a cutting-edge open-wheel racing simulator has come out.. it's also been awhile since a cutting edge fighter sim has come out, too.
The wording of the whole article is very suspect.. while China might have been stealing a cookie from the 'evil' jar, trying to segregate the internet would be establishing giant co-owned 'evil' factory on a Seattle campus.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a thinkpad off Ebay. It cost all of $300 delivered.
I put the thinkpad on my coffee table. Strangely, it rarely moves. I am lazy.
Voila. Coffee table computer. Doesn't even look too bad.
Sometimes, it morphs into the "side table" computer.
I've even seen it looking lustily at the SVideo cable. It might become a coffee table MEDIA CENTER!
(sarcasm, for the impared)
Bob got armor with +100 wrong answer resistance from playing all night long.
Wrong answer resistance. I love it.
Does that make Red Bull a Haste Potion?
It's not travelling. It's the fact I'm LAZY, and hate plugging stuff in. (looks over at meeping cell phone)
"Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges."
And you can read a paperback or magazine how many times between charges?
E-Ink has been working on this, for, uh, ever.
..then you need to make it damn near indestructible, and no thicker than a small pad of paper.
I was thinking about this the last time I was flying transatlantic; there's no way I can justify the added expense of business class - so no power. That means you're lucky to get a notebook to run the whole way. Nevermind you might be hopping off one plane and onto another one for another six hours. It's HARD to beat paper. HARD. It's cheap, disposable, recycable, everywhere, and you can easily print on it at rediculous interruptions. No biggie if it's lost or damaged. Infinate battery life. Great capacity (look at a newspaper).
All of these ebooks have the power problem, and the price problem - even if they've finally come up with an attractive display.
I'm convinced the only thing that would make e-books possible would be if the Federal Government stepped in and issued one of these to every person in the country for a nominal - like $20 or less - fee. That would create a defacto platform. It still wouldn't solve the power problem - I think you'd almost have to be able to run the thing off self-contained solar cells.
It's a tough problem.
I'd be tempted to pick up one of these if it came in 8.5x11 form factor in paper resolution for reading technical manuals and PDF's - right now I have three monitors, and at any one time, one of them has a specification sheet for a semiconductor open on it.
As far as an ipod for books goes, maybe that's the ticket, if the next ipod has a large screen. It still is a hell of a lot smaller than a copy of wired.. and a lot more expensive.
There's a H U G E market for cheap 8 bit microcontrollers now that you can get a little computer for the price of a latte', and you can do a lot of near things with them very easily. There's loads of related things like robotics that they missed out on too - how many people have any idea where to get a motion controller, or a servo motor?
Makes you think.
Then there's the whole embedded linux thing!
Radio Shack turned their back on hobbiests; I probably owe my EE degree to Forrest Mimms and his great books that radio shack distributed in the 80's. Now they sell cheap crap from China and Cell Phones.
A newsstand copy of wired magazine is about the same.. I don't see $7/mo for one opinion.
.. maybe there's an opportunity for someone who's enterprising to cherry pick the best and give then a cheque every month for managing the details. (podchats? heh)
:)
I'd pay $7/mo for a collection of professionally produced podcasts or recorded talk radio though
Whatever happened to Geeks in Space anyway?
I'd bet that your "two very old machines" don't have a PF anywhere near 0.85.
Nope, that's why they're in the inductor donor bin.
I agree with you, but I'm just saying a cheap meter is good enough for an indication one way or the other - for example, what's the difference between folding@home and idle. The $30 meter ends up being a lot more for someone like me who isn't in a major center OR the USA.
Most switching power supplies are very efficient and take power factor into consideration. There are some high-end units that approach ~0.99+. I would imagine most to be around ~0.85.
:)
My point being for $10 you can get an acceptable measure of your computer's power draw. Do be careful, though.
I was running two very old machines for fileservering and routing/firewall duties. My estimate put these machines at about ~$30-40/mo to run depending on what I was doing. I was able to drop this down by about half moving to a mini ITX board with the via C3 processor, and it only cost about $150. I could have spent less, but I upgraded the power supplies as well.
You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.
I guarantee you'll be suprised. I was.
Unfortunately, those are political problems - not engineering ones. Sadly I only have experience fixing the later, and problems understanding the former.
[i]
To them I say.. Sure. Fine. But just remember that our great and global civilization wont be the first to have underestimated their effect on nature. History has shown that civilizations CAN affect the environment around them to the point that their civilization becomes unsustainable. Look up the end of the Mayan civilization. Actually even the Easter Islands belong to this category.
[/i]
The Mayan's and the Easter Islanders didn't have nuclear power.. and nuclear weapons. We're not going back to the stone age anytime soon unless we want to. That's another debate.
If I have enough energy, I can grow my own food, make my own air, purify my own water. The only thing needed is energy, and lots of it. The realistic fact is there is enough coal and nuclear energy to sustain western civilization for the next 100 years or more; there is unlimited solar power available; and there's the fusion wildcard. There's potential for new energy sources from the quantum vacuum itself. (see: casimir effect)
The knowledge to work with modern engineering is duplicated in every university in the world.
It's a shame the planet is going to suffer. But you know what? We're products of this planet. We're part of nature. If it gets bad enough outside, I'll live in my air conditioned, dehumified cave. Sucking energy out of the wind along the way.
If you want to do something postive for the planet, don't have children, or only have one. That will have a more far-reaching impact than anything else.
..complete with handcuff pictures.
..what about countries where it's legal to do that? Will they talk about countries that don't have any copyright law?
These advertisements were openly mocked when I was in school, and I can just imagine how badly they'll be laughed at. I find it interesting that they focus on peer-to-peer networks though. What about the evils of sharing music with your friends?
How about some history, or will that be re-written? Many developing countries didn't always hold foreign patent protection in the highest regard.
I actually don't have a problem with this in schools, so long as it's facts and not biased, legally processed corporate driven being presented.
I wonder what the price tag of these picees of software will be. Probabably beyond what's feasible to raise.
One can only imagine the impact that an open source Delphi or C++ Builder would have. It'd be a nice gesture given the loyal developers who stuck with Borland. I still haven't found a C++ RAD tool as efficient as Builder.
If I can't look at the source.. it ain't secure.
Some advice from someone who's done this.. two or three times now.
Get your prototype or demo working (well). That's phase 1.
Write up a ~5-10 page document that explains;
- Who you are;
- What you've done before;
- What you want to do;
- How you plan to do what you want to do;
- How you plan to make money and..
- how much money you can make;
To see if the idea is even worth pursuing. Once you've convinced yourself of that, go talk to some local investors. You're not going to get the attention of a VC unless you have connections, and if you had those connections, you wouldn't be asking on slashdot.
If you can't convince the local investment community to risk a few bucks, then your idea is probably not as good as you think it is. Most communities of any size have some (usually wealthy) people who will risk some money on local firms. You need to network with those people and see what they think. Once you get that far, THEN you need to think about a business plan. Until you get to that point, that basic document I described above is all you need.
Good luck!
Or were you just being cotrarian to start an argument.
:-)
Isn't that the point?
Small stuff stays secret. Big stuff doesn't.
How would you know, for sure?
No Windows XP, no online play. Nevermind with a hack, the game runs perfectly in Windows 2000. I've got no plans to move my home system from 2000, let alone to Vista!
I guess my copy of Halo 2 will sit up there next to my copy of AOE3. Oh, wait..
Sigh.
I'm a big SGI fan. One of the first "real" computers I ever used was a SGI Indigo.
:o
It's kind of shocking that they haven't found a way to leverage the huge brand recognition they have amoung the graphics geeks out there. Notice that slashdot still uses the old logo? That's the old SGI that has the brand recognition. The one run by engineers. I don't know what SGI does now - live of of legacy defense contracts? Remember they were first with that beautful, wide-aspect LCD?
SGI broke my heart the way HP did. HP used to make the best scopes, the best function generators, the best calculators. No compromises, for engineers, by engineers. Now they make plastic, disposable, mass produced, "me too", junk. SGI went from being a company on the edge to getting demolished by cheap commodity hardware - they lost sight of what made them special IMHO.
SGI should make a high-end x86 workstation that doesn't suck, and work on things like OpenGL based software APIs do to things the next generation of software and scientific apps are going to need. Things like vision recognition, 3D world building, massive 3D simulations. Work with nvidia or ATI to make some new, exotic cards. Push hard on not just full rates and shaders, but raw computational geometry - pushing millions of verticies around.
No vision, no company, no SGI. Maybe Apple can buy them and make a SGIpod.
We're not talking about claiming the moon landing is a hoax.
The government is perfectly capable of keeping classified materials that way forever.
Specifics about the internals of, say, a neutron device or stress concentrations in turbines used in the stealth bomber? That's a different matter altogether.
Really, I think the best proof that it's not a hoax is that there's no way that many people could keep a secret for that long.
Never worked in the defense industry, have you? There is PLENTY that gets locked down and stays that way. F o r e v e r.
Stanton Friedman did a great rebuttal of that misconception on one of his Roswell books. Before you laugh too loud, have a look into his background.
There's a simpler explaination out there;
There's too many good games that aren't old yet ATM.
I have a reasonably high-end system, and I buy maybe 2-3 games a year. But it takes me awhile to get through them, and there's been a backlog of games and too little time to enjoy them all. I know I'll be looking for new stuff in the fall or winter, but that's a long way off. Many of the crop of games don't take full advantage of the current generation hardware.
I got Quake 4 for Xmas, and it's still sitting on top of the PC in the shrink wrap.
The only game I'm really anxious for is TOCA3, because EA has gone a horrible job with the F1 franchise games that they should hang their head in shame. It's been awhile since a cutting-edge open-wheel racing simulator has come out.. it's also been awhile since a cutting edge fighter sim has come out, too.
IANA molecular biologist, but isn't there a pretty common process for taking trace DNA, then duplicating it en masse for crime scene investigation?
The wording of the whole article is very suspect.. while China might have been stealing a cookie from the 'evil' jar, trying to segregate the internet would be establishing giant co-owned 'evil' factory on a Seattle campus.
Unlikely, at best.
I doubt there's any weighty corellation between high intelligence and eccentricity.
:-)
I take it you haven't done many post graduate science or engineering studies, then.