Disclaimer: I have not yet seen Galaxy Quest, but I do intend to despite the following comments.
I respect parody, but recognize it as inferior to the original form. It is far easier to laugh at the original clichés than create new ones or bend the existing ones.
Consider the genre of action flicks. Often the pace of the action is choreographed to the music. The Fifth Element took this oft-repeated cimenatic effect one step further by having background characters actually dancing to the music.
And consider The Matrix whose producers attempted to create a world in which comicbook-style superheros would be believable. We often see sequences of reduced speed action. As the audience, we know that we're being manipulated, but these scene just fit in because we know that it's all a computer simulation anyways!
Turning now to Galaxy Quest, what new elements will it introduce? The appeal is to fans of the StarTrek series and movies, but will anyone else really care? Even the Trekkie/Trekker audience has been saturated. We've seen the self-congradulatory Trekkies and now we've got yet another parody to add to the collection.
Movies like
Galaxy Quest
appeal to Hollywood. These are viewed as safe choices with dedicated audiences. I, on the other hand, wish the money were spend to highlight new ideas about the future. Science Fiction is a rich genre celebrating a diversity of ideas. Star Fleet and the 'Prime Directive', despite cosmetic attempts to update them (black commanders - DS9, women commanders & black vulcans - Voyager), are concepts of the 1960s. Let's move on to something new.
When I first heard about DeCSS, I thought, 'Gee, that's interesting. Another weak encryption system broken. *shrug*' and proceed to promptly forget about the entire thing.
Then a few lawyers get involved. Why do I suddenly feel the need to download the source and walk through it line by line?
So far, I haven't heard of any attempt to shutdown the Linux DVD player efforts (please correct me if I'm wrong). It appears that the efforts to date focus only on a tool aimed specifically at facilitating DVD copying. If I am correct, I urge patience.
I find it hard to believe that an effort will be made to block a Linux DVD player. Linux owners are the recording industry's best customers - generally young (15-35) with lots of sending money and an interest in techno-gadgits. The goals of the recording industry are really simple: maximize profits. They really don't want to offend the Linux audience unless their profits are threatened.
If, on the other hand, an attempt is made to block the Linux development efforts, tell me where to contribute to the legal defense fund. $50 * 1k people starts to get interesting.
If you're a wearable computing fan, you're probably thinking: "So what?"
I completely agree that IBM producing a wearable unit without any major technical innovation is largly duplicating the work of other companies. The difference is that this legitimizes the industry in the minds of many industry executives and normal users. Just as the news that Microsoft has heavily invested in some obscure technology sparks curiosity, the IBM announcement, like the IBM version of the Palm Pilot, will get wearables in to many corporate settings through the front door.
I personally have concerns about the social effects of wearables. Just as I don't carry a pager or cell phone, I'm not sure that I want the office constantly projected on a monitor centimeters from my eyes. I certainly don't want an employer requiring that I do so. But, I do want a wearable for personal use.
I'm glad to see IBM getting involved. This should attract considerable publicity and spur competition in the wearable market.
Let me second the Kinesis keyboard recommendation. This works by dramatically limiting your wrist movement. The keys are placed into seperate wells places shoulder width apart. Keys are pressed curling and extending individual fingers. If you'll look at your hand, you'll notice that the middle finger is longest, the two adjacent fingers are about equally long, and the pinky is shortest. This determines the depth of the individual rows. Likewise, because your pinky is set back 0.5 cm towards your wrist, the Kinesis keyboard moves this row by 0.5 cm.
For more information about Kinesis, check their web site or one of their resellers. DataHand makes an even more extreme keyboard.
I examined several keyboards before selecting Kinesis. I see the split keyboards as 'halfway' measures and skipped the DataHand because I periodically need to work on non-ergonomic keyboards. By the end of the first day, I was typing at just over 60% speed and reached full speed after a week or so.
It's really funny that after years of arguing the rising power of personal computers signals the death of mainframes, I'm now on the other side.
Since the early 1980's, the processor power of PCs has increased by a factor of almost 4000 and the strorage space by about the same amount. Where are the extra CPU cycles going? According to my NT task manager, 97% goes to the idle process! In a large organization, where does all the storage space go? Simple, hundreds of identical copies of the same applications such as Microsoft Office.
To understand why centralized computing resources like the SunRay have a chance, you must understand Total Cost of Ownership. In an enterprise environment, the cost of a network of computers is a combination of the price of the machines and software and the price of maintenence including factors such as software & hardware updates, periodic backups, and network administration. The upfront costs are dwarfed by the ongoing costs of support. The SunRay is directly targeted at reducing these costs.
My views of this topic have changed primarily because of the rapid bandwidth growth and improved stability of corporate networks. As 100kb/s and, in some cases, 1Gb/s connections proliferate, the differences between running an application locally and across the network diminish. But to the administrators, backing up 3 large machines is far easier than several hundred small ones.
I applaud Apple simply because I appreciate healthy diversity within the market. No single operating system is appropriate for all users. Today we have several healthy choices: NT, Linux, Solaris, PalmOS, and, yes, MacOS. Likewise, not single chip manufacturer should dominate the scene. Today we have Intel, AMD, and Motorola. You may not like Apple's products, but the company has helped maintain a competative and creative environment over the last decade.
Where does Apple go from here? Personally, I'm attracted by the possibility of a multiprocessor G4 running a Unix core with a slick window-based environment - Mac OS X. This vision may not work for everyone, but damnit, it works for me.
If you're a fan of Stephenson's Snow Crash, this consolidation shouldn't come as any surprise. I view his Metaverse as a large portal site describing the physics of the world, interfaces for the avatars, and renting of real estate (a la Ultima Online). Each building is then a seperate site which implements the specified interface. Within the streets of the Metaverse, there is advertising - not much different from the banner ads at the top of this web page. The characters in the novel divide their time between wandering the streets and visiting connected sites.
Snow Crash is only a story, but like many successful sci-fi novels, the characters in the story think and behave in ways familiar to today's reader. The best reasons for this is commercial self interest: if the readers don't identify with the characters, less copies will be sold. There are deeper reasons, however, for assuming that technology will not change human psychology [with the possible exceptions of gene modification or cyborgs]. Consider the Gilgamesh sagas or Greek tragedies. Despite major technological revolutions, these works are still readable and the personalities recognizable two to four thousand years later. The same will certainly be true for the next several decades.
As a result, the consolidation of the internet is inevitable. I believe that television is the best metaphor, but consider newspapers for a minute. Whereas once several dailies competed in each of the major cities, most cities have only one paper. In the future, national papers may dominate the market. There are many economic reasons for this, but I'll focus on human psychology again. The role of geography has greatly diminished as a barrier to communication and friendships. Assuming that you still read newspapers, how often have you asked: 'Did you read that article in last Friday's New York Times?' In this way, a local or national paper such as the NYT helps define a common reference point in the communication between two people. As the culture continues to globalize, the scope and importance attached to brand names will grow.
Likewise, how often have you asked a friend or colleague the question, 'Did you see ____ on television last night?' A discussion of the personal problems / sex life / clothing choices / etc. of the characters often follows. For the last few decades, television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, and South Park have provided a reference point around which the human need to gossip may be satisfied. As an exercise, try spending a day without discussing anything you've heard in newspapers, television, movies, or the web. Now imagine meeting someone like this. You'd probably describe them as a social misfit - and you'd be right!
There is no reason to assume that the internet will be any different. The chances are that you're already addicted to this place and many of your friends probably are too. Whether it is a mailing list, a portal site with instant messaging (AOL / Metaverse), or a chatroom and news board (/., Black Sun), a limited number of places will become the focal point around which the entire internet will be viewed.
* The signal uses radio frequencies instead of IR. It will therefore pass through walls and other obstacles.
* No encryption scheme is mentioned. If multiple base stations are in close proximity - say in apartments, dorms, etc. - I wonder how performance will be affected and who might decide to listen in.
* Two iBooks with AirPort cards can communicate without any base station. Imagine playing Quake during lectures? I also wonder about the broadcast capabilities. Sending lecture notes, applets, and homeworks assignments to the audience could be quite convenient in academic settings.
In conclusion, this makes the IR on the Palm V look quite primitive.
They were doing tests in one of the Disney places (world, land ?) and people who tested these new arcade games complained of dizziness and disorientation after leaving the game.
This commonly occurs in VR games for people susceptible to motion sickness. I went down to Epcot (Orlando, Florida, USA) where a VR version of PacMan was featured. Imagine a totally immersive game in which you sharply turn 90 or 180 degrees every few seconds. Despite the numerous warning signs, nearby attendents were required to ask players afterwards if they were okay. Several people were not.
It must be summer. The temperature is reaching record highs around the US, and hot, irritated people are reaching irrational conclusions. In this context...
I'd like to announce that I'm not buying Apple Computer. I will not be adding it to my vast personal entertainment empire - though the expected convergence of consumer electronics and workstations is drawing near. Nor will I negotiate with Volkswagon to install MacOS on the new iBug (even if my action blocks Bill Gates from putting NT there first). And despite widespread rumors to the contrary, I am not lobbying both Capitol Hill and the Department of Energy to replace the entire Library of Congress with a few Powerbooks.
For though the masses fear the end of the millenium, and the adolescence of P1 is upon us, I just can't see squeezing more than $2 billion on my credit cards.
[Seriously: I still remember when IBM was going to buy Apple in the early 1980's.]
Assuming 35GB/day divided into 350 KB blocks gives 100k blocks/day. [The FAQ suggests that different sized blocks are given to different platforms, but for lack of a better estimate, I'll agree with this one.]
There may almost 600k users, but the majority of these probably don't keep their machines on all the time. I'd guess only about half this number should count. Let's say 300k users at 40 hours each. This still gives us a 2:1 redundency.
2:1 redundency is a very good thing. As mentioned in elsewhere, this helps SETI detect calculation errors and possible fraud. But more importantly, SETI is exciting and _current_. How many of these users are going to stick with SETI@Home when 'the next big thing' is released? And how many of these users are going to stick around for the full two year duration of the project? I'm guessing that far less than half do. Hopefully this deficit will be offset by increases in computing power over the next two years.
I'd like to say that I enjoy reading stories about great scientific concepts, rejected initially by scientists in the mainstream, which were finally vindicated after careful work. And in fact, this is true. Stories like prions ('contageous' proteins believed to cause CJD and BSE (Mad Cow Disease)) are fascinating subjects.
Cold fusion is not one of them. Like many others, I was deeply intrigued by the initial reports from the University of Utah. The informal Thursday nuclear physics colloquium that I frequently attended generated so much attention that we were forced to move it to a local auditorium. Our normal 10-15 had now grown to several hundred. Overheads were copied from only hour old faxes and displayed with hasty analysis. Those first hours were extremely exciting, but as the familiar quote goes, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' and care.
Several problems were detected in the original papers. This is not unusual in draft documents and partly explains why peer review is important in scientific communication. Firstly, given the claimed rates of reaction and without any shielding, lethal doses of radiation would be emitted. Secondly, the spectra were appearently mislabeled and looked suspiciously like ordinary background radiation. None the less, the audience, though skeptical, was hopeful.
In the next weeks, the experiments were repeated in basements in universities around the world. At the same time, the authors of the original papers were fielding many questions from the scientific community and the media.
By the end of the following month, all attempts to duplicate claims of cold fusion had failed. One of the two original papers had been withdrawn by the author and Pons and Fleishman (authors of the second) were unavailable.
Years later, I have two comments: 1) The experiment in which cold fusion was claimed to have occured is a complex system. One may very easily get a false positive unless great care is taken. If the researcher is determined to prove that cold fusion is happening, odds are he'll probably see something in the noise that can be claimed as proof.
2) If you are really interested in science, read a magazine like Scientific American, Science, or Nature. In these are stories about great discoveries, uncertain results, and battles between conflicting paradigms. Often you will find that reality is truly stranger than fiction.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I have not yet seen Galaxy Quest, but I do intend to despite the following comments.
I respect parody, but recognize it as inferior to the original form. It is far easier to laugh at the original clichés than create new ones or bend the existing ones.
Consider the genre of action flicks. Often the pace of the action is choreographed to the music. The Fifth Element took this oft-repeated cimenatic effect one step further by having background characters actually dancing to the music.
And consider The Matrix whose producers attempted to create a world in which comicbook-style superheros would be believable. We often see sequences of reduced speed action. As the audience, we know that we're being manipulated, but these scene just fit in because we know that it's all a computer simulation anyways!
Turning now to Galaxy Quest, what new elements will it introduce? The appeal is to fans of the StarTrek series and movies, but will anyone else really care? Even the Trekkie/Trekker audience has been saturated. We've seen the self-congradulatory Trekkies and now we've got yet another parody to add to the collection.
Movies like
Galaxy Quest
appeal to Hollywood. These are viewed as safe choices with dedicated audiences. I, on the other hand, wish the money were spend to highlight new ideas about the future. Science Fiction is a rich genre celebrating a diversity of ideas. Star Fleet and the 'Prime Directive', despite cosmetic attempts to update them (black commanders - DS9, women commanders & black vulcans - Voyager), are concepts of the 1960s. Let's move on to something new.When I first heard about DeCSS, I thought, 'Gee, that's interesting. Another weak encryption system broken. *shrug*' and proceed to promptly forget about the entire thing.
Then a few lawyers get involved. Why do I suddenly feel the need to download the source and walk through it line by line?
So far, I haven't heard of any attempt to shutdown the Linux DVD player efforts (please correct me if I'm wrong). It appears that the efforts to date focus only on a tool aimed specifically at facilitating DVD copying. If I am correct, I urge patience.
I find it hard to believe that an effort will be made to block a Linux DVD player. Linux owners are the recording industry's best customers - generally young (15-35) with lots of sending money and an interest in techno-gadgits. The goals of the recording industry are really simple: maximize profits. They really don't want to offend the Linux audience unless their profits are threatened.
If, on the other hand, an attempt is made to block the Linux development efforts, tell me where to contribute to the legal defense fund. $50 * 1k people starts to get interesting.
Why is this article funny? Reading about NT always makes me want to cry.
If you're a wearable computing fan, you're probably thinking: "So what?"
I completely agree that IBM producing a wearable unit without any major technical innovation is largly duplicating the work of other companies. The difference is that this legitimizes the industry in the minds of many industry executives and normal users. Just as the news that Microsoft has heavily invested in some obscure technology sparks curiosity, the IBM announcement, like the IBM version of the Palm Pilot, will get wearables in to many corporate settings through the front door.
I personally have concerns about the social effects of wearables. Just as I don't carry a pager or cell phone, I'm not sure that I want the office constantly projected on a monitor centimeters from my eyes. I certainly don't want an employer requiring that I do so. But, I do want a wearable for personal use.
I'm glad to see IBM getting involved. This should attract considerable publicity and spur competition in the wearable market.
Let me second the Kinesis keyboard recommendation. This works by dramatically limiting your wrist movement. The keys are placed into seperate wells places shoulder width apart. Keys are pressed curling and extending individual fingers. If you'll look at your hand, you'll notice that the middle finger is longest, the two adjacent fingers are about equally long, and the pinky is shortest. This determines the depth of the individual rows. Likewise, because your pinky is set back 0.5 cm towards your wrist, the Kinesis keyboard moves this row by 0.5 cm.
For more information about Kinesis, check their web site or one of their resellers. DataHand makes an even more extreme keyboard.
I examined several keyboards before selecting Kinesis. I see the split keyboards as 'halfway' measures and skipped the DataHand because I periodically need to work on non-ergonomic keyboards. By the end of the first day, I was typing at just over 60% speed and reached full speed after a week or so.
It's really funny that after years of arguing the rising power of personal computers signals the death of mainframes, I'm now on the other side.
Since the early 1980's, the processor power of PCs has increased by a factor of almost 4000 and the strorage space by about the same amount. Where are the extra CPU cycles going? According to my NT task manager, 97% goes to the idle process! In a large organization, where does all the storage space go? Simple, hundreds of identical copies of the same applications such as Microsoft Office.
To understand why centralized computing resources like the SunRay have a chance, you must understand Total Cost of Ownership. In an enterprise environment, the cost of a network of computers is a combination of the price of the machines and software and the price of maintenence including factors such as software & hardware updates, periodic backups, and network administration. The upfront costs are dwarfed by the ongoing costs of support. The SunRay is directly targeted at reducing these costs.
My views of this topic have changed primarily because of the rapid bandwidth growth and improved stability of corporate networks. As 100kb/s and, in some cases, 1Gb/s connections proliferate, the differences between running an application locally and across the network diminish. But to the administrators, backing up 3 large machines is far easier than several hundred small ones.
I applaud Apple simply because I appreciate healthy diversity within the market. No single operating system is appropriate for all users. Today we have several healthy choices: NT, Linux, Solaris, PalmOS, and, yes, MacOS. Likewise, not single chip manufacturer should dominate the scene. Today we have Intel, AMD, and Motorola. You may not like Apple's products, but the company has helped maintain a competative and creative environment over the last decade.
Where does Apple go from here? Personally, I'm attracted by the possibility of a multiprocessor G4 running a Unix core with a slick window-based environment - Mac OS X. This vision may not work for everyone, but damnit, it works for me.
If you're a fan of Stephenson's Snow Crash, this consolidation shouldn't come as any surprise. I view his Metaverse as a large portal site describing the physics of the world, interfaces for the avatars, and renting of real estate (a la Ultima Online). Each building is then a seperate site which implements the specified interface. Within the streets of the Metaverse, there is advertising - not much different from the banner ads at the top of this web page. The characters in the novel divide their time between wandering the streets and visiting connected sites.
Snow Crash is only a story, but like many successful sci-fi novels, the characters in the story think and behave in ways familiar to today's reader. The best reasons for this is commercial self interest: if the readers don't identify with the characters, less copies will be sold. There are deeper reasons, however, for assuming that technology will not change human psychology [with the possible exceptions of gene modification or cyborgs]. Consider the Gilgamesh sagas or Greek tragedies. Despite major technological revolutions, these works are still readable and the personalities recognizable two to four thousand years later. The same will certainly be true for the next several decades.
As a result, the consolidation of the internet is inevitable. I believe that television is the best metaphor, but consider newspapers for a minute. Whereas once several dailies competed in each of the major cities, most cities have only one paper. In the future, national papers may dominate the market. There are many economic reasons for this, but I'll focus on human psychology again. The role of geography has greatly diminished as a barrier to communication and friendships. Assuming that you still read newspapers, how often have you asked: 'Did you read that article in last Friday's New York Times?' In this way, a local or national paper such as the NYT helps define a common reference point in the communication between two people. As the culture continues to globalize, the scope and importance attached to brand names will grow.
Likewise, how often have you asked a friend or colleague the question, 'Did you see ____ on television last night?' A discussion of the personal problems / sex life / clothing choices / etc. of the characters often follows. For the last few decades, television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, and South Park have provided a reference point around which the human need to gossip may be satisfied. As an exercise, try spending a day without discussing anything you've heard in newspapers, television, movies, or the web. Now imagine meeting someone like this. You'd probably describe them as a social misfit - and you'd be right!
There is no reason to assume that the internet will be any different. The chances are that you're already addicted to this place and many of your friends probably are too. Whether it is a mailing list, a portal site with instant messaging (AOL / Metaverse), or a chatroom and news board (/., Black Sun), a limited number of places will become the focal point around which the entire internet will be viewed.
The FAQ makes several interesting points:
* The signal uses radio frequencies instead of IR. It will therefore pass through walls and other obstacles.
* No encryption scheme is mentioned. If multiple base stations are in close proximity - say in apartments, dorms, etc. - I wonder how performance will be affected and who might decide to listen in.
* Two iBooks with AirPort cards can communicate without any base station. Imagine playing Quake during lectures? I also wonder about the broadcast capabilities. Sending lecture notes, applets, and homeworks assignments to the audience could be quite convenient in academic settings.
In conclusion, this makes the IR on the Palm V look quite primitive.
They were doing tests in one of the Disney places (world, land ?) and people who tested these new arcade games complained of dizziness and disorientation after leaving the game.
This commonly occurs in VR games for people susceptible to motion sickness. I went down to Epcot (Orlando, Florida, USA) where a VR version of PacMan was featured. Imagine a totally immersive game in which you sharply turn 90 or 180 degrees every few seconds. Despite the numerous warning signs, nearby attendents were required to ask players afterwards if they were okay. Several people were not.
Check out the article at Ziff-Davis for side by side images of the two machines.
It must be summer. The temperature is reaching record highs around the US, and hot, irritated people are reaching irrational conclusions. In this context...
I'd like to announce that I'm not buying Apple Computer. I will not be adding it to my vast personal entertainment empire - though the expected convergence of consumer electronics and workstations is drawing near. Nor will I negotiate with Volkswagon to install MacOS on the new iBug (even if my action blocks Bill Gates from putting NT there first). And despite widespread rumors to the contrary, I am not lobbying both Capitol Hill and the Department of Energy to replace the entire Library of Congress with a few Powerbooks.
For though the masses fear the end of the millenium, and the adolescence of P1 is upon us, I just can't see squeezing more than $2 billion on my credit cards.
[Seriously: I still remember when IBM was going to buy Apple in the early 1980's.]
Assuming 35GB/day divided into 350 KB blocks gives 100k blocks/day. [The FAQ suggests that different sized blocks are given to different platforms, but for lack of a better estimate, I'll agree with this one.]
There may almost 600k users, but the majority of these probably don't keep their machines on all the time. I'd guess only about half this number should count. Let's say 300k users at 40 hours each. This still gives us a 2:1 redundency.
2:1 redundency is a very good thing. As mentioned in elsewhere, this helps SETI detect calculation errors and possible fraud. But more importantly, SETI is exciting and _current_. How many of these users are going to stick with SETI@Home when 'the next big thing' is released? And how many of these users are going to stick around for the full two year duration of the project? I'm guessing that far less than half do. Hopefully this deficit will be offset by increases in computing power over the next two years.
Still keeping the faith.
I'd like to say that I enjoy reading stories about great scientific concepts, rejected initially by scientists in the mainstream, which were finally vindicated after careful work. And in fact, this is true. Stories like prions ('contageous' proteins believed to cause CJD and BSE (Mad Cow Disease)) are fascinating subjects.
Cold fusion is not one of them. Like many others, I was deeply intrigued by the initial reports from the University of Utah. The informal Thursday nuclear physics colloquium that I frequently attended generated so much attention that we were forced to move it to a local auditorium. Our normal 10-15 had now grown to several hundred. Overheads were copied from only hour old faxes and displayed with hasty analysis. Those first hours were extremely exciting, but as the familiar quote goes, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' and care.
Several problems were detected in the original papers. This is not unusual in draft documents and partly explains why peer review is important in scientific communication. Firstly, given the claimed rates of reaction and without any shielding, lethal doses of radiation would be emitted. Secondly, the spectra were appearently mislabeled and looked suspiciously like ordinary background radiation. None the less, the audience, though skeptical, was hopeful.
In the next weeks, the experiments were repeated in basements in universities around the world. At the same time, the authors of the original papers were fielding many questions from the scientific community and the media.
By the end of the following month, all attempts to duplicate claims of cold fusion had failed. One of the two original papers had been withdrawn by the author and Pons and Fleishman (authors of the second) were unavailable.
Years later, I have two comments:
1) The experiment in which cold fusion was claimed to have occured is a complex system. One may very easily get a false positive unless great care is taken. If the researcher is determined to prove that cold fusion is happening, odds are he'll probably see something in the noise that can be claimed as proof.
2) If you are really interested in science, read a magazine like Scientific American, Science, or Nature. In these are stories about great discoveries, uncertain results, and battles between conflicting paradigms. Often you will find that reality is truly stranger than fiction.