Evidently this isn't just aiming to achieve "break-even" but an actual "fusion burn" lasting 1000 seconds or approximately 16 minutes. I can't help but
wonder that if they reach this goal whether it will massively accelerate the arrival of commercial fusion energy. The difference between break-even and
burn is that break-even merely releases more energy than input, whereas burn requires self sustained reaction without additional input of energy.
Many people think controlled fusion is "undoable" so such a demonstration would go a long way towards getting rid of the "30 years away and always will be" assumption.
We only have to wait until Mid-August to find out.
Actually as a computer programmer I lay most of the blame on the bad design of the scanning systems. The scanner in one location the scale in another, often far flung, location, the credit card swipe in still another location, even down below eyesight. Worse yet as with many ATMs machines there are TOO MANY BUTTONS for what should be only ONE OPTION enter PIN and PAY! Not only are there too many buttons, but the onscreen instructions often are worded differently than the keys you have to press. "PRESS YES" out of the extra 10 buttons only an "OK" seems to map to "YES." It may seem obvious to you that OK is YES, but you have to read each key to eliminate the possibility that YES is an Option, this takes time, not just to read, but to double check you are doing it correctly. I don't know how many stores I have shopped at that put those kindergarten silver or gold stars by the keys, then verbally tell you to ignore the instructions and hit the "GOLD STAR". Often the screen will have option layout that would map to 4 function keys, but the keypad doesn't really have function keys in that location. Add to this that at auto-checkouts there's usually no one there to assist you, you usually have to figure this all out on your own. It is a money transaction, so if you are like me with an unfamiliar interface, you double, triple, quadruple check what you are doing.
BUT worst of all, instead of one crappy layout system used by all stores, THEY ALL SUCK, BUT DIFFERENTLY. Name me one chain that has these machines well made? In time, someone will come up with a decent layout and everyone will adopt it and it will seem silly we had these problems but we're not there yet.
HERE's an idea, put stick on scan labels by all the veggies so once bagged they can just be weighed and scanned instead of having to key in the code by HAND -- WTF???. Make the labels big with not just the code but large with print of what the veggie is so people aren't too tempted to cheat the system. A computer voice should also echo the entry (I believe most systems already do this).
Many systems I have seen seem cobbled together from unrelated discrete components -- THIS WILL NOT DO.
I WORK IN SQA AND I WOULD NEVER SIGN OFF ON THIS SHIT! Forgive my language, but its us, the IT professionals to blame here -- NOT EVERYDAY FOLK who
I'm sure you'll get modded up. No surprise that high oil prices in the late 70s early 80s had these same kinds of research projects. They probably floundered in the 90s when prices came down and now someone is blowing the dust off the old plans.
Ha, ha, never heard that one before. Boy really proves your point.
Serisously, though you insist the comparison be made with HDMI when down-rezing will only be down on Blu-Ray movies. Not games, and then not till 2010. How is the $500 box not the more valid comparison? I still don't get why PS3 detractors are so shrill about not needing HDMI, not needing Blu-Ray, then insisting that the high end model is that one that must be compared when the low end model still has more features than the XBox 360.
Truth is you just want the price difference to be as high as possible to justify your choice if other than Sony for whatever reasons (valid or not) because you don't like Sony.
My 3 year old 3ghz box is fast enough and capable enough. I'm sure I'll get new equipment in the future sometime, but it will be after VISTA comes out.
You may have reservations about adopting VISTA, but when you buy equipment a few months after major OS releases you get the longest support and the longest productive use of your equipment. I'm sure I'm not alone in milking my Window-XP until VISTA comes out (even then I won't be on the bleeding edge of first buyers).
This in my opinion is a major factor in the slow down for computer manufacturers, that and the end of the ability to ramp up the Hz number. It is now very hard to convince customers they need new hardware, and in most cases they don't. It also seems to me that we haven't been keeping up with Moore's Law. When you break the Law, there's always a penalty.
All good points, but those points weren't in the article. The article was pure FUD, so that is what I responded to. Maybe you should have written the Article. Call me insane, but with my current video setup I'm really looking forward to the Blu-Ray player part. Can't back up my disks? I couldn't do that when DVD first came out either. You don't like DRM? Fine, I don't either, but you aren't going to get any HDV in non-DRM through consumer channels anytime soon. Get over it. Crackers will be along soon enough.
Uhhmmm, I'm pimped either way with constraint token with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray since my NEC has no HDMI, but MOST likely I'll have new equipment and a stand-alone cheap Blu-Ray player with HDMI by the time the token is turned on -- they have pledged no token till at least 2010
That HDMI can't be upgrade later on the Cheaper models is DOUBLY true of the XBox 360.
I don't understand why you insist the comparison MUST be made to the high-end model. The XBox 360 has accessories and you don't insist that the accessories be totaled in, HDMI amounts to an accessory that costs $100 more.
Don't get it if you don't need or want it. It's not even an option on the XBox 360 at any price. For people that want a 108OP HDMI game machine then a $600 dollar PS3 is a bargain, as an XBox 360 won't do this at any price as an add on option.
What is silly is all the negative press about how the Sony isn't worth the money when it isn't even out yet. I hoping the Cell-Processor will be as revolutionary as IBM promises. Supercomputer builders are already taking a serious look at this chip even without Double Precision Float (because it can emulate Double when needed still faster than anyone else can do double natively). At worst I will have an affordable Blu-Ray player, most likely I will have a lot more. Wait until the machine gets here to fling mud if it under performs. This article is just FUD for marketing reasons.
I use a component to VGA adapter; it only cost $45 new and seems to work great.
The component out on the PS3 may stop at 1080I though and my current adapter may not have enough bandwidth even if it did. Guess I'll find out.
Most Blu-Ray distributors have pledged not to flip the down-rez bit until 2010,
I will no doubt have a stand-alone (sub $100) player by then and an HDMI compatible TV or projector.
I bought the rig over 5 years ago used on Ebay (just over $4K). 2 summers ago I almost gave up on it. NEC dealers will no
longer service it (just past its 7 year parts guarantee), but I found someone to sell me a cheap Hi-Voltage card and I was able to revive it (so its been down once for about 3 months).
She took a lot of setup and the image is a little soft at 1980 across it you are trying to do word processing, but oddly HDTV material from my cable box looks better than anything I have seen on anything else. I use an 8' wide glass bead screen and a totally blacked out room with black fabric hangings to cut ambient down even further.
It's held its value reasonably well, but the new DLP projectors are probably better and cost about $2K. At least it has lasted long enough for really good HDTV stuff to come along. And I did have bragging rights for the last 5 years. Ever see a first person shooter on an 8-Foot Screen at 2500 pixels across? I have;-)
Sadly, I don't think it was worth my 4k investment since I've really only had HDTV to feed it for the last two years. HDTV arrived very slowly here in Champaign, Illinois. Pretty good-looking DVDs with line doubling though. Computers make awesome DVD players if you have the right setup. TV upconverting doesn't upconvert from the original discrete cosine transform matrices, and thus the image processing usually isn't anywhere near as good.
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They only compare to the High End PS3 price with its support of HDMI.
Neither of the other boxen have HDMI, so the only fair comparison would be to the $100 cheaper non-HDMI version. The more expensive PS3 also has a larger hard-drive, but even the low end one has a 20gig harddrive.
PS3 will likely be Linux compatible straight out of the box without modding. How could Slashdotters not go ape for this console?
Two less capable machines do not add up to the same value as one more powerful machine if it does what you want. The HD-DVD player was the most ludicrous example of all to throw in the article. They even envoked the Betamax comparison (when in my opinion HD-DVD will likely be the really Betamax redux). The whole thing smacked of trying to stop Sony momentum from building. This is not a pure news article, but mostly a paid for stealth ad. The thing I don't get is why Slashdot would post it as legitimate news.
Ever since the Sony root-kit episode, Slashdot seems to be gunning for Sony. I'm not happy about the root-kit stuff either, but get over it already, they're not still doing it.
A great many Slashdotters brag about their overclocked custom gaming rigs costing thousands of dollars. Too expensive for some, sure, but every consumer good is too expensive for someone. One sure way to keep the Sony price high is to keep initial sales low so the price comes down less slowly. No doubt that is the real indirect aim of this article.
I myself am looking forward to a $500 dollar blue ray player that plays games and hooks up to my 1080p NEC 1350.
Maybe this wasn't a strong enough disclaimer, but the there are religious types should indicate that I am not talking about ALL. Bigoted? Perhaps. I think my agnostic view of the world is superior to any of the World's organized religious. My common sense and experience having talked to religious people at work (and I'm talking a tech environment here) almost to a person they read great significance into random events. It seems to come part and parcel with the religious experience, especially those that interpret the Bible "literally."
You may consider it a cop out to take these factors into consideration. But it is possible to be scientifically rational and politically unwise. Why fuel any flames if you don't have to? Maybe it was unwise to fly the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, to space on Columbia on the eve of war with Iraq. A HUGE percentage of the Islamic culture took Columbia's demise to be an act of God.
If we weren't at war I would say fine, don't bother avoiding a July 4th lift if reasonably possible. The most recent news is making it look like a July 4th liftoff is unlikely anyway. BUT it is always possible political pressure will be put the bear to have a July 4th launch for reasons of National pride. This is the kind of synchronicity of events that ends in tragedy.
If we should loose Discovery in launch it seems likely it will prolong certain aspects of our current military venture (whether you
approve of that venture or not). The two shouldn't be connected, but they are because religious propagandists will make them connected. We should be surprised if our opponents in this clash of cultures would use NASA failures for propaganda purposes, the whole NASA manned space program is largely pro-American propaganda (when things go right).
Well they've fueled the Shuttle twice already, Tuesday will be the third. Thermal stress was indicted as a contributing factor in foam detaching. Everything probably would have been fine if they had launched the first time, I suspect their cloud distance tolerances are too tight these days compared to thermal stress from fuel cycling on the parts for later lift off.
I'm not saying NASA should have launched the first time, but with only a 30% chance of launch due to weather, why did they even fuel the bird up? Weather should have a least an 80%
chance window I would think think to decrease the likelihood of one fueled up scrub after another leading to excessive thermal stress on tank components.
Also while many may see July 4th as a feel-good day to launch (National pride and all that) if anything goes wrong there are religious types both Christian and Muslim that will see it as a sign validating whatever their view of the world is.
Exactly. Maybe 99% of us can claim common ancestors back to some ancestor alive in 500 BC. Go back far enough -- sure eventually it will hit 100%, but you have to go WAY back. Go back to 5000 BC maybe the figure becomes 99.9 percent. Go back another 10000 and it climbs to 99.99%. Finally if you go back before all the Polynesians, Australian Aborigines, American Aborigines left Europe and Asia and you've got a shot at 100%. Somewhere in America there is probably still some 100% pure blooded American Indian whose lineage doesn't include any European blood.
The last 500 years have probably zoomed a 90% common ancestor pool in the last 2000 years to 99% given our much greater mobility, but I find it hard to believe we are at 100% going back only 2500 years. These feel good we're-all-brother-and-sisters numbers just don't allow for all the hundreds of pockets of isolation. There are still South American populations that have only encountered modern humans in the last 50 years. As long as they have even one child between only pure bloods, then the 100% figure is unobtainable.
SETI@home essentially invented donated distributed over the internet, over a dozen other projects are benefiting from it in the form of
BOINC and the WSJ is upset because people don't donate cycles with presumed morally superior choices the WJS sees.
I have noticed an up-tic recently in attempts to kill SETI research of any kind. The reason is always "it's a waste of time." In other
words the opponents of SETI always know better that it is a fruitless search than the proponents, but they have no scientific basis for making that assertion other than that's the way it feels to them. Granted pro-SETI people similarly have little evidence that ET will be found soon -- but there are no
wasted inquiries in science. If you search and fail to find something, you have still learned something, you now have a number and you
can put some bound on a phenomenon. No one tells physicists to give up searching because they haven't found the Higgs Boson yet, or at the lower energies
they initially predicted.
Most likely a signal won't be found in the next decade or two, but I still donate my free cycles to SETI@home. I believe that
while in the short run the odds are not high, there are few other discoveries that could be so transformative as this --
and although they won't say it, this is why the opponents of SETI are so rabid to shut it down. SETI is the ugly step child of science,
it will never get the support other branches will. This is why a volunteer effort is so important. Of course if a signal is
ever found, well then step back and watch all the money and resources that will get thrown at it, then your cycles won't be needed.
Also be prepared to hear all about how many politicians where a friend of SET way back when.
WSJ suggests inertia to explain why we give cycles to search for SETI, that and the pride of placing high in the SETI work units competition.
WSJ suggests that competition is the main reason for SETI@home's success, and had another project come along first to set up as competition for
bragging rights about how many work units accomplished all the cycles
would be goin to that project instead. Rubbish. The same people that download OSS apps and care about matters scientific are the very people that care about SETI. I donate my cycles because I care about SETI, which has I have already mentioned is an unpopular science with the general public. It is seen as
an underdog by the hacker community, it appeals to their sense of adventure and wonder.
Ironically I had just posted on this subject in a new blog project
Brink with the entry
SETI: First Detection
Wow, the hypocrisy of it all.
SETI@home essentially invented donated distributed over the internet, over a dozen other projects are benefiting from it in the form of
Bionic and the WSJ is upset because people don't donate cycles with presumed morally superior choices the WJS sees.
I have noticed an up-tic recently in attempts to kill SETI research of any kind. The reason is always "it's a waste of time." In other
words the opponents of SETI always know better that it is a fruitless search, but they have no scientific basis for making that assertion other
than that's the way it feels to them. Granted pro-SETI people similarly have little evidence that ET will be found soon -- but there are no
wasted inquiries in science. If you search and fail to find something, you have still learned something, you now have a number and you
can put some bound on a phenomenon. No one tells physicists to give up searching because they haven't found the Higgs Boson yet, or at the lower energies
they initially predicted.
Most likely a signal won't be found in the next decade or two, but I still donate my free cycles to SETI@home. I believe that
while in the short run the odds are not high, there are few other discoveries that could be so transformative as this --
and although they won't say it, this is why the opponents of SETI are so rabid to shut it down. SETI is the ugly step child of science,
it will never get the support other branches will. This is why a volunteer effort is so important. Of course if a signal is
ever found, well then step back and watch all the money and resources that will get thrown at it, then your cycles won't be needed.
Also be prepared to hear all about how many politicians where a friend of SET way back when.
And now for a shameless plug of my new blog project Brink
An on going series of essays
about possible world changing advances in our future, SETI among them.
Actually this is how all law enforcement data bases work. They find places where print ridges have certain kinds of discontinuities, bifurcations etc... then store the potions of these points relative to each other. Very few database matches rely on a complete match, nor are they actually comparing actual pictures of prints, but rather how many points in common line up. Since lifting prints often distorts the print or misses some areas, exact matches are
really ever found, but the quality of the match goes up with the more points in common. I believe the standard is 5 points in common to be considered a match. A figure many feel is too low and has probably falsely identified many people -- especially when you are just trolling for matches in a database of millions, and no other evidence.
Point is, there is nothing to keep some future law enforcement under newly enacted laws from subpoena the database and converting it to troll for matches, with as mentioned before the high likelihood of false positives.
Congratulations! You are our One Millionth Customer to be accused of Homicide!
You beat me to Googling this earlier attempt,
but what you get from actually RTFA is that they metion this 1979 atempt and it involed
none other than Burt Ratan! (SpaceShip One fame)
The 1979 attempt was hard and unintuitive to control, but the drone attempt will not
rely on ingrained pilot intincts and automatically control the pitch over that happens when say you nose the plane up.
Many have chosen to assume I am for "the unwashed masses" to have religion, but the old Soviet Union with an atheistic model faired no better on the morality front. It is probably the case Religion just has NO predictive value on adhering to cultural mores.
I would submit that agnostics and atheists on average are more free thinkers and have a higher average IQ and thus find better work and find themselves in better financial circumstances; poverty being the largest predictor for crime and other anti-social or maladaptive behaviors.
It always seems to the older generation the current one is going to hell in a hand-basket. Is it really true? What is really moral? As I said, I have no firm answers for this. It is likely that society is changing due to political climate and due to technology, those accustomed to getting by in the old way see the changes in a negative light.
BTW too bad you appear to be an A.C., my words are probably not going to lead to an interesting thread.
I can't help but wonder what kind of precedent this sets for activities like spamming. Essentially the courts are saying if it is easy to do, even if clearly not the desire of those seeking privacy to not be invaded by you -- go ahead anyway. Lots of cool things are unworkable on the internet because people don't respect clearly posted guidelines for activities, this is just one more ruling making it harder for online communities to self-govern.
Sadly if the ruling went the other way, I could see bad outcomes as well. Still Direct TV seems more than a little slimy in ignoring the request. Perhaps their anti-social behavior should be more widely disseminated -- say by some well read online community of some sort, perhaps one that provides news to the technically inclined or what the general public calls geeks.
Being married to a Chinese national and having just come back from China I'll weigh in with a few observations. Social obligation is considered very high, but not in a legal sense. The cultural revolution of the seventies and even the Communist party of today placed/places a high value on public self recrimination as a means to redemption. Pointing out the flaws in others has been a way of deflecting unwanted attention to ones self in China for decades. I won't go into details about
the personal lives of some of my wife's friends, but based on what she tells me adultery and divorce are becoming as common in China as they are in America. Violent crime may be much lower but all other forms of crime abound.
This new internet activism is probably a reaction to the commonly held belief that social mores are going to hell in a hand basket. My wife, an agnostic like myself, wonders if there is some value in most people having Religion in order to hold
the more selfish, destructive behaviors in check. It would sadden me if this is the case, but as the Chinese government lessens its control of its citizenry and with the majority having no clear religion, there has been a corresponding rise in what most consider immoral behavior, and thus the current backlash.
Now whether the new behavior is truly immoral is a separate question, and as an agnostic one I have no firm answer for.
WOW, two mistakes in one Post (and still got a 5). "Passage to India" shot in 35mm. I did a quick search when I watched it because the quality was so high. I had assumed the 70mm refered to shot in, but in this case it was only shown in 70mm. Still the HD transfer probably was from one of these 70mm prints. Now I'm really curious what IMAX or true 70mm would look like in HD, I'm pretty sure my comment about graininess is still valid as to muddying final HDV.
Also wrong about IMAX 60fps. It comes in 24 and 48 and not much in 48fps, which is labled IMAX-HD.
Still I think the industry should evolve towards a better frame rate instead of going for effective mega-pixels. To really improve resolution takes MUCH more film. Increasing fps to 60fps will only cost 2.5x as much film. Film's days are numbered anyway, 60fps is probably a physical strain on a film-train anyway. But 60fps will be child's play for the near futures HDV cams. Since compression gets better with less change between frames, digital doesn't even have to take twice as much space for 60fps vs 30fps, maybe something like 1.5.
IMAX is shot at 60fps. This is what gives it it's hyper-realistic look.
60fps is the main reason for IMAX, though it also uses 70mm film, and this is scrolling sideways, not
up and down like regular film -- IMAX burns through film stock at a ferocious rate.
Now here is the thing... IMAX must make enough money to stay in business. So FILM cost isn't the huge factor in shooting movies that Hollywood would lead you to believe. Hollywood just likes to shave costs wherever they can, and since most Ciniplexes can't even get the focus right, it just won't matter in 90% of the venues they play in weather it was shot in 35mm or 70mm. Ironically HDTV may motivate Hollywood to rethink this policy or embrace some IMAX like format so as to be able to compete on quality with HDTV, that and to look good on the convert to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whatever the HDV medium is.
I think the PS3 is coming out at just the right time and price point for Sony. HDTVs are flying off the shelves now, this being the first year HDTV sales exceed analog TV. The point of Blu-Ray in the very near future will be as a strong competitor to going to the Movie Theater. In fact if Blu-Ray truly supports 1080P and not just 1080P upconverted from 24fps but full-blown 60fps then in many/most cases the viewing experience will be far better than your average Ciniplex.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. If Sony really wants to get early adopters on board they should try to get the IMAX catalog converted to 60fps 1080P as quickly as possible, that and start shooting new movies in 60fps in an IMAX-lite version -- it would be fairly easy to adapt 24fps cinema equipment to 60fps. Pans would loose their jitter, double vision look. Action sequences would seem more realistic.
Now it maybe that some future hyper-internet will support HDTV on demand, but for the next 5 years Blu-Ray will offer the best cheapest delivery system despite what Bill Gates has to say on the subject -- that and Hollywood's reluctance to distribute on anything other than a physical medium.
One last note about visual quality, I recently watched "Passage to India" (shot in 70mm) in HDTV. The quality was glorious. This because the graininess of standard 35mm confuses HD compression and robs the final mpeg of the resolution it is really capable of. Films shot either direct to HD, with HD-video cameras, or converted from 70mm prints really show the real potential image clarity of HD. Hollywood will soon have to start factoring image quality of HD viewing into account when shooting new content.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a better link from a Chinese news source Super-heated fusion experiment to reach 100 million degrees
Evidently this isn't just aiming to achieve "break-even" but an actual "fusion burn" lasting 1000 seconds or approximately 16 minutes. I can't help but wonder that if they reach this goal whether it will massively accelerate the arrival of commercial fusion energy. The difference between break-even and burn is that break-even merely releases more energy than input, whereas burn requires self sustained reaction without additional input of energy.
Many people think controlled fusion is "undoable" so such a demonstration would go a long way towards getting rid of the "30 years away and always will be" assumption.
We only have to wait until Mid-August to find out.
Actually as a computer programmer I lay most of the blame on the bad design of the scanning systems. The scanner in one location the scale in another, often far flung, location, the credit card swipe in still another location, even down below eyesight. Worse yet as with many ATMs machines there are TOO MANY BUTTONS for what should be only ONE OPTION enter PIN and PAY! Not only are there too many buttons, but the onscreen instructions often are worded differently than the keys you have to press. "PRESS YES" out of the extra 10 buttons only an "OK" seems to map to "YES." It may seem obvious to you that OK is YES, but you have to read each key to eliminate the possibility that YES is an Option, this takes time, not just to read, but to double check you are doing it correctly. I don't know how many stores I have shopped at that put those kindergarten silver or gold stars by the keys, then verbally tell you to ignore the instructions and hit the "GOLD STAR". Often the screen will have option layout that would map to 4 function keys, but the keypad doesn't really have function keys in that location. Add to this that at auto-checkouts there's usually no one there to assist you, you usually have to figure this all out on your own. It is a money transaction, so if you are like me with an unfamiliar interface, you double, triple, quadruple check what you are doing.
BUT worst of all, instead of one crappy layout system used by all stores, THEY ALL SUCK, BUT DIFFERENTLY. Name me one chain that has these machines well made? In time, someone will come up with a decent layout and everyone will adopt it and it will seem silly we had these problems but we're not there yet.
HERE's an idea, put stick on scan labels by all the veggies so once bagged they can just be weighed and scanned instead of having to key in the code by HAND -- WTF???. Make the labels big with not just the code but large with print of what the veggie is so people aren't too tempted to cheat the system. A computer voice should also echo the entry (I believe most systems already do this).
Many systems I have seen seem cobbled together from unrelated discrete components -- THIS WILL NOT DO.
I WORK IN SQA AND I WOULD NEVER SIGN OFF ON THIS SHIT! Forgive my language, but its us, the IT professionals to blame here -- NOT EVERYDAY FOLK who
You can just make out the begin of what looks like the word "chair"
Its all fun and games until someone puts a Planaria's eye out!
I'm sure you'll get modded up. No surprise that high oil prices in the late 70s early 80s had these same kinds of research projects. They probably floundered in the 90s when prices came down and now someone is blowing the dust off the old plans.
I actually proposed something similar for providing and shipping desalinated water in my blog with Now All I Need Is A Giant Baggie..."just a week ago.
"I'd expect nothing less from a dumb swede"
Ha, ha, never heard that one before. Boy really proves your point.
Serisously, though you insist the comparison be made with HDMI when down-rezing will only be down on Blu-Ray movies. Not games, and then not till 2010. How is the $500 box not the more valid comparison? I still don't get why PS3 detractors are so shrill about not needing HDMI, not needing Blu-Ray, then insisting that the high end model is that one that must be compared when the low end model still has more features than the XBox 360.
Truth is you just want the price difference to be as high as possible to justify your choice if other than Sony for whatever reasons (valid or not) because you don't like Sony.
My 3 year old 3ghz box is fast enough and capable enough. I'm sure I'll get new equipment in the future sometime, but it will be after VISTA comes out.
You may have reservations about adopting VISTA, but when you buy equipment a few months after major OS releases you get the longest support and the longest productive use of your equipment. I'm sure I'm not alone in milking my Window-XP until VISTA comes out (even then I won't be on the bleeding edge of first buyers).
This in my opinion is a major factor in the slow down for computer manufacturers, that and the end of the ability to ramp up the Hz number. It is now very hard to convince customers they need new hardware, and in most cases they don't. It also seems to me that we haven't been keeping up with Moore's Law. When you break the Law, there's always a penalty.
All good points, but those points weren't in the article. The article was pure FUD, so that is what I responded to. Maybe you should have written the Article. Call me insane, but with my current video setup I'm really looking forward to the Blu-Ray player part. Can't back up my disks? I couldn't do that when DVD first came out either. You don't like DRM? Fine, I don't either, but you aren't going to get any HDV in non-DRM through consumer channels anytime soon. Get over it. Crackers will be along soon enough.
Uhhmmm, I'm pimped either way with constraint token with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray since my NEC has no HDMI, but MOST likely I'll have new equipment and a stand-alone cheap Blu-Ray player with HDMI by the time the token is turned on -- they have pledged no token till at least 2010
That HDMI can't be upgrade later on the Cheaper models is DOUBLY true of the XBox 360. I don't understand why you insist the comparison MUST be made to the high-end model. The XBox 360 has accessories and you don't insist that the accessories be totaled in, HDMI amounts to an accessory that costs $100 more. Don't get it if you don't need or want it. It's not even an option on the XBox 360 at any price. For people that want a 108OP HDMI game machine then a $600 dollar PS3 is a bargain, as an XBox 360 won't do this at any price as an add on option.
What is silly is all the negative press about how the Sony isn't worth the money when it isn't even out yet. I hoping the Cell-Processor will be as revolutionary as IBM promises. Supercomputer builders are already taking a serious look at this chip even without Double Precision Float (because it can emulate Double when needed still faster than anyone else can do double natively). At worst I will have an affordable Blu-Ray player, most likely I will have a lot more. Wait until the machine gets here to fling mud if it under performs. This article is just FUD for marketing reasons.
I use a component to VGA adapter; it only cost $45 new and seems to work great. The component out on the PS3 may stop at 1080I though and my current adapter may not have enough bandwidth even if it did. Guess I'll find out.
;-)
Most Blu-Ray distributors have pledged not to flip the down-rez bit until 2010, I will no doubt have a stand-alone (sub $100) player by then and an HDMI compatible TV or projector.
I bought the rig over 5 years ago used on Ebay (just over $4K). 2 summers ago I almost gave up on it. NEC dealers will no longer service it (just past its 7 year parts guarantee), but I found someone to sell me a cheap Hi-Voltage card and I was able to revive it (so its been down once for about 3 months). She took a lot of setup and the image is a little soft at 1980 across it you are trying to do word processing, but oddly HDTV material from my cable box looks better than anything I have seen on anything else. I use an 8' wide glass bead screen and a totally blacked out room with black fabric hangings to cut ambient down even further.
It's held its value reasonably well, but the new DLP projectors are probably better and cost about $2K. At least it has lasted long enough for really good HDTV stuff to come along. And I did have bragging rights for the last 5 years. Ever see a first person shooter on an 8-Foot Screen at 2500 pixels across? I have
Sadly, I don't think it was worth my 4k investment since I've really only had HDTV to feed it for the last two years. HDTV arrived very slowly here in Champaign, Illinois. Pretty good-looking DVDs with line doubling though. Computers make awesome DVD players if you have the right setup. TV upconverting doesn't upconvert from the original discrete cosine transform matrices, and thus the image processing usually isn't anywhere near as good. `
They only compare to the High End PS3 price with its support of HDMI.
Neither of the other boxen have HDMI, so the only fair comparison would be to the $100 cheaper non-HDMI version. The more expensive PS3 also has a larger hard-drive, but even the low end one has a 20gig harddrive.
PS3 will likely be Linux compatible straight out of the box without modding. How could Slashdotters not go ape for this console?
Two less capable machines do not add up to the same value as one more powerful machine if it does what you want. The HD-DVD player was the most ludicrous example of all to throw in the article. They even envoked the Betamax comparison (when in my opinion HD-DVD will likely be the really Betamax redux). The whole thing smacked of trying to stop Sony momentum from building. This is not a pure news article, but mostly a paid for stealth ad. The thing I don't get is why Slashdot would post it as legitimate news.
Ever since the Sony root-kit episode, Slashdot seems to be gunning for Sony. I'm not happy about the root-kit stuff either, but get over it already, they're not still doing it.
A great many Slashdotters brag about their overclocked custom gaming rigs costing thousands of dollars. Too expensive for some, sure, but every consumer good is too expensive for someone. One sure way to keep the Sony price high is to keep initial sales low so the price comes down less slowly. No doubt that is the real indirect aim of this article.
I myself am looking forward to a $500 dollar blue ray player that plays games and hooks up to my 1080p NEC 1350.
Maybe this wasn't a strong enough disclaimer, but the there are religious types should indicate that I am not talking about ALL. Bigoted? Perhaps. I think my agnostic view of the world is superior to any of the World's organized religious. My common sense and experience having talked to religious people at work (and I'm talking a tech environment here) almost to a person they read great significance into random events. It seems to come part and parcel with the religious experience, especially those that interpret the Bible "literally."
You may consider it a cop out to take these factors into consideration. But it is possible to be scientifically rational and politically unwise. Why fuel any flames if you don't have to? Maybe it was unwise to fly the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, to space on Columbia on the eve of war with Iraq. A HUGE percentage of the Islamic culture took Columbia's demise to be an act of God.
If we weren't at war I would say fine, don't bother avoiding a July 4th lift if reasonably possible. The most recent news is making it look like a July 4th liftoff is unlikely anyway. BUT it is always possible political pressure will be put the bear to have a July 4th launch for reasons of National pride. This is the kind of synchronicity of events that ends in tragedy.
If we should loose Discovery in launch it seems likely it will prolong certain aspects of our current military venture (whether you approve of that venture or not). The two shouldn't be connected, but they are because religious propagandists will make them connected. We should be surprised if our opponents in this clash of cultures would use NASA failures for propaganda purposes, the whole NASA manned space program is largely pro-American propaganda (when things go right).
Well they've fueled the Shuttle twice already, Tuesday will be the third. Thermal stress was indicted as a contributing factor in foam detaching. Everything probably would have been fine if they had launched the first time, I suspect their cloud distance tolerances are too tight these days compared to thermal stress from fuel cycling on the parts for later lift off.
I'm not saying NASA should have launched the first time, but with only a 30% chance of launch due to weather, why did they even fuel the bird up? Weather should have a least an 80% chance window I would think think to decrease the likelihood of one fueled up scrub after another leading to excessive thermal stress on tank components.
Also while many may see July 4th as a feel-good day to launch (National pride and all that) if anything goes wrong there are religious types both Christian and Muslim that will see it as a sign validating whatever their view of the world is.
Exactly. Maybe 99% of us can claim common ancestors back to some ancestor alive in 500 BC. Go back far enough -- sure eventually it will hit 100%, but you have to go WAY back. Go back to 5000 BC maybe the figure becomes 99.9 percent. Go back another 10000 and it climbs to 99.99%. Finally if you go back before all the Polynesians, Australian Aborigines, American Aborigines left Europe and Asia and you've got a shot at 100%. Somewhere in America there is probably still some 100% pure blooded American Indian whose lineage doesn't include any European blood.
The last 500 years have probably zoomed a 90% common ancestor pool in the last 2000 years to 99% given our much greater mobility, but I find it hard to believe we are at 100% going back only 2500 years. These feel good we're-all-brother-and-sisters numbers just don't allow for all the hundreds of pockets of isolation. There are still South American populations that have only encountered modern humans in the last 50 years. As long as they have even one child between only pure bloods, then the 100% figure is unobtainable.
SETI@home essentially invented donated distributed over the internet, over a dozen other projects are benefiting from it in the form of BOINC and the WSJ is upset because people don't donate cycles with presumed morally superior choices the WJS sees. I have noticed an up-tic recently in attempts to kill SETI research of any kind. The reason is always "it's a waste of time." In other words the opponents of SETI always know better that it is a fruitless search than the proponents, but they have no scientific basis for making that assertion other than that's the way it feels to them. Granted pro-SETI people similarly have little evidence that ET will be found soon -- but there are no wasted inquiries in science. If you search and fail to find something, you have still learned something, you now have a number and you can put some bound on a phenomenon. No one tells physicists to give up searching because they haven't found the Higgs Boson yet, or at the lower energies they initially predicted.
Most likely a signal won't be found in the next decade or two, but I still donate my free cycles to SETI@home. I believe that while in the short run the odds are not high, there are few other discoveries that could be so transformative as this -- and although they won't say it, this is why the opponents of SETI are so rabid to shut it down. SETI is the ugly step child of science, it will never get the support other branches will. This is why a volunteer effort is so important. Of course if a signal is ever found, well then step back and watch all the money and resources that will get thrown at it, then your cycles won't be needed. Also be prepared to hear all about how many politicians where a friend of SET way back when.
WSJ suggests inertia to explain why we give cycles to search for SETI, that and the pride of placing high in the SETI work units competition. WSJ suggests that competition is the main reason for SETI@home's success, and had another project come along first to set up as competition for bragging rights about how many work units accomplished all the cycles would be goin to that project instead. Rubbish. The same people that download OSS apps and care about matters scientific are the very people that care about SETI. I donate my cycles because I care about SETI, which has I have already mentioned is an unpopular science with the general public. It is seen as an underdog by the hacker community, it appeals to their sense of adventure and wonder.
Ironically I had just posted on this subject in a new blog project Brink with the entry SETI: First Detection
Wow, the hypocrisy of it all. SETI@home essentially invented donated distributed over the internet, over a dozen other projects are benefiting from it in the form of Bionic and the WSJ is upset because people don't donate cycles with presumed morally superior choices the WJS sees. I have noticed an up-tic recently in attempts to kill SETI research of any kind. The reason is always "it's a waste of time." In other words the opponents of SETI always know better that it is a fruitless search, but they have no scientific basis for making that assertion other than that's the way it feels to them. Granted pro-SETI people similarly have little evidence that ET will be found soon -- but there are no wasted inquiries in science. If you search and fail to find something, you have still learned something, you now have a number and you can put some bound on a phenomenon. No one tells physicists to give up searching because they haven't found the Higgs Boson yet, or at the lower energies they initially predicted.
Most likely a signal won't be found in the next decade or two, but I still donate my free cycles to SETI@home. I believe that while in the short run the odds are not high, there are few other discoveries that could be so transformative as this -- and although they won't say it, this is why the opponents of SETI are so rabid to shut it down. SETI is the ugly step child of science, it will never get the support other branches will. This is why a volunteer effort is so important. Of course if a signal is ever found, well then step back and watch all the money and resources that will get thrown at it, then your cycles won't be needed. Also be prepared to hear all about how many politicians where a friend of SET way back when.
And now for a shameless plug of my new blog project Brink
An on going series of essays about possible world changing advances in our future, SETI among them.
Actually this is how all law enforcement data bases work. They find places where print ridges have certain kinds of discontinuities, bifurcations etc... then store the potions of these points relative to each other. Very few database matches rely on a complete match, nor are they actually comparing actual pictures of prints, but rather how many points in common line up. Since lifting prints often distorts the print or misses some areas, exact matches are really ever found, but the quality of the match goes up with the more points in common. I believe the standard is 5 points in common to be considered a match. A figure many feel is too low and has probably falsely identified many people -- especially when you are just trolling for matches in a database of millions, and no other evidence.
Point is, there is nothing to keep some future law enforcement under newly enacted laws from subpoena the database and converting it to troll for matches, with as mentioned before the high likelihood of false positives.
Congratulations! You are our One Millionth Customer to be accused of Homicide!
You beat me to Googling this earlier attempt, but what you get from actually RTFA is that they metion this 1979 atempt and it involed none other than Burt Ratan! (SpaceShip One fame)
The 1979 attempt was hard and unintuitive to control, but the drone attempt will not rely on ingrained pilot intincts and automatically control the pitch over that happens when say you nose the plane up.
Gives whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"
Many have chosen to assume I am for "the unwashed masses" to have religion, but the old Soviet Union with an atheistic model faired no better on the morality front. It is probably the case Religion just has NO predictive value on adhering to cultural mores.
I would submit that agnostics and atheists on average are more free thinkers and have a higher average IQ and thus find better work and find themselves in better financial circumstances; poverty being the largest predictor for crime and other anti-social or maladaptive behaviors.
It always seems to the older generation the current one is going to hell in a hand-basket. Is it really true? What is really moral? As I said, I have no firm answers for this. It is likely that society is changing due to political climate and due to technology, those accustomed to getting by in the old way see the changes in a negative light.
BTW too bad you appear to be an A.C., my words are probably not going to lead to an interesting thread.
I can't help but wonder what kind of precedent this sets for activities like spamming. Essentially the courts are saying if it is easy to do, even if clearly not the desire of those seeking privacy to not be invaded by you -- go ahead anyway. Lots of cool things are unworkable on the internet because people don't respect clearly posted guidelines for activities, this is just one more ruling making it harder for online communities to self-govern.
Sadly if the ruling went the other way, I could see bad outcomes as well. Still Direct TV seems more than a little slimy in ignoring the request. Perhaps their anti-social behavior should be more widely disseminated -- say by some well read online community of some sort, perhaps one that provides news to the technically inclined or what the general public calls geeks.
Being married to a Chinese national and having just come back from China I'll weigh in with a few observations. Social obligation is considered very high, but not in a legal sense. The cultural revolution of the seventies and even the Communist party of today placed/places a high value on public self recrimination as a means to redemption. Pointing out the flaws in others has been a way of deflecting unwanted attention to ones self in China for decades. I won't go into details about the personal lives of some of my wife's friends, but based on what she tells me adultery and divorce are becoming as common in China as they are in America. Violent crime may be much lower but all other forms of crime abound.
This new internet activism is probably a reaction to the commonly held belief that social mores are going to hell in a hand basket. My wife, an agnostic like myself, wonders if there is some value in most people having Religion in order to hold the more selfish, destructive behaviors in check. It would sadden me if this is the case, but as the Chinese government lessens its control of its citizenry and with the majority having no clear religion, there has been a corresponding rise in what most consider immoral behavior, and thus the current backlash.
Now whether the new behavior is truly immoral is a separate question, and as an agnostic one I have no firm answer for.
WOW, two mistakes in one Post (and still got a 5). "Passage to India" shot in 35mm. I did a quick search when I watched it because the quality was so high. I had assumed the 70mm refered to shot in, but in this case it was only shown in 70mm. Still the HD transfer probably was from one of these 70mm prints. Now I'm really curious what IMAX or true 70mm would look like in HD, I'm pretty sure my comment about graininess is still valid as to muddying final HDV.
Also wrong about IMAX 60fps. It comes in 24 and 48 and not much in 48fps, which is labled IMAX-HD.
Still I think the industry should evolve towards a better frame rate instead of going for effective mega-pixels. To really improve resolution takes MUCH more film. Increasing fps to 60fps will only cost 2.5x as much film. Film's days are numbered anyway, 60fps is probably a physical strain on a film-train anyway. But 60fps will be child's play for the near futures HDV cams. Since compression gets better with less change between frames, digital doesn't even have to take twice as much space for 60fps vs 30fps, maybe something like 1.5.
IMAX is shot at 60fps. This is what gives it it's hyper-realistic look. 60fps is the main reason for IMAX, though it also uses 70mm film, and this is scrolling sideways, not up and down like regular film -- IMAX burns through film stock at a ferocious rate.
Now here is the thing... IMAX must make enough money to stay in business. So FILM cost isn't the huge factor in shooting movies that Hollywood would lead you to believe. Hollywood just likes to shave costs wherever they can, and since most Ciniplexes can't even get the focus right, it just won't matter in 90% of the venues they play in weather it was shot in 35mm or 70mm. Ironically HDTV may motivate Hollywood to rethink this policy or embrace some IMAX like format so as to be able to compete on quality with HDTV, that and to look good on the convert to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whatever the HDV medium is.
I think the PS3 is coming out at just the right time and price point for Sony. HDTVs are flying off the shelves now, this being the first year HDTV sales exceed analog TV. The point of Blu-Ray in the very near future will be as a strong competitor to going to the Movie Theater. In fact if Blu-Ray truly supports 1080P and not just 1080P upconverted from 24fps but full-blown 60fps then in many/most cases the viewing experience will be far better than your average Ciniplex.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. If Sony really wants to get early adopters on board they should try to get the IMAX catalog converted to 60fps 1080P as quickly as possible, that and start shooting new movies in 60fps in an IMAX-lite version -- it would be fairly easy to adapt 24fps cinema equipment to 60fps. Pans would loose their jitter, double vision look. Action sequences would seem more realistic.
Now it maybe that some future hyper-internet will support HDTV on demand, but for the next 5 years Blu-Ray will offer the best cheapest delivery system despite what Bill Gates has to say on the subject -- that and Hollywood's reluctance to distribute on anything other than a physical medium.
One last note about visual quality, I recently watched "Passage to India" (shot in 70mm) in HDTV. The quality was glorious. This because the graininess of standard 35mm confuses HD compression and robs the final mpeg of the resolution it is really capable of. Films shot either direct to HD, with HD-video cameras, or converted from 70mm prints really show the real potential image clarity of HD. Hollywood will soon have to start factoring image quality of HD viewing into account when shooting new content.