So they complain. It's not like they can just only stock movies without regional encoding -- the shelves would be empty.
I agree the movie distributers are only hurting themselves with regional encoding, but it hardly takes Busterbuster to point out that pirating florishes because of this policy. At this point, they wan't more control not less, and use the exisitance of rampant piracy to gain political support for more draconian DRM.
Re:Aerospace analysts are always too optimistic
on
The Future of Flight
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I have to agree to a large degree with this poster. Aviation followed a very exciting first 70 years, very similar to what we are now see in the personal computer industry. The last thirty have shown it to be a fairly mature technology. The 747 was designed in the late 60's and is nowhere near the end of its life cycle. The Airbus 380 has not yet arrived, and will still have to prove its reliability and economy of operation. Even so, the 380 has a familiar look, and while large, is hardly radical. The fasted plane ever publically acknowledged, the SR-71 blackbird, was also designed in the 60's.
Security and speed of boarding become more important in the airline equation than ever before. Marginal increases in speed, do little to improve the overall perception of the flying experience. Radical changes in speed, while exciting to contemplate, will require decades of testing before being considered safe enough for commercial adoption.
Pilotless craft might make sense for small planes where the pilot's pay is a huge fraction of the total transportation cost, but will take much longer to be adopted in 200+ passenger craft, even if the pilot is largely redundant.
That all said, Flying Wings is where I see the future of flight going. That and computer assisted small jump craft of various types. See this recent Popular Science article on flight. There is an expression in military circles when it come to evaluating new aircraft: "looks right, flies right." Looking at the envisioned commercial passenger flying wing concepts in the Popular Science article, one can't help but feel this aircraft has the right shape. Kudos also to whomever created the pictures in the magazine, because at first look, you would swear these beautiful behemoths are already lifting off from tarmacs in Tokyo.
Rather than obsess on airspeed, I think our focus should be on making the trip to the airport fast and easy, and of course the boarding fast and easy. Imaging a airport where it was more like a trip to the local cineplex. You park your car close to the terminal minutes before your flight. The car is moved inexpensively for you to a storage lot (rather than park in the hinter lands and wait for a bus). Or better yet, you have had a quick comfortable ride (mag-lift or not) from a city center, directly to your terminal. You are a frequent traveler, so you have undergone a rigorous pre-screening procedure once a year, and can now be biometrically scanned in quickly for a hassle free entry. Like first class seating, biometric priority boarding could be a real money maker for the airlines. Once on board the flying wing, space is not as much a factor as in tube based airplane designs. Weight is the limiting criteria on the 800-1500 seat flying city, not space, so everyone has space to stretch out, and get comfortable. Even reclining to a complete sleep position, to just sleep through a long trip, very much like the golden age of rail. Personal video screens for each passenger will be considered a must, and you will have a screening choice of dozens of first run movies at a cost similar to seeing it in the theater. Your screen will also allow web-browsing, and by the time you update your journal on/. , and post a few comments, it's time to deplane.
Making airplane fuels more environmentally friendly should also be a priority this century. A lot of fuel is used on take off, so how about mag catapult launch? Perhaps planes that use microwave beam power; using conventional fuels only to get airborne, or for emergencies. The rest of the trip a series of boasts from microwave beam boast areas. Ah, but I'm getting decades ahead of myself, and the crystal ball always grows murky 10+ years out.
I for one didn't find the sex all the gratuitous, but then again maybe I like gratuitous
sex.
More to the point, in the end you realize all the sex hungry characters all turned out to be Cylon
(with the unmasking of one the fighter pilots as an undetected Cylon).
So the Cylons want to both destroy us and to be like us.
Or perhaps Cylons confuse sexual release with true emotion and feeling.
I especially like the fact the Baltar is not irredeemably evil, but complex, and for now
is casting his lot with humanity.
Lots of things were once luxury items, like land-line phones for instance. But society changes, and what is considered a luxury starts to become a necessity. Also for those of us with cell phones, we begin to rely on them once we have them. We don't wait at home if we are expecting an important phone call, but don't know exactly when it will be coming. I guess people that have loved ones that are sick, and await news should never venture from home or hospital. Granted cell phones allow us to make bad choices at times, or be inconsiderate, but I think the good they allow far out ways the bad.
A I stated in another reply, I think the FCC should allocate a courtesy zone signal, but not jamming.
Wow, do you want all doctors-on-call to be jammed while you enjoy your movie without a beep to interrupt it. Guess you must go to theaters that don't have other more annoying distractions like noisy kids that parents can't keep quite.
Seriously, reception with cell phones is bad enough without adding totally dead zones on purpose, and of course that jamming won't limit itself to the intended zone, but add unpredictably to the sea of electromagnetic noise around.
I would support the FCC creating a courtesy zone signal on some approved EM band, that causes your phone to shut off, or switch to vibrate, depending on what you set it to.
As for jamming cell phones in schools, why not just a rule no cell phones in schools without prior approval, those exceptions being for children with disabilities, or with parents that are disabled, and may require more communication to make connections, or deal with emergencies? Once again blanket jamming will not discriminate between those with legitimate needs to communicate and those that don't.
Anyway, I'm not exagerating, and I live in a relatively urban area about 2 hours from Chicago. Champaign Illinois to be precise. You seem to be lucky enough to live in a good coverage area, but I would be suspicious of your 90% figure for true, easily recieved HD, but I only have my one data point as experience.
The antenna mentioned is a Channel Master 8 bow, but I am using it indoors in an apartment. Only ABC has any HD programming yet here (check titantv.com for the 61820 area code).
Finally, my equipment is not compatible with what local cable offers (and they have no local or network channels in digital). I could get dish, and I am strongly cosidering that, but I still have apartment issues to deal with. If I knew I could time shift HBO or Showtime with DISH, this would definitely push me to get a system.
THANK GOD FOR DVD, else I might go Insane
(glorious on a 10' diagonal Front Projection Quad XGA projection system).
So now seems like an appropriate time to tell you how the story came out. I recently bought a MyHD 120 card, and am very happy with the card (I plan on buying a couple more). However I can only get one Digital channel so far, and they're not broadcasting true HD yet. Digital does look nice, very nice, DVD nice, but still isn't HD. There is one channel in the area broadcasting HD, but I can't pull it in, even though I just bought a 3 foot square UHF antenna to do so. There are supposed to be 8 channels in my area broadcasting Digital, and I can only get one. And only one of the 8 are broadcasting HD (which I can't get as mentioned), and then for only about half of prime time hours. I'm told by sales people that the stations are only broadcasting currently at half power, but I have no way to confirm this. Even the one channel that comes in strong (full meter), suffers occasional complete drops, very much like early cell phone use. While the HD picture is probably going to be glorious (and digital is already very good), they really fell down on the job when it came to the carrier signal, and I think it safe to say VSB was an extremely poor choice. People are use to a signal fading in and out on analog, but still be viewable (you can still follow the story or hear the audio), when a sizable portion have digital, and find they loose signal completely from time to time, well there will be hell to pay. The FCC has quite the mess on its hands.
BTW, when the one channel I do get is not in primetime, I switch to the analog sister station. The upconvert of local programing is like a 56k streaming video. Painful to watch.
Ironically as a child I use to wonder: if I were mentally retarded, would I be smart enough to know I was mentally retarded?
Since I have several +5 postings on Slashdot, I'm going to guess I'm not a "moron."
What evidence to you have to the contrary for yourself?
With the exception of Crop Circles and Homeopathy, I'm willing to entertain changes in my cuckoo scale assertions with humility and grace, so I'm guessing one of these two is a sacred cow for you, most likely crop circles, since your belligerent attitude is the same I have seen over and over from crop circle advocates over at Space.com.
Here is another hard held belief of mine that will no doubt infuriate you: the things that get done in life, are done by people like myself who think critically about what is true in the world and act accordingly, and are not side tracked by fantasy and wishful thinking. This is not to say one should not have fantasies, or wistful thoughts, nor that nature never throws us a curve ball, but if you never rule out the majority of red herrings and dead ends, you'll never get anything done, or make any real discoveries.
Surely he could have found one or two to fit the high end of the scale.
How about crop circles by electromagnetic fields?
Trust me, you can't reason with the pro crop circle camp, I've debated with them over at Space.com
Some other over looked -- way out ideas.
No Anti-Gravity Speculation?
The Anti-Gravity by Spinning Super-Conductor: Seems to be clocking in at 3 cuckoos by my estimate
However
Gravity Wave Detection and coupling to Electromagnetic Fields: a 1 cuckoo currently, but could go higher or lower in the near future with new experiments.
Multiple Universes: I'd give this a zero, but experimental confirmation is going to be a real bitch.
Dark Mater: a zero cuckoo for sure, but we haven't really seen the damn stuff yet.
Brane Collision origin of the universe: 1 to 2 cuckoos, but could gain respectability. Less violent than Big Bang, less inflation, but still an abrupt origin in the 10-20 Billion Year range.
String Theory: a zero cuckoo. It's hard to bet against a theory that just keeps changing, refining, and redefining itself. In the end String Theory will probably be the GUT, but by then will probably have no strings:-)
Underlining process to Universe are computational: Main premis to Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science." I like Stephen, and even use to work for him, but he has a long way to go before being able to claim a truly "New Kind of Science." I'd say 1 cuckoo.
Cold Fusion: I'd give it 2 cuckoos (these guys just won't go away)
Homeopathic Medicine: I'd give this one a 5 on the 4 cuckoo scale.
MOND Modified Newtonian Dynamics: 1 cuckoo probably, but could really upset the apple cart in physics. Has even had write ups in Scientific American see Where's the Dark Matter?
These are just a few off the top of my head, I look forward to seeing some other Slashdotters lists.
BTW WHO THE HELL BROKE top500.org!?!?
This site used to be easy to use and informative, now it
is a banner add hell, that obscures the info you used to be able to get to easily,
with many broken links and apologies for works in progress.
Anyway I digress, the point is that in 1993
the fastest computer was the TMC at Los Alamos with GigaFlops ratings of
59.7 Rmax 131.0 Rpeak
My Dell XPS today would rate in the top half of fastest machines in the world for 1993 if I'm reading the stats right
with just over a GigaFlop of power.
Todays fastest machine is Japan's Earth Simulator rated at
35860 Rmax 40960 Rpeak
If we define a super computer as the ability to get in the top500
then 245.1 Rmax 384.0 are the numbers that indicate your machine would be a super computer by 2003 standards.
Methinks you exaggerate. My coverage here is excellent (sprint).
Data stays on the phone until it reliably off loads to the net. You may loose access to some apps when in a dead area, but no data loss.
Of course your real complaint is performance. Well you can't have it all. If a hundred dollar smart phone does everthing a 500 hundred PDA does, then you have to decide if the service glitches are so terrible, it's worth the 400 dollar difference. And as mentioned already, no syncing up your PDA, and all your buddies back at the office get all your data in real time.
Put the Brains at the Phone Exchange
on
Death of the PDA?
·
· Score: 1
A smart-phone that doubles as a PDA, doesn't have to has smart as a PDA. It just has to be able to emulate a PDA, or rather be a terminal for the PDA software that's at the phone exchange. Now you don't even have to sync your info up, just keep all your data on some internet server. Granted the phone has to have some smarts, and do some functions on its own, but anything complicated you keep on the server side. Much safer from data loss as well. Granted you want to be in a good coverage area, but that is getting to be less and less a problem these days.
New improved apps appear by magic with no
change to your dumb-smart-phone, with software
upgrades at the main office.
The phone is cheep, and the semi-expensive server
with all the cool software, gets shared between hundreds if not tens of thousands of users.
It really only needs to be a stripped down web browser.
Don't feel sorry for this 12 year old. I'm sure people will be sending money to this family on the margins soon, probably much more than $2000. Don't get me wrong, I think they should, and I'll be sending a check for a few bucks when I know an address to send it to. DO feel sorry the six or seventh child they do this to, because they won't have the celebrity of being first that will lead to being bailed out.
I moonlight at a club that plays a lot of live music. Musicians can make a fine living playing live music (or for those who can only make good music in a studio, autograph signings or TV appearances Lip Syncing their hits (ala Britney Spears)). What is the great good done for society having its citizens to spend a huge percentage of their income on music and movies, making a few artists, and more importantly Mega-Media houses, obscenely wealthy? How much better could that money be spent on average? Life without art would be impoverished, but giving recorded music away for free would not end music, nor leave our lives impoverished, nor would all artists starve.
How about sponsoring music you like? How about shareware music? Same for movies. If Spielberg had a list of projects he might produce, given the financial incentive, I would donate to see the project I like produced, then distributed to patrons first who have sponsored it, then offered cheap to non-patrons. Maybe even getting some money back, if the project does really well outside the original patronage. How about $1 HDTV movies over the internet, with a suggested $1-$5 donation per viewer, if they feel they liked what they see? Only quality (OK popular) movies make money past production cost.
I'm all for compensating people fairly for their intellectual property, but I would hardly call most music "intellectual." Granted that's a judgement call, but think of all the scientists and engineers who produce the technology that keeps the 6 billion people on this planet alive, and yet stringing 4 minutes of words together, is what possibly earns somebody millions. Granted not many win that 4 minute lottery, but it does happen, and far more often than the engineer or medical researcher who works his whole life on life saving project gets well compensated. You spoiled-whinny-self-important artists Grow Up, and see what's really important in life. Quit robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
Having used 3D monitors before with LCD glasses, I imagine the LCD panel is simply synced to the monitor frequency, shunting each frame left and right. So you want a really, really high frame rate to keep flicker to a minimum (because you are halving it). If my guess is correct, only the size of the LCD panel and Monitor need line up, not the pixel density, however, there are probably distortion effects from pixel misalignment, like resizing your resolution on LCD displays.
Re:Quality of computer
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Before 1886 there was no cheap process for refining aluminum. Aluminum was considered a precious metal and was even incorporated into things like the Royal Crown Jewels.
(some aluminum facts)
I read the dead-tree version of this article last week. The prediction is not just making small gems and computer chips, but huge, pure, industrial quantities soon.
Despite anything that De Beers tries to do, if chemically and structurally identical diamonds can be made, natural diamonds will collapse in value. Aluminum certainly didn't retain its value.
As to the price of chips made from diamonds, market forces will determine the fair price (and drive costs inexorably downward.) The major cost of a Silicon-based chip is not the Silicon, but the processing needed to make it function. The same will soon be true of Diamond based chips. Undoubtably there will be a steep learning curve in making diamond chips, so Silicon has at least a decade of safely being number one. Gallium Arsenide is considered superior to Silicon in many ways, but has only unseated Silicon in certain high frequency, low power, telecommunication applications. Diamond-based chips will probably infiltrate niche markets first, where price of fabrication is not a major deterrent.
50 flights, WAM ! Challenger tragedy. 100 more flights, Columbia tragedy. This is simplistic extrapolation on my part, but I would expect on the order of 200 flights before the next catastrophic failure (a doubling of safety for every mishap), assuming we have learned from the design flaws that lead to this one.
I guess one could ask if 1:200 is an acceptable risk. Oddly, NASA use to believe that it was, as I have seen 1:200 as the expected failure rate in some risk analysis estimates (granted I have also seen wildly more optimistic numbers in some other studies).
To expect changes in Management structure to fix this "problem" is naive. To over spend on management is to under spend on development of safer alternatives. Time and experience will likely make Shuttles safer -- and apparently have, if you look at the trend, though not necessary in a cost effective way (but that is a different debate).
Of the current astronaut corps, given the 1:100 failure rate we currently seem to have, I bet down to the last man or woman, all would get on the next Shuttle mission without hesitation, without any changes to launch procedure.
Lets accept that flying into space is a risky proposition, and let these people be the heroes, we generally expect them to be.
I think most are missing the point of this article (maybe they should read it).
The point is not that this enables forging.
What it does is provide a much cheaper means for everyday users to produce gloss-watermarked documents that are much harder to forge casually.
Yes the same technology can be used to produce gloss-watermarks for forging, but would require a much harder set of steps (the gloss-watermarks claim to be unscannable). The one down side, gullible people might accept gloss-watermarked documents without question, as proof of authenticity, just because it has a watermark.
When I suggest a 3D environment, I do not mean in a 3D game sense. Just various objects that you fix your attention on an bring them closer when you want to scrutinize them, very much like I do with my desk at work. The combined pixel count of all the documents strewn across it would be enormous, but I don't really see all that resolution, only portions of it when I pick up a folder or paper and examine it more closely.
I have a 19 monitor at 1280x1040 res that I'm using to type this, and an 8 foot projection screen on the same computer capable of Quad-XGA (2048*1536). I had expected to use the projection screen as my main screen, but I don't. I find that I sit close to the 19 inch monitor and, when something is very small, or requires extra scrutiny, I lean in close, a sort of poor man's 3D maneuver to zoom in on an area of interest (don't get me wrong Quad-XGA is Awesome for games and movies). The huge surface of my 8 foot screen is great for navigating 3-D gaming environments, but sucks for 2D editing chores.
I have seen early 3D OS experiments rendered at 1280x1040 or lower and they suck. It wasn't so much that the maneuvering of documents was clumsy and un-intuitive (which it was), but that the low resolution destroyed the ability to discern what a document was when you put it down on your simulated desk environment, or it had to change into come icon, which may or many not be a convenient mnemonic.
I typically have 10-20 windows open at a time at work. Usually they are all at their smallest readable setting. I can't get enough space to keep them all visible at one time without iconifying them. I would prefer to "put-down" the ones I'm not using, to have them shrink, but remain readable, which would take a huge resolution to pull off. While I could do this in 2D with font size changes and such, I can still imagine there might be a more intuitive way to do these things in 3D (or 2 ½ D) I don't really need to view things off axis or rotated for text work, but that doesn't mean some aspects of a 3D OS might not be handy and production enhancing, but from experience I know 3D doesn't work well with out really high resolution.
In the long run, OS's and Programs that allow you to easily zoom in and read small print will be the norm. Things are only occasionally hard to read now, because cheap hi-resolution displays are only now becoming common, and we have a lot of legacy software.
Microsoft may not lead the pack in adaptation of easy to use, intuitive, screen zooming, integrated into the OS, but they will throw it in, in a heartbeat, when a competing OS does. Only with truly hi-resolution displays, do interactive 3-D OS environments make sense.
The trouble with extrapolating that battle hardened microbes will displace all competing microbes, is to overlook some of the main features of evolution. There are enough desolate places on Earth to breed such creatures, and they are populated by such creatures, but these hardy creatures don't displace the E-Coli in your gut. Why not? The adaptations to flourish in harsh environments depend of chemical tricks and adaptations that only work in harsh environments. Your lake weed example actually illustrates this point. These weeds evolved in very similar lake environments, and exploded in population only from lack of natural predators and parasites. Cactuses are very "battle hardened" plants, and yet are very unlikely to take over your Minnesota lakes.
Should someone intentionally introduce Martian microbes to similar extreme environments here on Earth, we might see something similar, but contained within those extreme environments, and having little impact on that portion of the biosphere we usually experience. Sure it would have some environmental impact, but likely not disastrous. Most likely it would integrate with the local ecology, though perhaps not in way we would like. Esthetically you feel your lakes have suffered by introduction of a weed that wasn't native to the environment 100 years ago, but it's not the end of the world. Only evolution in action. The contamination of these lakes could have happened naturally, and a similar adaptation cycle would have occurred. I suspect introduction of alien species has little true long term impact on the biosphere. Which is not to say such disruptions are desirable, or don't have severe local impacts, aesthetically and economically.
I would say it is likely we can bring back samples and contain them.
If we have an accident, it is unlikely the microbes will spread because they are not adapted to the immediate environment.
Should they somehow gain a toehold in an environment favorable to them, they will likely integrate with the ecology in some way, not totally displace it.
All and all, I think these points argue well for taking the risk of sample return missions, the reward being unknown insights into biological processes.
One final aside, I would use the International Space Station as a first containment stop for a sample return mission, and have written to NASA on this point. Not because is greatly enhances safety (and it probably adds to cost), but because it gives psychological reassurance to the general populace that NASA is doing everything to ensure safety, and it gives the ISS a true mission.
Lets see, the remote already holds hundreds if not thousands of button settings combinations in ROM. There must be RAM of some type to hold the 4 digit device numbers that index into the ROM table. Your telling me the RAM to hold 10 or 20, 4 digits numbers is a significant cost difference over what is used to hold 3 to 6 ?
The RAM used is almost certainly vast overkill for holding these few numbers, and it is a design issue in having numbered/named device buttons directly. Which is odd, because a device button followed by a number would actually decrease button count (decreasing device cost).
Slashdot Mirror
Sure strained silicon is great, but the real advance was the world's smallest colander.
I agree the movie distributers are only hurting themselves with regional encoding, but it hardly takes Busterbuster to point out that pirating florishes because of this policy. At this point, they wan't more control not less, and use the exisitance of rampant piracy to gain political support for more draconian DRM.
Security and speed of boarding become more important in the airline equation than ever before. Marginal increases in speed, do little to improve the overall perception of the flying experience. Radical changes in speed, while exciting to contemplate, will require decades of testing before being considered safe enough for commercial adoption.
Pilotless craft might make sense for small planes where the pilot's pay is a huge fraction of the total transportation cost, but will take much longer to be adopted in 200+ passenger craft, even if the pilot is largely redundant.
That all said, Flying Wings is where I see the future of flight going. That and computer assisted small jump craft of various types. See this recent Popular Science article on flight. There is an expression in military circles when it come to evaluating new aircraft: "looks right, flies right." Looking at the envisioned commercial passenger flying wing concepts in the Popular Science article, one can't help but feel this aircraft has the right shape. Kudos also to whomever created the pictures in the magazine, because at first look, you would swear these beautiful behemoths are already lifting off from tarmacs in Tokyo.
Rather than obsess on airspeed, I think our focus should be on making the trip to the airport fast and easy, and of course the boarding fast and easy. Imaging a airport where it was more like a trip to the local cineplex. You park your car close to the terminal minutes before your flight. The car is moved inexpensively for you to a storage lot (rather than park in the hinter lands and wait for a bus). Or better yet, you have had a quick comfortable ride (mag-lift or not) from a city center, directly to your terminal. You are a frequent traveler, so you have undergone a rigorous pre-screening procedure once a year, and can now be biometrically scanned in quickly for a hassle free entry. Like first class seating, biometric priority boarding could be a real money maker for the airlines. Once on board the flying wing, space is not as much a factor as in tube based airplane designs. Weight is the limiting criteria on the 800-1500 seat flying city, not space, so everyone has space to stretch out, and get comfortable. Even reclining to a complete sleep position, to just sleep through a long trip, very much like the golden age of rail. Personal video screens for each passenger will be considered a must, and you will have a screening choice of dozens of first run movies at a cost similar to seeing it in the theater. Your screen will also allow web-browsing, and by the time you update your journal on /. , and post a few comments, it's time to deplane.
Making airplane fuels more environmentally friendly should also be a priority this century. A lot of fuel is used on take off, so how about mag catapult launch? Perhaps planes that use microwave beam power; using conventional fuels only to get airborne, or for emergencies. The rest of the trip a series of boasts from microwave beam boast areas. Ah, but I'm getting decades ahead of myself, and the crystal ball always grows murky 10+ years out.
More to the point, in the end you realize all the sex hungry characters all turned out to be Cylon
(with the unmasking of one the fighter pilots as an undetected Cylon).
So the Cylons want to both destroy us and to be like us.
Or perhaps Cylons confuse sexual release with true emotion and feeling.
I especially like the fact the Baltar is not irredeemably evil, but complex, and for now is casting his lot with humanity.
A I stated in another reply, I think the FCC should allocate a courtesy zone signal, but not jamming.
Seriously, reception with cell phones is bad enough without adding totally dead zones on purpose, and of course that jamming won't limit itself to the intended zone, but add unpredictably to the sea of electromagnetic noise around.
I would support the FCC creating a courtesy zone signal on some approved EM band, that causes your phone to shut off, or switch to vibrate, depending on what you set it to.
As for jamming cell phones in schools, why not just a rule no cell phones in schools without prior approval, those exceptions being for children with disabilities, or with parents that are disabled, and may require more communication to make connections, or deal with emergencies? Once again blanket jamming will not discriminate between those with legitimate needs to communicate and those that don't.
Anyway, I'm not exagerating, and I live in a relatively urban area about 2 hours from Chicago. Champaign Illinois to be precise. You seem to be lucky enough to live in a good coverage area, but I would be suspicious of your 90% figure for true, easily recieved HD, but I only have my one data point as experience.
The antenna mentioned is a Channel Master 8 bow, but I am using it indoors in an apartment. Only ABC has any HD programming yet here (check titantv.com for the 61820 area code).
Finally, my equipment is not compatible with what local cable offers (and they have no local or network channels in digital). I could get dish, and I am strongly cosidering that, but I still have apartment issues to deal with. If I knew I could time shift HBO or Showtime with DISH, this would definitely push me to get a system.
THANK GOD FOR DVD, else I might go Insane (glorious on a 10' diagonal Front Projection Quad XGA projection system).
Pretty Sad for a High Tech Area
Channel Master 8 Bow, Yup, That's what I got!
Trouble is I'm an Appartement dweller, and this sucker is bolted to the ceiling (but stearable).
Cable carries no locals, no network affiliates in digital.
So now seems like an appropriate time to tell you how the story came out. I recently bought a MyHD 120 card, and am very happy with the card (I plan on buying a couple more). However I can only get one Digital channel so far, and they're not broadcasting true HD yet. Digital does look nice, very nice, DVD nice, but still isn't HD. There is one channel in the area broadcasting HD, but I can't pull it in, even though I just bought a 3 foot square UHF antenna to do so. There are supposed to be 8 channels in my area broadcasting Digital, and I can only get one. And only one of the 8 are broadcasting HD (which I can't get as mentioned), and then for only about half of prime time hours. I'm told by sales people that the stations are only broadcasting currently at half power, but I have no way to confirm this. Even the one channel that comes in strong (full meter), suffers occasional complete drops, very much like early cell phone use. While the HD picture is probably going to be glorious (and digital is already very good), they really fell down on the job when it came to the carrier signal, and I think it safe to say VSB was an extremely poor choice. People are use to a signal fading in and out on analog, but still be viewable (you can still follow the story or hear the audio), when a sizable portion have digital, and find they loose signal completely from time to time, well there will be hell to pay. The FCC has quite the mess on its hands.
BTW, when the one channel I do get is not in primetime, I switch to the analog sister station. The upconvert of local programing is like a 56k streaming video. Painful to watch.
A year later and the Quest goes on.
Since I have several +5 postings on Slashdot, I'm going to guess I'm not a "moron." What evidence to you have to the contrary for yourself?
With the exception of Crop Circles and Homeopathy, I'm willing to entertain changes in my cuckoo scale assertions with humility and grace, so I'm guessing one of these two is a sacred cow for you, most likely crop circles, since your belligerent attitude is the same I have seen over and over from crop circle advocates over at Space.com.
Here is another hard held belief of mine that will no doubt infuriate you: the things that get done in life, are done by people like myself who think critically about what is true in the world and act accordingly, and are not side tracked by fantasy and wishful thinking. This is not to say one should not have fantasies, or wistful thoughts, nor that nature never throws us a curve ball, but if you never rule out the majority of red herrings and dead ends, you'll never get anything done, or make any real discoveries.
Surely he could have found one or two to fit the high end of the scale.
How about crop circles by electromagnetic fields?
Trust me, you can't reason with the pro crop circle camp, I've debated with them over at Space.com
Some other over looked -- way out ideas.
No Anti-Gravity Speculation?
The Anti-Gravity by Spinning Super-Conductor: Seems to be clocking in at 3 cuckoos by my estimate
However
Gravity Wave Detection and coupling to Electromagnetic Fields: a 1 cuckoo currently, but could go higher or lower in the
near future with new experiments.
Multiple Universes: I'd give this a zero, but experimental confirmation is going to be a real bitch.
Dark Mater: a zero cuckoo for sure, but we haven't really seen the damn stuff yet.
Brane Collision origin of the universe: 1 to 2 cuckoos, but could gain respectability. Less violent than Big Bang, less
inflation, but still an abrupt origin in the 10-20 Billion Year range.
String Theory: a zero cuckoo. It's hard to bet against a theory that just keeps changing, refining, and redefining itself.
In the end String Theory will probably be the GUT, but by then will probably have no strings
Underlining process to Universe are computational: Main premis to Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science." I like Stephen, and even use to work for him, but he has a long way to go before being able to claim a truly "New Kind of Science." I'd say 1 cuckoo.
Cold Fusion: I'd give it 2 cuckoos (these guys just won't go away)
Homeopathic Medicine: I'd give this one a 5 on the 4 cuckoo scale.
MOND Modified Newtonian Dynamics: 1 cuckoo probably, but could really upset the apple cart in physics. Has even had write ups in Scientific American
see
Where's the Dark Matter?
These are just a few off the top of my head, I look forward to seeing some other Slashdotters lists.
I recently did a search of top500.org which has specs back to June 1993 and up to June 2003
BTW WHO THE HELL BROKE top500.org!?!? This site used to be easy to use and informative, now it is a banner add hell, that obscures the info you used to be able to get to easily, with many broken links and apologies for works in progress.
Anyway I digress, the point is that in 1993 the fastest computer was the TMC at Los Alamos with GigaFlops ratings of 59.7 Rmax 131.0 Rpeak
My Dell XPS today would rate in the top half of fastest machines in the world for 1993 if I'm reading the stats right with just over a GigaFlop of power.
Todays fastest machine is Japan's Earth Simulator rated at 35860 Rmax 40960 Rpeak
If we define a super computer as the ability to get in the top500 then 245.1 Rmax 384.0 are the numbers that indicate your machine would be a super computer by 2003 standards.
If your contacts are running windows (whether in focus or not) and you're driving, gives a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
Data stays on the phone until it reliably off loads to the net. You may loose access to some apps when in a dead area, but no data loss.
Of course your real complaint is performance. Well you can't have it all. If a hundred dollar smart phone does everthing a 500 hundred PDA does, then you have to decide if the service glitches are so terrible, it's worth the 400 dollar difference. And as mentioned already, no syncing up your PDA, and all your buddies back at the office get all your data in real time.
New improved apps appear by magic with no change to your dumb-smart-phone, with software upgrades at the main office.
The phone is cheep, and the semi-expensive server with all the cool software, gets shared between hundreds if not tens of thousands of users.
It really only needs to be a stripped down web browser.
Don't feel sorry for this 12 year old. I'm sure people will be sending money to this family on the margins soon, probably much more than $2000. Don't get me wrong, I think they should, and I'll be sending a check for a few bucks when I know an address to send it to. DO feel sorry the six or seventh child they do this to, because they won't have the celebrity of being first that will lead to being bailed out.
I moonlight at a club that plays a lot of live music. Musicians can make a fine living playing live music (or for those who can only make good music in a studio, autograph signings or TV appearances Lip Syncing their hits (ala Britney Spears)). What is the great good done for society having its citizens to spend a huge percentage of their income on music and movies, making a few artists, and more importantly Mega-Media houses, obscenely wealthy? How much better could that money be spent on average? Life without art would be impoverished, but giving recorded music away for free would not end music, nor leave our lives impoverished, nor would all artists starve.
How about sponsoring music you like? How about shareware music? Same for movies. If Spielberg had a list of projects he might produce, given the financial incentive, I would donate to see the project I like produced, then distributed to patrons first who have sponsored it, then offered cheap to non-patrons. Maybe even getting some money back, if the project does really well outside the original patronage. How about $1 HDTV movies over the internet, with a suggested $1-$5 donation per viewer, if they feel they liked what they see? Only quality (OK popular) movies make money past production cost.
I'm all for compensating people fairly for their intellectual property, but I would hardly call most music "intellectual." Granted that's a judgement call, but think of all the scientists and engineers who produce the technology that keeps the 6 billion people on this planet alive, and yet stringing 4 minutes of words together, is what possibly earns somebody millions. Granted not many win that 4 minute lottery, but it does happen, and far more often than the engineer or medical researcher who works his whole life on life saving project gets well compensated. You spoiled-whinny-self-important artists Grow Up, and see what's really important in life. Quit robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
BTW,. Where do I send the check?
This is slashdot for God sakes, we want an article on how to make a lava lamp with real LAVA!
Having used 3D monitors before with LCD glasses, I imagine the LCD panel is simply synced to the monitor frequency, shunting each frame left and right. So you want a really, really high frame rate to keep flicker to a minimum (because you are halving it). If my guess is correct, only the size of the LCD panel and Monitor need line up, not the pixel density, however, there are probably distortion effects from pixel misalignment, like resizing your resolution on LCD displays.
(some aluminum facts)
I read the dead-tree version of this article last week. The prediction is not just making small gems and computer chips, but huge, pure, industrial quantities soon. Despite anything that De Beers tries to do, if chemically and structurally identical diamonds can be made, natural diamonds will collapse in value. Aluminum certainly didn't retain its value.
As to the price of chips made from diamonds, market forces will determine the fair price (and drive costs inexorably downward.) The major cost of a Silicon-based chip is not the Silicon, but the processing needed to make it function. The same will soon be true of Diamond based chips. Undoubtably there will be a steep learning curve in making diamond chips, so Silicon has at least a decade of safely being number one. Gallium Arsenide is considered superior to Silicon in many ways, but has only unseated Silicon in certain high frequency, low power, telecommunication applications. Diamond-based chips will probably infiltrate niche markets first, where price of fabrication is not a major deterrent.
I guess one could ask if 1:200 is an acceptable risk. Oddly, NASA use to believe that it was, as I have seen 1:200 as the expected failure rate in some risk analysis estimates (granted I have also seen wildly more optimistic numbers in some other studies).
To expect changes in Management structure to fix this "problem" is naive. To over spend on management is to under spend on development of safer alternatives. Time and experience will likely make Shuttles safer -- and apparently have, if you look at the trend, though not necessary in a cost effective way (but that is a different debate).
Of the current astronaut corps, given the 1:100 failure rate we currently seem to have, I bet down to the last man or woman, all would get on the next Shuttle mission without hesitation, without any changes to launch procedure.
Lets accept that flying into space is a risky proposition, and let these people be the heroes, we generally expect them to be.
The point is not that this enables forging.
What it does is provide a much cheaper means for everyday users to produce gloss-watermarked documents that are much harder to forge casually.
Yes the same technology can be used to produce gloss-watermarks for forging, but would require a much harder set of steps (the gloss-watermarks claim to be unscannable). The one down side, gullible people might accept gloss-watermarked documents without question, as proof of authenticity, just because it has a watermark.
I have a 19 monitor at 1280x1040 res that I'm using to type this, and an 8 foot projection screen on the same computer capable of Quad-XGA (2048*1536). I had expected to use the projection screen as my main screen, but I don't. I find that I sit close to the 19 inch monitor and, when something is very small, or requires extra scrutiny, I lean in close, a sort of poor man's 3D maneuver to zoom in on an area of interest (don't get me wrong Quad-XGA is Awesome for games and movies). The huge surface of my 8 foot screen is great for navigating 3-D gaming environments, but sucks for 2D editing chores.
I have seen early 3D OS experiments rendered at 1280x1040 or lower and they suck. It wasn't so much that the maneuvering of documents was clumsy and un-intuitive (which it was), but that the low resolution destroyed the ability to discern what a document was when you put it down on your simulated desk environment, or it had to change into come icon, which may or many not be a convenient mnemonic.
I typically have 10-20 windows open at a time at work. Usually they are all at their smallest readable setting. I can't get enough space to keep them all visible at one time without iconifying them. I would prefer to "put-down" the ones I'm not using, to have them shrink, but remain readable, which would take a huge resolution to pull off. While I could do this in 2D with font size changes and such, I can still imagine there might be a more intuitive way to do these things in 3D (or 2 ½ D) I don't really need to view things off axis or rotated for text work, but that doesn't mean some aspects of a 3D OS might not be handy and production enhancing, but from experience I know 3D doesn't work well with out really high resolution.
Microsoft may not lead the pack in adaptation of easy to use, intuitive, screen zooming, integrated into the OS, but they will throw it in, in a heartbeat, when a competing OS does. Only with truly hi-resolution displays, do interactive 3-D OS environments make sense.
Should someone intentionally introduce Martian microbes to similar extreme environments here on Earth, we might see something similar, but contained within those extreme environments, and having little impact on that portion of the biosphere we usually experience. Sure it would have some environmental impact, but likely not disastrous. Most likely it would integrate with the local ecology, though perhaps not in way we would like. Esthetically you feel your lakes have suffered by introduction of a weed that wasn't native to the environment 100 years ago, but it's not the end of the world. Only evolution in action. The contamination of these lakes could have happened naturally, and a similar adaptation cycle would have occurred. I suspect introduction of alien species has little true long term impact on the biosphere. Which is not to say such disruptions are desirable, or don't have severe local impacts, aesthetically and economically.
I would say it is likely we can bring back samples and contain them.
If we have an accident, it is unlikely the microbes will spread because they are not adapted to the immediate environment.
Should they somehow gain a toehold in an environment favorable to them, they will likely integrate with the ecology in some way, not totally displace it.
All and all, I think these points argue well for taking the risk of sample return missions, the reward being unknown insights into biological processes.
One final aside, I would use the International Space Station as a first containment stop for a sample return mission, and have written to NASA on this point. Not because is greatly enhances safety (and it probably adds to cost), but because it gives psychological reassurance to the general populace that NASA is doing everything to ensure safety, and it gives the ISS a true mission.
The RAM used is almost certainly vast overkill for holding these few numbers, and it is a design issue in having numbered/named device buttons directly. Which is odd, because a device button followed by a number would actually decrease button count (decreasing device cost).