My understanding was this was a quarterly report and a quarterly tax rate issue, which was closer to 40% this time. I'm not sure what the yearly effective tax rate has to do with it. If analysts are going to guess and then punish google for guessing wrong, then I don't see how that's Google's fault. Sure, it's how Wall St. works, but Google didn't create that system any more than they made China censor. If Wall St. wants to enforce corporate leaks for guidance purposes, then the SEC should pass a rule.
And as for your quote of Google's motto, maybe you should read their site:
Preface
Our informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil." We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users - as well we should. But being "a different kind of company" means more than the products we make and the business we're building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees.
Read it a couple of times if it's not apparent to you.
Here's what I think is going on. It's not about Google and China or Google and Trust. It's about Google and the US government. Google stood up to the Bush Justice Dept over search records. Today, generic ones, tomorrow maybe more specific ones.
The result? A large stock slide and all this speculation on how Google is "not to be trusted." It smacks of Bush tactics -- turn your enemies strength into a weakness. Trust = mistrust, Bad = good, etc...
Was Time a big supporter of the War in Iraq? Is Time hammering on the latest Bush scandals in anything more than a typical corporate media lipservice kind of way?
And can anyone explain why Google had a sudden, one-time tax hit that no one else predicted? From what I understand, if not for this 40% tax hit in the last quarter, Google would have beat its Wall St. estimates by a penny or two at least. How is it that analysts didn't see the tax hit coming and yet everyone jumped on Google's sudden "big miss?" Is it possible the tax hit was something the IRS "figured out" after a call from the WH?
And what exactly is behind all this "Google is really evil with China" crap? Sure, no one outside the Chinese gov't wants censorship there. But it's China that's censoring. Google has to place physical servers in China to offer any level of quality service due to China's meddling with Google.com and other sites. Servers in China are subject to Chinese law, no matter what anyone might want. So it's a choice between self-censoring by law and crappy service.
For those of you who'd choose "no service" do you practice what you preach? I hope you don't use Chinese products, electronics, clothing. And if the measure of business ethics is whether a given government has done wrong, then why don't you protest all of the other companies that do business with China, or all of the other countries that do wrong, including, at times, the US? Should Google pull out of the US market over Iraq, or secret torture, or unwarranted wiretapping? They tried to stand up to the Bushies, and look what happened so far...
Oh, it's becuase Google said something about evil. Well, I never took "don't be evil" to mean Google had to be the world's Mother Theresa. No one expected them to donate all their profits to starving children, did they? Or to avoid all advertizing because ads are largely misleading (why else would anyone buy this crap?) "Don't be evil," to me, meant "don't be microsoft"--don't screw your competition--play fair and win on the merits. And they've done just that. They label ads, they even label when they're censoring in China, which is about all one could expect.
Bottom line: don't trust Google with your sensitive data. Don't trust anyone. Don't even put it where people can steal or subpoena it. Common sense.
The savings is in not replacing the disks. I don't know if they pay the Wal*Mart price for DVDs or more since they're renting them out. If they were really smart, they'd have a blanket license for N copies of any given movie and even have the right to burn their own replacement copies on a regular basis. But I doubt it, especially when I've had two separate instances of reporting a movie damaged and getting another equally damaged disk to replace it.
I agree, but the bait-and-switch is worse than that. They can modify the TOS all they want, but it's pure false advertising to say "unlimited" and then have an algorithm with the purpose of "limiting" the number of movies I can watch in some non-deterministic way (i.e., based on what they claim other people are doing). Just put a clear cap on it. I can live with that.
Hell, it would still beat BlockBuster if they said "unlimited (up X per month)" and/or added a shipping surcharge per disk for anything over X/month.
Just be honest, NetFlix. Don't bury it in the TOS.
I don't know if I'm the only one with this issue (I doubt it), but the number of scratched/unplayable movies on NetFlix has skyrocketed recently. This last month, I hit the 50% mark (of about 7 movies attempted, 3 retries). Remarkably, the same movie came scratched twice and I'm fairly sure they sent the replacement before they received the original.
I'm wondering if they've discovered that not removing broken disks from circulation lowers their costs too. Not sending me any disks at all would no doubt lower costs even further, as would shutting down the service completely. Or maybe it's just blockbuster renting their movies for "fun."
I'm thinking of marking the painted side of the DVD with a sticker "MARKED AS BROKEN--YOU GOT CHEATED" before I return it next time. If we had enough volunteers doing that, we'd resolve the issue in no time.
Following that argument, do you personally avoid all trade with China? Clothes, electronics, etc? I'm not saying you have to, but glass houses and all...
Hiding opposing viewpoint makes it possible for the government to say whatever it wants and have no open challenges. But then everyone knows it's the government's viewpoint. When MoT stuff gets tricky is when there is little or no censorship but the facts are still twisted.
Examples:
Global Warming. To counter any implication of censorship, let's show both sides of the debate. What debate? And so we do nothing.
Evolution. Again, in trying to be open, we let people believe there is some doubt about natural selection.
Iraq and 9/11. Did Bush need censorship to cause 50-60% of Americans to believe Sadam was responsible for 9/11?
If we take your arguments to heart, Google should stop all service to the US due to the War in Iraq. Of course, not everyone agrees the war is a mistake, just as not everyone even inside China thinks relaxing the level of authoritarianism will benefit them, just as there are people in the US that would love to see the US become a theocracy (i know a few of these).
I'm not in any way defending China. But so far, access to technology (and by that, education, information --even partial information) has been the driving force behind reform in China. Cutting them off to make a point doesn't help anyone.
craig, AK Population (1990): 1260 (504 housing units) craig, CO Population (1990): 8091 (3559 housing units) craig, IA Population (1990): 116 (47 housing units) craig, MO Population (1990): 346 (166 housing units) craig, NE Population (1990): 228 (116 housing units)
(from dictionary.reference.com)
Anyway, so they'll charge. But $10 won't stop annoying/deceptive ads and if they go much higher, they'd better offer something for it, like better searching and better policing. How much does Ebay spend to fight fraud?
And eventually, CraigsList will be just another brand site and we'll find a new cheapo service to use for free.
I don't think you understand the situation. Take a moment to consider:
1. Bejing is forcing the censorship. The only way Google could steer clear of it is to avoid all service to China. Who does that benefit? The Chinese people might never even hear about such a stunt.
2. All countries (even the US) have some level of censorship, so the test is not "selling out" vs. being true to some ideal. It's a judgement ca Or should Google stop service to all countries that don't meat your ideal?
3. As I said, Chinese can still (I hope) reach uncensored Google.com if they need it (albeit slowly).
4. Re-read 1984. The Ministry of Truth is not about twisting the truth, not censoring it. Good == bad, etc.. Are you alleging that Google rewords web pages to alter their meaning?
5. This US administration is more likely to use double-speak (again, re-read 1984) than anything I've heard come out of China. "Unwarranted Spying => terrorist prevention." Death Tax. No Child Left Behind. Would you argue that Google should not operate in the US to make a point about the Bush administration?
The one big complaint I do have about Google is that they should not log IP addresses. If people want to use their cookies for some service benefit, that's fine. But don't track my IP over time without my permission. On that, I call BS.
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding comes from, but it persists.
Google.com (US and intl servers) is still available to China UNCENSORED by Google (at least as uncensored as the US database is). Google.com is apparently censored or degraded by China or their ISPs to the point of being painfully slow, spotty, etc..
Google.cn is the new service that uses servers INSIDE the Great Firewall, therefore isn't censored on the international pipes and is much more available to the people who need it. The tradeoff is that the servers are INSIDE China and therefore subject to Chinese law, no matter what Google chooses. Google could say no censorship and China could say, "Okay, we now own your servers."
You can argue that Google shouldn't have created a second system for better service (in terms of access) with the caveat that some results are censored by law. But you can't say Google decided to censor China. It's not because "they do business" in China. It's because the SERVERS are in China. Chinese computer users can still get to Google.com (I hope) and have some choice in the matter.
Is that if it were not for the 40+% tax hit Google took, their numbers would have actually beat expectations by a few cents. So the analysts were pretty on target without guidance from Google except for totally missing this one-time tax issue and in effect causing this dip.
Makes me wonder if Google even knew about the potential tax issue that far in advance or if someone from the IRS called them up to say "now, about those records our President wants..."
BTW, anyone saying the China censorship issue hurt Google's stock price is wacked in the head. Wall St loves anything having to do with investments in China right now, so there's no shyness about China's legal restrictions. I'd personally rather see Google stand up to China, but the reality is that chinese-language Google.com is NOT censored by Google, but IS censored by China to the point of being almost useless. The only way I see for Google to have any real presence in China is to have servers inside the Great Firewall (Google.cn), which means they're subject to the local laws.
disclaimer: I own Google stock, but would rather sell it if I thought they were turning evil.
I just upgraded my living room PC from ATI to NVidia, knowing that I was probably trading some video quality (TV, DVD) for better NVidia software and better overall performance. But I didn't realize just how bad it was with current NVidia video (7800GT) -- it's like going back from 32 bit color to 16. My HTDV Wonder practically crumbled to dust (probably ATI's fault for incompatibility) and my brand new video hardware decoder almost approaches my original quality, though the filtering still sucks.
Now it seems that I might get closer to my original ATI video quality with NVidia's PureVideo -- but they charge $20 to $50 bucks depending on what audio I want? That's outrageous. ATI's quality video is included in the base price, but NVidia wants to charge extra for not even the same level of performance? What are they becoming, a car dealership? Oh, the windshield wipers are extra?
NVidia needs to bundle PureVideo pure and simple. If it was a "nice to have" feature or they were ahead of ATI on video quality, I might not mind. But they've burned any loyalty I had.
After learning about other diseases that were supposedly behavioral/environmental being actually caused by viruses or bacteria (or somewhere inbetween, like protobacter -- ulcers, IBD, cervical cancer, etc...) I'm not surprised at all. I believe we'll eventually find most digestive disorders are caused by unwanted bugs.
The fact is, we have as many bacteria cells in our guts as we have "human" cells in our entire body. It's no wonder we don't understand most of it yet.
And it's no wonder that the balance of power in our gut could affect our weight. Even without this research, it was clear that some of the bacteria in our guts helped us digest food and some didn't (sometimes causing gas, IBD-like symptoms, etc..). If we populate with more of the friendly pro-digestive ones, we would naturally get more nutrition out of our food and tend to gain weight. Whether a virus can cause us to grow fat cells directly, I can only speculate.
On a personal level, I just went through an antibiotic "reboot" of my gut bacteria to try to cure some longstanding issues and the result was a very rapid weight gain of 20-30 pounds, which in my case was a net positive, plus I just feel much better.
In the case of last year's London bombings, I recall that the cell phones were used as timers, not even remote triggers. No cell phone service was required, just the alarm function.
As others have said, the information is available elsewhere, sometimes more detailed, but usually in a less convient form. The satellite companies are the obvious place to filter out sensitive areas. I believe Israel has or had deals limiting the satellite resolution of the entire country.
If the best resolution imagery comes from aerial photography anyway, that's much easier for a country to regulate. I mean, Dick Cheney just got a special 1-mile no-fly-zone created for his new home outside of DC--even when he's not there (because the FAA has nothing better to do than protect gov't officials personal property...).
More to the point, this sounds a lot like India has never considered that someone might fly a spy plane or UAV over a sensitive area. If you just blur or blue-dot the sensitive areas on Google Earth, that gives you a pretty good idea of which areas are most important and you can then go look directly. Better to hide in plain sight, or underground.
You would think that a nuclear power would have gained some sophistication in their defensive planning, but perhaps not.
I presume by "virtual cave" the poster refers to the CAVE (CAVE Audio Video Environment), which is essentially a small room where most or all walls show computer-generated imagery (rather than using, say, a head-mounted display). I imagine USC has one or two for research purposes.
However, there's nothing in the article, the press release, or associated video clip to indicate this has anything to do with the language training. It all seems to be happening on a standard computer monitor. I'm a big advocate of CAVEs for all sorts of things, but I'm not sure what price-performance advantage it would have for language training.
Microsoft is soon releasing a Universal Patch(tm) for all its software: Duct Tape. Just apply the patch directly to your hard disk surface and/or monitor screen and all will be well.
(That ought to shut DHS up for a while... How much of the Duct Tape business does Bush own again?)
Yeah. I understood that. The only question I have is how tightly-coupled the projector and screen need to be; i.e., how narrow those frequency ranges are across different brands and models.
I'm sure any projector that splits the white light into red, green, and blue channels and recombines on output could be fitted with the right combination of dichromatic mirrors and polarizing filters, but I don't know what the variance is among these from brand to brand.
I had enough trouble trying to replace a simple red/clear plastic polarizer sheet that melted in my old LCD projector... It still shoots purple images to this day...
While this screen sounds very cool, people with very bright projectors have been projecting on "black" surfaces, even black velvet, for a long time. It results in amazing colors and high apparent contrast _if_ you have an extremely bright lamp to overcome the absorption.
I, on the other hand, took the opposite approach-- a $50 screen made of plain 300 count white bedsheet (king size) stretched tight over a thin wood frame. Better than any $500 screen I've seen, but I'd love to see this new one in action.
True about the I/O problem, but you seem to be assuming you need all of the data up front.
Ignoring the art security issue (which is present either way), having the distributed client fetch data as needed would cut bandwidth tremendously while only adding an additional wait on the client, which may not hurt anyone.
An example of this is Keyhole's Earthviewer, which pulls only the imagery it needs, but does so from a 10 TB database quickly enough to roam anywhere on earth in real-time (16 ms frame-render times). Realtime graphics has many tools and techniques that non-realtime rendering can use to predict and optimize I/O for this purpose.
...but backwards. The Bush administration's goal is to LOSE all its pieces, since pieces require taxes to maintain.
So Bush puts out this obvious new gambit which, if successful, will cause NASA to saceifice its REAL pieces for some highly SPECULATIVE ones (if you can just get your pawn to the other side of the board, we have a shiny new queen for you...)
NASA is playing the game as best it can (with the required level of public-facing loyalty), saying, in effect, 'Okay, then take my Knight,' knowing the public outcry that will follow.
And why is anyone surprised? The Republican M.O. has changed over the last 50 years from direct opposition to government programs to a deceitful and suicidal kind of support for them. "Sure, we'll run up the deficit to 25% of the GDP -- that way we won't have any choice but to cut government! (except for our buddies companies who live off gvt handouts)..."
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And as for your quote of Google's motto, maybe you should read their site:
Read it a couple of times if it's not apparent to you.
I forgot to add my usual disclaimer: I do own google stock.
Here's what I think is going on. It's not about Google and China or Google and Trust. It's about Google and the US government. Google stood up to the Bush Justice Dept over search records. Today, generic ones, tomorrow maybe more specific ones.
The result? A large stock slide and all this speculation on how Google is "not to be trusted." It smacks of Bush tactics -- turn your enemies strength into a weakness. Trust = mistrust, Bad = good, etc...
Was Time a big supporter of the War in Iraq? Is Time hammering on the latest Bush scandals in anything more than a typical corporate media lipservice kind of way?
And can anyone explain why Google had a sudden, one-time tax hit that no one else predicted? From what I understand, if not for this 40% tax hit in the last quarter, Google would have beat its Wall St. estimates by a penny or two at least. How is it that analysts didn't see the tax hit coming and yet everyone jumped on Google's sudden "big miss?" Is it possible the tax hit was something the IRS "figured out" after a call from the WH?
And what exactly is behind all this "Google is really evil with China" crap? Sure, no one outside the Chinese gov't wants censorship there. But it's China that's censoring. Google has to place physical servers in China to offer any level of quality service due to China's meddling with Google.com and other sites. Servers in China are subject to Chinese law, no matter what anyone might want. So it's a choice between self-censoring by law and crappy service.
For those of you who'd choose "no service" do you practice what you preach? I hope you don't use Chinese products, electronics, clothing. And if the measure of business ethics is whether a given government has done wrong, then why don't you protest all of the other companies that do business with China, or all of the other countries that do wrong, including, at times, the US? Should Google pull out of the US market over Iraq, or secret torture, or unwarranted wiretapping? They tried to stand up to the Bushies, and look what happened so far...
Oh, it's becuase Google said something about evil. Well, I never took "don't be evil" to mean Google had to be the world's Mother Theresa. No one expected them to donate all their profits to starving children, did they? Or to avoid all advertizing because ads are largely misleading (why else would anyone buy this crap?) "Don't be evil," to me, meant "don't be microsoft"--don't screw your competition--play fair and win on the merits. And they've done just that. They label ads, they even label when they're censoring in China, which is about all one could expect.
Bottom line: don't trust Google with your sensitive data. Don't trust anyone. Don't even put it where people can steal or subpoena it. Common sense.
The savings is in not replacing the disks. I don't know if they pay the Wal*Mart price for DVDs or more since they're renting them out. If they were really smart, they'd have a blanket license for N copies of any given movie and even have the right to burn their own replacement copies on a regular basis. But I doubt it, especially when I've had two separate instances of reporting a movie damaged and getting another equally damaged disk to replace it.
I agree, but the bait-and-switch is worse than that. They can modify the TOS all they want, but it's pure false advertising to say "unlimited" and then have an algorithm with the purpose of "limiting" the number of movies I can watch in some non-deterministic way (i.e., based on what they claim other people are doing). Just put a clear cap on it. I can live with that.
Hell, it would still beat BlockBuster if they said "unlimited (up X per month)" and/or added a shipping surcharge per disk for anything over X/month.
Just be honest, NetFlix. Don't bury it in the TOS.
I don't know if I'm the only one with this issue (I doubt it), but the number of scratched/unplayable movies on NetFlix has skyrocketed recently. This last month, I hit the 50% mark (of about 7 movies attempted, 3 retries). Remarkably, the same movie came scratched twice and I'm fairly sure they sent the replacement before they received the original.
I'm wondering if they've discovered that not removing broken disks from circulation lowers their costs too. Not sending me any disks at all would no doubt lower costs even further, as would shutting down the service completely. Or maybe it's just blockbuster renting their movies for "fun."
I'm thinking of marking the painted side of the DVD with a sticker "MARKED AS BROKEN--YOU GOT CHEATED" before I return it next time. If we had enough volunteers doing that, we'd resolve the issue in no time.
Following that argument, do you personally avoid all trade with China? Clothes, electronics, etc? I'm not saying you have to, but glass houses and all...
Hiding opposing viewpoint makes it possible for the government to say whatever it wants and have no open challenges. But then everyone knows it's the government's viewpoint. When MoT stuff gets tricky is when there is little or no censorship but the facts are still twisted.
Examples:
Global Warming. To counter any implication of censorship, let's show both sides of the debate. What debate? And so we do nothing.
Evolution. Again, in trying to be open, we let people believe there is some doubt about natural selection.
Iraq and 9/11. Did Bush need censorship to cause 50-60% of Americans to believe Sadam was responsible for 9/11?
If we take your arguments to heart, Google should stop all service to the US due to the War in Iraq. Of course, not everyone agrees the war is a mistake, just as not everyone even inside China thinks relaxing the level of authoritarianism will benefit them, just as there are people in the US that would love to see the US become a theocracy (i know a few of these).
I'm not in any way defending China. But so far, access to technology (and by that, education, information --even partial information) has been the driving force behind reform in China. Cutting them off to make a point doesn't help anyone.
craig, AK Population (1990): 1260 (504 housing units)
craig, CO Population (1990): 8091 (3559 housing units)
craig, IA Population (1990): 116 (47 housing units)
craig, MO Population (1990): 346 (166 housing units)
craig, NE Population (1990): 228 (116 housing units)
(from dictionary.reference.com)
Anyway, so they'll charge. But $10 won't stop annoying/deceptive ads and if they go much higher, they'd better offer something for it, like better searching and better policing. How much does Ebay spend to fight fraud?
And eventually, CraigsList will be just another brand site and we'll find a new cheapo service to use for free.
typo in previous post: the ministry of truth IS about twisting the truth, not censoring it. Sorry.
I don't think you understand the situation. Take a moment to consider:
1. Bejing is forcing the censorship. The only way Google could steer clear of it is to avoid all service to China. Who does that benefit? The Chinese people might never even hear about such a stunt.
2. All countries (even the US) have some level of censorship, so the test is not "selling out" vs. being true to some ideal. It's a judgement ca Or should Google stop service to all countries that don't meat your ideal?
3. As I said, Chinese can still (I hope) reach uncensored Google.com if they need it (albeit slowly).
4. Re-read 1984. The Ministry of Truth is not about twisting the truth, not censoring it. Good == bad, etc.. Are you alleging that Google rewords web pages to alter their meaning?
5. This US administration is more likely to use double-speak (again, re-read 1984) than anything I've heard come out of China. "Unwarranted Spying => terrorist prevention." Death Tax. No Child Left Behind. Would you argue that Google should not operate in the US to make a point about the Bush administration?
The one big complaint I do have about Google is that they should not log IP addresses. If people want to use their cookies for some service benefit, that's fine. But don't track my IP over time without my permission. On that, I call BS.
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding comes from, but it persists.
Google.com (US and intl servers) is still available to China UNCENSORED by Google (at least as uncensored as the US database is). Google.com is apparently censored or degraded by China or their ISPs to the point of being painfully slow, spotty, etc..
Google.cn is the new service that uses servers INSIDE the Great Firewall, therefore isn't censored on the international pipes and is much more available to the people who need it. The tradeoff is that the servers are INSIDE China and therefore subject to Chinese law, no matter what Google chooses. Google could say no censorship and China could say, "Okay, we now own your servers."
You can argue that Google shouldn't have created a second system for better service (in terms of access) with the caveat that some results are censored by law. But you can't say Google decided to censor China. It's not because "they do business" in China. It's because the SERVERS are in China. Chinese computer users can still get to Google.com (I hope) and have some choice in the matter.
Is that if it were not for the 40+% tax hit Google took, their numbers would have actually beat expectations by a few cents. So the analysts were pretty on target without guidance from Google except for totally missing this one-time tax issue and in effect causing this dip.
Makes me wonder if Google even knew about the potential tax issue that far in advance or if someone from the IRS called them up to say "now, about those records our President wants..."
BTW, anyone saying the China censorship issue hurt Google's stock price is wacked in the head. Wall St loves anything having to do with investments in China right now, so there's no shyness about China's legal restrictions. I'd personally rather see Google stand up to China, but the reality is that chinese-language Google.com is NOT censored by Google, but IS censored by China to the point of being almost useless. The only way I see for Google to have any real presence in China is to have servers inside the Great Firewall (Google.cn), which means they're subject to the local laws.
disclaimer: I own Google stock, but would rather sell it if I thought they were turning evil.
I just upgraded my living room PC from ATI to NVidia, knowing that I was probably trading some video quality (TV, DVD) for better NVidia software and better overall performance. But I didn't realize just how bad it was with current NVidia video (7800GT) -- it's like going back from 32 bit color to 16. My HTDV Wonder practically crumbled to dust (probably ATI's fault for incompatibility) and my brand new video hardware decoder almost approaches my original quality, though the filtering still sucks.
Now it seems that I might get closer to my original ATI video quality with NVidia's PureVideo -- but they charge $20 to $50 bucks depending on what audio I want? That's outrageous. ATI's quality video is included in the base price, but NVidia wants to charge extra for not even the same level of performance? What are they becoming, a car dealership? Oh, the windshield wipers are extra?
NVidia needs to bundle PureVideo pure and simple. If it was a "nice to have" feature or they were ahead of ATI on video quality, I might not mind. But they've burned any loyalty I had.
I believe the theory is/was that the timer was used to avoid them having to make the decision and/or miss the synchronized time to explode.
After learning about other diseases that were supposedly behavioral/environmental being actually caused by viruses or bacteria (or somewhere inbetween, like protobacter -- ulcers, IBD, cervical cancer, etc...) I'm not surprised at all. I believe we'll eventually find most digestive disorders are caused by unwanted bugs.
The fact is, we have as many bacteria cells in our guts as we have "human" cells in our entire body. It's no wonder we don't understand most of it yet.
And it's no wonder that the balance of power in our gut could affect our weight. Even without this research, it was clear that some of the bacteria in our guts helped us digest food and some didn't (sometimes causing gas, IBD-like symptoms, etc..). If we populate with more of the friendly pro-digestive ones, we would naturally get more nutrition out of our food and tend to gain weight. Whether a virus can cause us to grow fat cells directly, I can only speculate.
On a personal level, I just went through an antibiotic "reboot" of my gut bacteria to try to cure some longstanding issues and the result was a very rapid weight gain of 20-30 pounds, which in my case was a net positive, plus I just feel much better.
In the case of last year's London bombings, I recall that the cell phones were used as timers, not even remote triggers. No cell phone service was required, just the alarm function.
As others have said, the information is available elsewhere, sometimes more detailed, but usually in a less convient form. The satellite companies are the obvious place to filter out sensitive areas. I believe Israel has or had deals limiting the satellite resolution of the entire country.
If the best resolution imagery comes from aerial photography anyway, that's much easier for a country to regulate. I mean, Dick Cheney just got a special 1-mile no-fly-zone created for his new home outside of DC--even when he's not there (because the FAA has nothing better to do than protect gov't officials personal property...).
More to the point, this sounds a lot like India has never considered that someone might fly a spy plane or UAV over a sensitive area. If you just blur or blue-dot the sensitive areas on Google Earth, that gives you a pretty good idea of which areas are most important and you can then go look directly. Better to hide in plain sight, or underground.
You would think that a nuclear power would have gained some sophistication in their defensive planning, but perhaps not.
So if the Iraqi merchant you're interrogating shoots off a bit of witty repartee, you'll know which way to roll and aim your gun?
I presume by "virtual cave" the poster refers to the CAVE (CAVE Audio Video Environment), which is essentially a small room where most or all walls show computer-generated imagery (rather than using, say, a head-mounted display). I imagine USC has one or two for research purposes.
However, there's nothing in the article, the press release, or associated video clip to indicate this has anything to do with the language training. It all seems to be happening on a standard computer monitor. I'm a big advocate of CAVEs for all sorts of things, but I'm not sure what price-performance advantage it would have for language training.
Microsoft is soon releasing a Universal Patch(tm) for all its software: Duct Tape. Just apply the patch directly to your hard disk surface and/or monitor screen and all will be well.
(That ought to shut DHS up for a while... How much of the Duct Tape business does Bush own again?)
Yeah. I understood that. The only question I have is how tightly-coupled the projector and screen need to be; i.e., how narrow those frequency ranges are across different brands and models.
I'm sure any projector that splits the white light into red, green, and blue channels and recombines on output could be fitted with the right combination of dichromatic mirrors and polarizing filters, but I don't know what the variance is among these from brand to brand.
I had enough trouble trying to replace a simple red/clear plastic polarizer sheet that melted in my old LCD projector... It still shoots purple images to this day...
While this screen sounds very cool, people with very bright projectors have been projecting on "black" surfaces, even black velvet, for a long time. It results in amazing colors and high apparent contrast _if_ you have an extremely bright lamp to overcome the absorption.
I, on the other hand, took the opposite approach-- a $50 screen made of plain 300 count white bedsheet (king size) stretched tight over a thin wood frame. Better than any $500 screen I've seen, but I'd love to see this new one in action.
True about the I/O problem, but you seem to be assuming you need all of the data up front.
Ignoring the art security issue (which is present either way), having the distributed client fetch data as needed would cut bandwidth tremendously while only adding an additional wait on the client, which may not hurt anyone.
An example of this is Keyhole's Earthviewer, which pulls only the imagery it needs, but does so from a 10 TB database quickly enough to roam anywhere on earth in real-time (16 ms frame-render times). Realtime graphics has many tools and techniques that non-realtime rendering can use to predict and optimize I/O for this purpose.
...but backwards. The Bush administration's goal is to LOSE all its pieces, since pieces require taxes to maintain.
So Bush puts out this obvious new gambit which, if successful, will cause NASA to saceifice its REAL pieces for some highly SPECULATIVE ones (if you can just get your pawn to the other side of the board, we have a shiny new queen for you...)
NASA is playing the game as best it can (with the required level of public-facing loyalty), saying, in effect, 'Okay, then take my Knight,' knowing the public outcry that will follow.
And why is anyone surprised? The Republican M.O. has changed over the last 50 years from direct opposition to government programs to a deceitful and suicidal kind of support for them. "Sure, we'll run up the deficit to 25% of the GDP -- that way we won't have any choice but to cut government! (except for our buddies companies who live off gvt handouts)..."
ABB