Yeah, but directors won't use greater than 24 FPS. It doesn't look "thematic" anymore. I hate watching battle sequences in movies because of this. It's like, there's a lot of action going on, but you can't see any of it because it's happening at 24 fps so it's just a big blur. I know that most LCD monitors/drivers only go up to 60Hz now. I wish they would consider enabling 85Hz with the 2ms monitors, but that probably won't happen.
I think hydrogen would be great for airships used for cargo transport or unmanned operations. It should really come down to economics and insurance considerations. If you're launching an unmanned surveillance airship, who's really going to be at risk if it burns up (it wouldn't explode). I think the "safety" of a lot of technologies (nuclear, etc.) will definitely be re-evaluated once energy prices get ridiculously expensive.
Heck, why can't they even use a non-flammable helium/hydrogen mixture? The cost of mixing these gases accurately would be pretty marginal and it would be just as non-flammable, greater lift, and less expensive.
I know most of my friends still don't care about the difference between DVD and HD quality, how on earth are you going to convince people that they need 2160p and 48 fps? I think trying to standardize long term on 1080p for everything is going to be hard enough.
I'm just curious how much energy the SETI project has used with zero results thus far. Is the amount of resources and time they are contributing to this cause really worth the incalculable chance they get a signal from an alien civilization? Having millions of PC's running at 100% doing pattern searching seems like a huge waste of energy. I'll run distributed clients myself like folding@home that actually have research results. Usually, only during the winter though (since electric heat is my only option anyway).
Yeah, but the iPhone can play YouTube content. It's pretty sad when you have a system with watts of power available, 80GB hard drive and 512MB of RAM that can't even do that.
2. Waiting to retype a password doesn't increase security at all. If you're password isn't strong enough and can be guessed by high speed brute force, it's useless to begin with and no amount of "waiting" before an attacker retypes it will help (which they wouldn't, they'd use an automated program on a secondary machine).
4. I don't understand periodically changing your password. Does someone have your current password and they won't use it now, but they may try after 6 months, so you better change it every so often just in case? Is someone trying to crack your weak encryption and they'll be done in 6 months 1 day so better change it just in case?
2 and 4 are primary reasons why users write passwords down. STOP USING THESE POLICIES and maybe people won't have to write passwords down (humans have limited memory, don't make things harder on them).
Speaking of altamont pass, I was up on a hill nearby a few days ago and it was like 30MPH winds. At least enough to knock you down. Every single windmill was STOPPED. I'm guessing it's some stupid thing to protect migratory birds, because they were certainly wasting a lot of potential electricity generation.
Sensationalism... Global warming doesn't kill fish. Fishing kills fish. Proper resource management is needed for any renewable good so that it doesn't become exhausted.
Local privately run computer stores pretty much don't exist in U.S. for the most part. If they do, the prices they charge are much higher (20% or more) for a similar priced item. In fact, some of the big retailers like Best Buy are even more expensive than online outlets such as Newegg.com and Amazon.com by another 20% or so.
It really comes down to bulk purchasing power and efficient distribution systems. In the long run, there is no way a small local computer shop is going to have the item you want. In the end, I think the online retailers are probably more environmentally efficient distribution wise since it takes much less gas for a UPS driver to deliver door to door, than it does for you to drive all the way to the shopping center to pick up that same good.
As far as computer repair, I find that most people know a friend or a friend-of-a-friend who knows enough about computers to do the repair work for free.
If there are companies that recover data, how come we never hear about them in Slashdot articles? It would seem relevant to this audience.
I think because most people on slashdot are smart enough to make backups? Data recovery services are
really more for the HR type people who dropped their laptop in the parking garage while on a business trip on outsourcing.
That's not too surprising. There isn't anything in a memory stick that a detergent can really eat away. It's just a few chips soldered to a small circuit board. I wouldn't be surprised if they did injection molding on some of those USB sticks too. Would be almost completely waterproof.
That's kind of odd for a solid state system. An industrial memory card can easily withstand much greater shock than falling to the ground (1G force right). I'm assuming some engineer just strapped a regular consumer grade digital camcorder on the thing?
This is mechanically impressive, but as far as software and electronics are concerned, it's really not much more than a player piano. I mean, they feed it in some scripted sequence of movements and it plays it right? I'm certain there are plenty of non-humanoid industrial robots on the market that could be scripted to perform this same task easily.
The question is, why aren't they doing more to make robots self aware? We are still in the stone ages of AI. The only thing I've seen come closed to impressing me is the DARPA grand challenge. What they really need to do is team up Japanese robotics experts with outside researchers to fully utilize these robotic platforms.
As a young person who's talked to a ham radio operator at work about the subject at work, I find the lack of innovation in the area a turn off. I still think we should be looking into the future instead of support the old waste of dedicated bandwidth of ham radio operators (and cellphone companies, TV stations, and government agencies). Since we have things like digital audio/video compression, software defined radios, mesh network works, packet routing etc... a lot more efficient use of these frequencies could be utilized by the general public if they would open them up to organizations like IEEE so they could be utilized as 802.11 has for 2.4GHz.
We have to stop thinking of frequency bands as precious resources to be auctioned and cordoned off, and start thinking of them as channels that can be defined in software and re-allocated and prioritized based on use. We're not talking about transistor radios from the 1960's anymore.
I highly doubt they are going to sell these to power "25,000" homes. It's more likely they will be purchased by city governments, military, or large corporations that require continuous power. Just imagine if instead of having to install a massive diesel generator you could just have your critical systems powered continuously from this nuclear device and still have the grid power available if you need it.
Actually, DC systems in cars will probably go up from 12V in the future. The main reason is to reduce wire size in the vehicle, thus reducing weight and cost. DC/DC converters are so efficient now that the input voltage isn't really much of an issue.
Is thought still legal over there in the UK? I mean gosh, they already go around with TV scanners to make sure you're paying your TV tax. They might as well make sure you're paying for your internet too like a good UK citizen.
Yeah, but video on demand isn't going to happen for another 10 or more years. Remember, 1080p is something like 40mbps. Comcast currently tops of at around 6mbps. Just imagine the bandwidth comcast would need for even 20% of it's customers all streaming 40mbps on a Friday night for 2 hours. They would also need a multitude of servers that could handle streaming all that data out.
The per-user cost of the routers, servers, and set-top boxes has got to be well over twice as much as a blu-ray or HD-DVD player is now. I'm not saying it won't happen, it's just not there yet and I don't see cable companies as smart enough to figure it out.
I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. As someone who doesn't spend much time editing articles, it just seems a bit much to have several little warning boxes above each page about things that need to be improved without actually doing any of the work. Most people who are just readers of wikipedia don't benefit from all these little warnings and it makes the website somewhat less inviting.
Yeah, I've noticed wikipedia is becoming more like that lately. Like, someone thinks it's their duty to go through every article and say "trivia sections are discouraged" or other nonsense little warnings that don't contribute anything to the article. All because it's some inside knowledge that they think they are so great they know all these "rules" about wikipedia and try to make you follow them.
Because, most people in the U.S. feel guilty about their successes and they want to feel good about their lives thinking they "changed the world". It's not a zero sum game. Because we produce wealth, does not mean we are deny it to others. No one appreciates the U.S., European, etc. engineers who help design a consumer product that employees millions of people rapidly industrializing countries (China, India etc...).
Of course if you make a few hundred of these wind generator things if you think that would be a good _business_ go for it. But don't think you'll solve the developing world's energy problems.
It's funny, they create this advanced technology to scan "business cards" when people should just figure out how to transfer their entire contact information by IR or bluetooth. Another solution looking for a problem. If people can't figure out how to do something as simple as an IR transfer from their cellphone, then how the heck are they going to figure out how to scan a business card, run OCR, make edits/fixes, and import that into outlook?
I mean, aren't all online retailers doing exactly the same thing? Selling stuff. You have a database of stuff. Different fields, etc... you just plop them in a template. So you have a regular website template and one for disability. Is that so hard? The only problem is, that people don't think about these things upfront and it leads to bad design.
Which makes me think, do they have standards documents for creating a disability accessible website? What all is involved? And what about amazon's "look inside" function? There is no way a text to speech algorithm can read those books because they are images.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but directors won't use greater than 24 FPS. It doesn't look "thematic" anymore. I hate watching battle sequences in movies because of this. It's like, there's a lot of action going on, but you can't see any of it because it's happening at 24 fps so it's just a big blur. I know that most LCD monitors/drivers only go up to 60Hz now. I wish they would consider enabling 85Hz with the 2ms monitors, but that probably won't happen.
I think hydrogen would be great for airships used for cargo transport or unmanned operations. It should really come down to economics and insurance considerations. If you're launching an unmanned surveillance airship, who's really going to be at risk if it burns up (it wouldn't explode). I think the "safety" of a lot of technologies (nuclear, etc.) will definitely be re-evaluated once energy prices get ridiculously expensive.
Heck, why can't they even use a non-flammable helium/hydrogen mixture? The cost of mixing these gases accurately would be pretty marginal and it would be just as non-flammable, greater lift, and less expensive.
I know most of my friends still don't care about the difference between DVD and HD quality, how on earth are you going to convince people that they need 2160p and 48 fps? I think trying to standardize long term on 1080p for everything is going to be hard enough.
I'm just curious how much energy the SETI project has used with zero results thus far. Is the amount of resources and time they are contributing to this cause really worth the incalculable chance they get a signal from an alien civilization? Having millions of PC's running at 100% doing pattern searching seems like a huge waste of energy. I'll run distributed clients myself like folding@home that actually have research results. Usually, only during the winter though (since electric heat is my only option anyway).
Yeah, but the iPhone can play YouTube content. It's pretty sad when you have a system with watts of power available, 80GB hard drive and 512MB of RAM that can't even do that.
2. Waiting to retype a password doesn't increase security at all. If you're password isn't strong enough and can be guessed by high speed brute force, it's useless to begin with and no amount of "waiting" before an attacker retypes it will help (which they wouldn't, they'd use an automated program on a secondary machine).
4. I don't understand periodically changing your password. Does someone have your current password and they won't use it now, but they may try after 6 months, so you better change it every so often just in case? Is someone trying to crack your weak encryption and they'll be done in 6 months 1 day so better change it just in case?
2 and 4 are primary reasons why users write passwords down. STOP USING THESE POLICIES and maybe people won't have to write passwords down (humans have limited memory, don't make things harder on them).
Speaking of altamont pass, I was up on a hill nearby a few days ago and it was like 30MPH winds. At least enough to knock you down. Every single windmill was STOPPED. I'm guessing it's some stupid thing to protect migratory birds, because they were certainly wasting a lot of potential electricity generation.
Sensationalism... Global warming doesn't kill fish. Fishing kills fish. Proper resource management is needed for any renewable good so that it doesn't become exhausted.
Local privately run computer stores pretty much don't exist in U.S. for the most part. If they do, the prices they charge are much higher (20% or more) for a similar priced item. In fact, some of the big retailers like Best Buy are even more expensive than online outlets such as Newegg.com and Amazon.com by another 20% or so.
It really comes down to bulk purchasing power and efficient distribution systems. In the long run, there is no way a small local computer shop is going to have the item you want. In the end, I think the online retailers are probably more environmentally efficient distribution wise since it takes much less gas for a UPS driver to deliver door to door, than it does for you to drive all the way to the shopping center to pick up that same good.
As far as computer repair, I find that most people know a friend or a friend-of-a-friend who knows enough about computers to do the repair work for free.
that's what i thought. I guess it's a function of how fast the payload was going, and how long it takes it to crash once it hits ground.
If there are companies that recover data, how come we never hear about them in Slashdot articles? It would seem relevant to this audience.
I think because most people on slashdot are smart enough to make backups? Data recovery services are really more for the HR type people who dropped their laptop in the parking garage while on a business trip on outsourcing.
That's not too surprising. There isn't anything in a memory stick that a detergent can really eat away. It's just a few chips soldered to a small circuit board. I wouldn't be surprised if they did injection molding on some of those USB sticks too. Would be almost completely waterproof.
That's kind of odd for a solid state system. An industrial memory card can easily withstand much greater shock than falling to the ground (1G force right). I'm assuming some engineer just strapped a regular consumer grade digital camcorder on the thing?
This is mechanically impressive, but as far as software and electronics are concerned, it's really not much more than a player piano. I mean, they feed it in some scripted sequence of movements and it plays it right? I'm certain there are plenty of non-humanoid industrial robots on the market that could be scripted to perform this same task easily.
The question is, why aren't they doing more to make robots self aware? We are still in the stone ages of AI. The only thing I've seen come closed to impressing me is the DARPA grand challenge. What they really need to do is team up Japanese robotics experts with outside researchers to fully utilize these robotic platforms.
As a young person who's talked to a ham radio operator at work about the subject at work, I find the lack of innovation in the area a turn off. I still think we should be looking into the future instead of support the old waste of dedicated bandwidth of ham radio operators (and cellphone companies, TV stations, and government agencies). Since we have things like digital audio/video compression, software defined radios, mesh network works, packet routing etc... a lot more efficient use of these frequencies could be utilized by the general public if they would open them up to organizations like IEEE so they could be utilized as 802.11 has for 2.4GHz.
We have to stop thinking of frequency bands as precious resources to be auctioned and cordoned off, and start thinking of them as channels that can be defined in software and re-allocated and prioritized based on use. We're not talking about transistor radios from the 1960's anymore.
I highly doubt they are going to sell these to power "25,000" homes. It's more likely they will be purchased by city governments, military, or large corporations that require continuous power. Just imagine if instead of having to install a massive diesel generator you could just have your critical systems powered continuously from this nuclear device and still have the grid power available if you need it.
Actually, DC systems in cars will probably go up from 12V in the future. The main reason is to reduce wire size in the vehicle, thus reducing weight and cost. DC/DC converters are so efficient now that the input voltage isn't really much of an issue.
Is thought still legal over there in the UK? I mean gosh, they already go around with TV scanners to make sure you're paying your TV tax. They might as well make sure you're paying for your internet too like a good UK citizen.
Yeah, but video on demand isn't going to happen for another 10 or more years. Remember, 1080p is something like 40mbps. Comcast currently tops of at around 6mbps. Just imagine the bandwidth comcast would need for even 20% of it's customers all streaming 40mbps on a Friday night for 2 hours. They would also need a multitude of servers that could handle streaming all that data out.
The per-user cost of the routers, servers, and set-top boxes has got to be well over twice as much as a blu-ray or HD-DVD player is now. I'm not saying it won't happen, it's just not there yet and I don't see cable companies as smart enough to figure it out.
I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. As someone who doesn't spend much time editing articles, it just seems a bit much to have several little warning boxes above each page about things that need to be improved without actually doing any of the work. Most people who are just readers of wikipedia don't benefit from all these little warnings and it makes the website somewhat less inviting.
Yeah, I've noticed wikipedia is becoming more like that lately. Like, someone thinks it's their duty to go through every article and say "trivia sections are discouraged" or other nonsense little warnings that don't contribute anything to the article. All because it's some inside knowledge that they think they are so great they know all these "rules" about wikipedia and try to make you follow them.
How many people will use a picture password of a stick man, tree, or a happy sun?
Because, most people in the U.S. feel guilty about their successes and they want to feel good about their lives thinking they "changed the world". It's not a zero sum game. Because we produce wealth, does not mean we are deny it to others. No one appreciates the U.S., European, etc. engineers who help design a consumer product that employees millions of people rapidly industrializing countries (China, India etc...).
Of course if you make a few hundred of these wind generator things if you think that would be a good _business_ go for it. But don't think you'll solve the developing world's energy problems.
It's funny, they create this advanced technology to scan "business cards" when people should just figure out how to transfer their entire contact information by IR or bluetooth. Another solution looking for a problem. If people can't figure out how to do something as simple as an IR transfer from their cellphone, then how the heck are they going to figure out how to scan a business card, run OCR, make edits/fixes, and import that into outlook?
I mean, aren't all online retailers doing exactly the same thing? Selling stuff. You have a database of stuff. Different fields, etc... you just plop them in a template. So you have a regular website template and one for disability. Is that so hard? The only problem is, that people don't think about these things upfront and it leads to bad design.
Which makes me think, do they have standards documents for creating a disability accessible website? What all is involved? And what about amazon's "look inside" function? There is no way a text to speech algorithm can read those books because they are images.