I agree. I used to drive only the main north-south and east-west streets to get places, like pretty much everyone else in our city does. Ever since getting sat-nav, I challenge myself to take the road less traveled, often cutting through neighborhoods in a twisty path I never would have been able to muster without sat-nav. I find this to be less stressful, plus I get to take in the flavor of local neighborhoods I never would have seen otherwise. And I always feel free to totally disregard the directions, trying a new road on my own, knowing that the GPS will help get me out of a bind if I get lost.
So, it believe it is true that if you blindly follow the directions, GPS can make you dumber. But if you use GPS as an aid for exploration, it can actually make you *much* more aware of your surroundings. I just wish GPSes had features that enabled and encouraged such exploration. For example, it would be really nice if the GPS would not pick a route for me, but would visually indicate for me which routes I could chose from. Perhaps, for example, individual roads on the map could be color coded: green for the most direct route, yellow for the non-direct routes, and red for dead-end roads. This would give me a choice at each juncture as to which turn to take.
The display technology has nothing to do with the form factor. My bet is that the Kindle DX 2, or whatever they call it, will have a PixelQi display and will cost much less than current model.
Actually, everything from those videos indicate that this is a drop in replacement for existing LCD displays and that it can be easily manufactured. Like was mentioned in the video, this technology was specifically designed for fast implementation without rocking the boat. Big difference from eInk, which requires different manufacturing technology. There is nothing keeping PixelQi technology from totally taking over the LCD market in a very disruptive fashion. This will probably happen very fast, much faster then the agonizingly slow switch from CRTs to LCDs which took place in the last decade.
I think the prospect for e-Ink technology looks very bad right now. Their only chance to survive against Pixel Qi is if they can come up with a day-light readable color e-Ink display really fast, because that's the Achilles heel for Mary Lou's display.
They don't want to dissolve the knob... do you have any idea how much the "knob that grounded the shuttle" will fetch on eBay? Enough for one or two more Hubble repair missions, at least.
Does the form say anything about not changing your password? I suppose one could write down their passwords, and then since those accounts were compromised, immediately change the password when you got home. They can't possibly make you sign something forbidding you from changing your password.... or can they?
The article does not explain whether zinc in general causes you to loose your ability to smell, or whether it is that putting zinc up your nose causes you to loose the ability smell. In the interest of science, I will perform a scientific experiment with Cold-Eeze lozenges, which unlike Zicam, are typically taken orally. Here I have two Cold-Eeze lozenges and a bottle of perfume. *stuffs one lozenge into each nostril* *takes a whiff of the perfume* How very interesting, I can't smell a thi... gasp! *collapses of axphyxia* Conclusion: Zinc can cause premature death, when stuffed into nose.
So, in other words, we extract moisture from the air to drink, so that the air becomes drier and you then have to drink more to make up for the moisture you are now loosing more rapidly through evaporation?
I can imagine walking up to the "moisture vacuum" around these things and instantly crumpling into a pruned-up mummy.
I always figured this would be the ideal way to make a paper thin Microsoft Surface like interface. No need for rear-projection and a rear-view camera. Not sure whether this can be made cheaper than the capacitative touch surface on, say, an iPhone, but I imagine with time it will be as cheap as active-matrix LCD displays are. Afterall, you already have transistors to drive the pixels, might as well add some photodiodes in there as well for sensing.
The posting said "it could cost at least $200". So, although it could cost $200, it could also cost $2,000 or maybe even $20,000. In other words, that wasn't the most useful bit of information to begin with:)
He spends a lot of time in that novel describing a world where augmented reality and total interconnectedness makes our day-to-day living into an ginourmous Second Life-esque, instant-messaging, avatar-riddled inferno.
I found it to be a difficult book to get through, because I kept thinking to myself, I don't believe people will be so banal as to take such incredible technology and make it into something so frivolous and pointless.
But, then I realize, it has already happened, and it's naive to think it won't happen again.
I had so much WiFi interference in my condo that I was only able to watch Netflix at the lowest quality, plus YouTube videos would buffer all the time. I tried a Netgear XE102 and now I can watch Netflix at full-res, and YouTube works great. It doesn't work on every outlet though.
I guess this can't be perfect, but there might be ways to improve it. For instance, one could combine it with motion detection and refuse to authenticate if the source image was perfectly steady. This would force the attacker to use video.
Or, they could use eye-tracking and move a dot around the screen in some pattern, only authenticating if the user was fixating on the dot. This would prevent the attacker from using a video recording.
I drove through Toronto last September on vacation in a rental car, and nearly three months later received a bill in the mail. $4.75 in toll, and $8.93 in bogus "service" fees. I was pissed.
I agree, the toll roads aren't well marked and the bill totally came out of the blue. I much rather go through a toll booth, where it is painfully obvious it's going to cost me money, and I have an option of turning around!
Here's a shot of my Mac Plus wishing the Macintosh a happy birthday. Sorry for the grainy shot, this is a really crappy web cam I had in my rubbish pile!
This is a Mac Plus which I grew up with and restored to working order about a year ago (by replacing a busted electrolytic cap). I also upgraded it to 4MB of RAM, added an external SCSI hard disk, an Iomega Zip drive, and loaded up System 7 on it. I slapped together the birthday greeting in HyperCard 1.2.5:)
As a tribute to the Mac's birthday, I just powered up my old Mac Plus, which I grew up with, and made a birthday card for it in HyperCard. I wish I hadn't lended out my digital camera, as this is totally a Kodak moment that I wish I could save for posterity.
Plus, without photographic evidence, nobody is gonna believe I'm enough of a nerd to actually have a working Mac Plus lying around.
I blame it on my continuous speech recognition (CSR) software, which has ubiquitously replaced my keyboard. That, and a lack of artificial intelligence on my part.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I used to drive only the main north-south and east-west streets to get places, like pretty much everyone else in our city does. Ever since getting sat-nav, I challenge myself to take the road less traveled, often cutting through neighborhoods in a twisty path I never would have been able to muster without sat-nav. I find this to be less stressful, plus I get to take in the flavor of local neighborhoods I never would have seen otherwise. And I always feel free to totally disregard the directions, trying a new road on my own, knowing that the GPS will help get me out of a bind if I get lost.
So, it believe it is true that if you blindly follow the directions, GPS can make you dumber. But if you use GPS as an aid for exploration, it can actually make you *much* more aware of your surroundings. I just wish GPSes had features that enabled and encouraged such exploration. For example, it would be really nice if the GPS would not pick a route for me, but would visually indicate for me which routes I could chose from. Perhaps, for example, individual roads on the map could be color coded: green for the most direct route, yellow for the non-direct routes, and red for dead-end roads. This would give me a choice at each juncture as to which turn to take.
Beware of the kids selling red Kool-Aid by the side of the road on a rainy day...
The display technology has nothing to do with the form factor. My bet is that the Kindle DX 2, or whatever they call it, will have a PixelQi display and will cost much less than current model.
Actually, everything from those videos indicate that this is a drop in replacement for existing LCD displays and that it can be easily manufactured. Like was mentioned in the video, this technology was specifically designed for fast implementation without rocking the boat. Big difference from eInk, which requires different manufacturing technology. There is nothing keeping PixelQi technology from totally taking over the LCD market in a very disruptive fashion. This will probably happen very fast, much faster then the agonizingly slow switch from CRTs to LCDs which took place in the last decade.
I think the prospect for e-Ink technology looks very bad right now. Their only chance to survive against Pixel Qi is if they can come up with a day-light readable color e-Ink display really fast, because that's the Achilles heel for Mary Lou's display.
They don't want to dissolve the knob... do you have any idea how much the "knob that grounded the shuttle" will fetch on eBay? Enough for one or two more Hubble repair missions, at least.
Does the form say anything about not changing your password? I suppose one could write down their passwords, and then since those accounts were compromised, immediately change the password when you got home. They can't possibly make you sign something forbidding you from changing your password.... or can they?
The article does not explain whether zinc in general causes you to loose your ability to smell, or whether it is that putting zinc up your nose causes you to loose the ability smell. In the interest of science, I will perform a scientific experiment with Cold-Eeze lozenges, which unlike Zicam, are typically taken orally. Here I have two Cold-Eeze lozenges and a bottle of perfume.
*stuffs one lozenge into each nostril*
*takes a whiff of the perfume*
How very interesting, I can't smell a thi... gasp!
*collapses of axphyxia*
Conclusion: Zinc can cause premature death, when stuffed into nose.
So, in other words, we extract moisture from the air to drink, so that the air becomes drier and you then have to drink more to make up for the moisture you are now loosing more rapidly through evaporation?
I can imagine walking up to the "moisture vacuum" around these things and instantly crumpling into a pruned-up mummy.
I always figured this would be the ideal way to make a paper thin Microsoft Surface like interface. No need for rear-projection and a rear-view camera. Not sure whether this can be made cheaper than the capacitative touch surface on, say, an iPhone, but I imagine with time it will be as cheap as active-matrix LCD displays are. Afterall, you already have transistors to drive the pixels, might as well add some photodiodes in there as well for sensing.
Since when are 2 GB Flash drives considered small enough to shoot at? Mine is still 512MBs
The posting said "it could cost at least $200". So, although it could cost $200, it could also cost $2,000 or maybe even $20,000. In other words, that wasn't the most useful bit of information to begin with :)
Would you like an Oracle database with that?
I've downloaded it for future reading. Thanks for the tip.
Well, sometimes IT professionals refer to people by their component parts too. For example:
"That dick from accounting just fubared the laser printer by feeding regular transparancies into it."
Reading through that article made me think of the novel "Rainbow's End" by Vernor Vinge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
He spends a lot of time in that novel describing a world where augmented reality and total interconnectedness makes our day-to-day living into an ginourmous Second Life-esque, instant-messaging, avatar-riddled inferno.
I found it to be a difficult book to get through, because I kept thinking to myself, I don't believe people will be so banal as to take such incredible technology and make it into something so frivolous and pointless.
But, then I realize, it has already happened, and it's naive to think it won't happen again.
-- Marcio
...just as the prophet Kurzweil hath writ.
Robots ... can work for long periods of time in utterly hostile environments with little to no supervision.
Tell that to my Roomba.
I had so much WiFi interference in my condo that I was only able to watch Netflix at the lowest quality, plus YouTube videos would buffer all the time. I tried a Netgear XE102 and now I can watch Netflix at full-res, and YouTube works great. It doesn't work on every outlet though.
I guess this can't be perfect, but there might be ways to improve it. For instance, one could combine it with motion detection and refuse to authenticate if the source image was perfectly steady. This would force the attacker to use video. Or, they could use eye-tracking and move a dot around the screen in some pattern, only authenticating if the user was fixating on the dot. This would prevent the attacker from using a video recording.
I drove through Toronto last September on vacation in a rental car, and nearly three months later received a bill in the mail. $4.75 in toll, and $8.93 in bogus "service" fees. I was pissed. I agree, the toll roads aren't well marked and the bill totally came out of the blue. I much rather go through a toll booth, where it is painfully obvious it's going to cost me money, and I have an option of turning around!
Here's a shot of my Mac Plus wishing the Macintosh a happy birthday. Sorry for the grainy shot, this is a really crappy web cam I had in my rubbish pile!
Mac Plus Birthday Card
This is a Mac Plus which I grew up with and restored to working order about a year ago (by replacing a busted electrolytic cap). I also upgraded it to 4MB of RAM, added an external SCSI hard disk, an Iomega Zip drive, and loaded up System 7 on it. I slapped together the birthday greeting in HyperCard 1.2.5 :)
As a tribute to the Mac's birthday, I just powered up my old Mac Plus, which I grew up with, and made a birthday card for it in HyperCard. I wish I hadn't lended out my digital camera, as this is totally a Kodak moment that I wish I could save for posterity. Plus, without photographic evidence, nobody is gonna believe I'm enough of a nerd to actually have a working Mac Plus lying around.
A trillion calculations per second on a home computer, eh?
According to wikipedia, the ATI Radeon HD4800 series acheives one teraflop. So, I would say Kurzweil was right on the mark on that one.
...the emergency of digital objects...
I blame it on my continuous speech recognition (CSR) software, which has ubiquitously replaced my keyboard. That, and a lack of artificial intelligence on my part.