Given that it does not track your movements until your fingers are touching (or at least really really close to) the countertop, it's a very specific and limited tracking system. Just because the countertop itself is not actively involved in the process doesn't mean it's not touch - there is tactile feedback with this. =Smidge=
I'm not talking about either one. I threw out an idea for a totally different device that combines aspects of several other devices - one of which being Hitachi's short-throw projection optics - to make something that is unique, portable and useful to the point where shadow issues are easily overlooked by the user. I really don't see anything in the wording of my original post that suggested otherwise.
Maybe you're just not used to being presented with more than one opinion at a time? Does looking at a design problem from more than one perspective confuse you? =Smidge=
Yes, they DO talk about two different things... that's why I made them seperate paragraphs.
My first comment was in direct reply to the parent. The current setup is not that portable, and using two projectors would be even less so - not only because it's twice the equipment, but because they would have to be carefully aligned and spaced. And you would still have "shadows" in that setup - areas of the display that are half as bright.
My second paragraph was my own comment that a shadow is not a big deal for a compact, portable, "use anywhere" device. =Smidge=
Or do what other multitouch systems do - rear projection. The short-throw projector still has an advantage because it allows the table to be thinner.
The only way this would be truly unique is if you combine the short-throw projector optics with those pocket-sized projectors and have the motion sensing cameras built into the same unit as well... then you would literally have a pocket-sized, large area multitouch interface that could be used on any surface.
Does anyone know if someone's gotten multitouch input to work with AutoCAD? An "interactive" drafting table is something I've wanted to build for years... =Smidge=
That is not an artile. That is a blog entry that copy and pasted a paragraph and stole a photo from an article. This is the article. Notice the difference: The blog contains a whopping 13 words, none of which actually relate to the story. The article, on the other hand, is a full page with lots of information and in-context quotes.
Everything I said here applies yet again. If the purpose of the Internet is to serve as an open forum for disseminating information, then the typical blog is the antithesis of that purpose; the worst thing to happen to the Internet since AOL. =Smidge=
Not to excuse them, but at least it's a different article on a different website, and at least it's not another worthless copy+paste blog "article" from over a year ago. This dupe is pretty high standard compared to some.
Moving the mouse counts as a step? Holy shit... maybe you should include "breathing" and "blinking" as steps too, just in case.
I bet setting up a bluetooth mouse on a Mac is so easy, you don't even have to take it out of the box! I'm sure as soon as it detects a Mac in the area, it unpacks and configures itself just before filing your tax returns, washing your car and sucking you off...
Still waiting for an answer about that network drive. =Smidge=
Actually I'd say the starting point for US cars is around 100HP, 4 cylinder.
Also worth mentioning is that, just because it supposedly gets 54 MPG, it still may not meet emissions requirements in most US states. The article does not say what emissions control systems, if any, are present. Catalytic converter? Crankcase ventilation? Fuel vapor recycling?
You're doing that "windos" thing again. I'm afraid I'll never be able to take you seriously if you insist on doing that.
So you think OSX / Linux is more intuitive than Windows? I can also tell you how many steps it takes to install a Bluetooth mouse in windows, but unlike you I'll actually give a number: 3. The first is to plug in the USB adapter, and the second and third are to click "OK"/"Next" on the "New Hardware" dialog and the one telling you the driver isn't signed. (You may not even get the new hardware dialog in XP)
So how many steps does it take to mount a drive shared over a network so that it remounts automatically at login in OSX or Linux? Either is fine. If it's more than 3 you lose to Windows. =Smidge=
And, for the record, I'm an Apple fanboy, not a Linux fanboy.
Then I apologize and retract portions of my comment. The "juvenile software ideology" part stays, though, perhaps moreso.
The last time I spent any amount of time fighting with my computer to get it working was, amusingly, trying to get the network/internet working on a copy of OSX Leopard (x86) I installed in a VMWare environment. Granted that's a special case, but my Windows system never gives me problems. This is because, like you and your favorite OS, I know how to set things up the way I like it and then everything works fine from there on out.
More than two cores. 2K supports up to 2 CPUs and does not distinguish between CPU sockets and multi-core packages. By the current cycle of things, my Core 2 Duo system will "need replacing" by about 2010. I'll see where things stand when the time comes.
What do I need that Linux doesn't provide? Hmm. The biggest item on the list is AutoCAD Building Systems, currently 2008 version. (Wine doesn't cut it, BTW.) Without that I don't get a paycheck, so once that's settled we can discuss the other software I need/want.
I'd also like to reinforce the fact that I am NOT defending Windows on the XO. It's an amazingly stupid idea no matter how you slice it. =Smidge=
Perhaps your definition of "use" isn't typical. For the vast majority of people, "usable" means they get their work done at the end of the day.
A configuration of Linux does not exist that satisfies everything I require of a computer. Windows does. Windows 2000 Professional specifically, though if I upgrade to anything with more than 2 CPU cores I'll be forced to go at least as far as XP Pro. If it was possible to make Linux do everything I need and want to do with my computer then I'd probably use it, and to those whose needs are met by it I extend my best regards.
All your bitching and moaning does absolutely nothing to make Linux half the OS you believe it is. This doesn't mean I'm a Microsoft fanboy or think Windows is the best thing ever... it certainly has its problems and so does Linux. Franky, though, your type of juvenile software ideology can eat a bowl of dicks.
Also, are you deliberately misspelling "windows" or are you just retarded?
That said: unless Microsoft is going to subsidize the costs of the hardware - not even offering the OS for free, but actually PAYING OLPC for doing this - then OLPC is going to get anally raped by the whole deal some time in the very near future. =Smidge=
Aha. The article says 0.02ms response time not refresh rate. Very different measurement there. The incorrect summary fogged my mind when reading the article... 0.02ms response time is slightly more believable.... not my much though. It's about 100x faster than current consumer-grade units (2-3ms).
I noticed the seams too. It's actually a tad unreasonable to actually make one huge curved LCD panel... manufacturing alone would be a challange.
It may be an effect of the video camera, though, that makes it look so noticible. You know how LCD panels look offcolor and dim when viewed from an angle... so if you are sitting the proper distance from the unit, all the panels would be facing directly at you and it might look very nice.
What gets me is the "0.02ms refresh" thing. 0.00002 second refresh rate? 50,000Hz refresh? Really? I'd believe a 2.0ms (100Hz) refresh rate, but 50kHz - if that's even possible - is wildly impractical. Anything more than the game's rendering FPS is technically a waste. =Smidge=
Since the average Windows user is probably buying a brand name PC, there is no excuse for not enabling the BIOS MBR protection at the factory. Those who are smart enough to install their own OS are *probably* smart enough to notice the warnign and turn it off themselves.
Uh, yeah. You might want to do a little searching before you call me a member of some "atheist kumbaya." I made that post (and this one) because I think it's important to distance passionate athiests like myself from militant dickheads like you.
Clearly the "quick jokes" (which you didn't hesitate to expand into multi-paragraph essays) are wasted here. Your joke was an obvious troll and I'm sure you just couldn't wait to start shit over the word "bible" in a headline. There are plenty of opportunities to argue about religion in places where people who willing to argue are already looking to do so. It's bad enough that the jesus freaks take every opportunity to shove their bullshit superstitions in everyone's face and there's no advantage to acting the same way.
Also remember that the majority of the religious consider direct and rabid confrontation like yours to be reinforcing of their beliefs. Random bile spewing is not going to cure anyone of their delusions. If that wasn't your intention to begin with, which I suspect is what you're going to say, then you're just a run-of-the-mill non-theistic fuckwit. Have a nice day.
Go firebomb a church or something. I'm sure that'll teach 'em. =Smidge=
I'm glad you "won't get into it" because this isn't the place for such arguments.
As an athiest, I would like to thank you in advance for shutting the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look bad.
Save the anti-religion vile for a topic that's actually about religion. This topic is about a comic strip that has nothing to do with religion except to occasionally mock it, and even then such comics are few and far between.
I'll see you in the next proper religious-involved topic, and I'll probably be agreeing with most of what you say. For now, though, just... shut up already. =Smidge=
Slashdot differs from a blog in two important aspects.
First, articles are user submitted. Most blogs have one person or maybe a small group of people who add all the "news" to the site. This technically makes Slashdot a news aggregation site, not a blog.
Second, Slashdot has structured and filterable discussion. This, along with a strong and generally knowledgeable user base, ADDS VALUE to the news in the way of useful comments. A threaded discussion model enhances this greatly, over the typical "list of replies" most blogs use. In this way, a Slashdot story as a whole often becomes more than the just a headline and summary. Added value makes a difference. =Smidge=
If you want to duplicate and archive that's fine. But copy and pasting the same shit over and over with a new date is at best a lazy effort to get attention and at worst a dishonest excuse to keep the cobwebs off your otherwise worthless website. I would not criticize anyone for making a deliberate attempt to archive news, even trivial news. The "victories" of the Blogosphere are few and far between, and those victories are credited to that vanishingly small percentage of Blogs that actually do something relevant.
And that is still no excuse for not adding to it. You can copy an article verbatim and still improve it's value by making some addition to it, either as a personal comment, further research into the topic, or a retrospective analysis of the article itself.
The "Information Revolution" is more like an "Information Echo Box" - Plagarism is not revolutionary. =Smidge=
Er, that's exactly how science is supposed to work. You don't have a theory for some occurrence, so you invent an explanation, you don't have proof, so you perform experiments to get evidence.
In most science, the evidence comes FIRST. Then you try to explain it, then make predictions based on that explanation. To say you perform experiments to find evidence is misleading. Science is basically about trying to prove an idea wrong, rather than trying to find evidence that supports an idea. The whole concept of "falsifiable" relies on the idea that any valid theory can be tested and, if incorrect, be shown to be false. There is no concept of "truthifiable."
Saying reality as we know it is just a simulation is not falsifiable. That is, any outcome of any test made against it can be explained as a limitation or condition of the simulation environment. In that respect, it's truly no better than "God works in mysterious ways." There is no conceivable benchmark by which we can measure and compare the nature of our known existence that is outside of our known existence, and so there is no difference between "real reality" and "simulated reality."
The whole thing is little more than a protracted session of mental masturbation. Fun, but not very productive. =Smidge=
This is a problem with the "Blogosphere" in general. The vast majority (not all but certainly most) just echo news from other sources, or worse other blogs. They do not offer any insight, commentary or additional information on top of their source information. It's a crapshoot whether or not they actually write ANYTHING original rather than copy+paste.
The worst is when you have a blog linking to a blog linking to the original info. FFS people...
The net effect is old news gets constantly recycled and real news gets diluted. How many times have you seen a new blog post about something that actually happened months ago? The "9V battery contains AAAA cells" thing stands out as the most recent example for me: here (2 Jan 2008), here (9 Jan 2007), here (3 Jan 2007), here (23 Dec 2006). You have a "story" at LEAST a year old that has been copied verbatim at least four times!
Original here (No date) as far as I can tell, since all of the above blogs link to it.
Plus, all of these blogs have comment sections, which make them twice as redundant because the comments themselves also fail to add anything most of the time. If they do you'll never find them because there are so many other palces that run the same "story."
Fight the watering down of information! NEVER link to a blog unless it provides something EXTRA to the news! ALWAYS take a few minutes to get as close to the original source as possible! If you run a blog yourself, work to ADD to articles you link to - personal thoughts, additional information, insightful discussion on the topic at hand - be UNIQUE. That's how you get a readership... by having something worth reading. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
You're being way too pedantic.
Given that it does not track your movements until your fingers are touching (or at least really really close to) the countertop, it's a very specific and limited tracking system. Just because the countertop itself is not actively involved in the process doesn't mean it's not touch - there is tactile feedback with this.
=Smidge=
I'm not talking about either one. I threw out an idea for a totally different device that combines aspects of several other devices - one of which being Hitachi's short-throw projection optics - to make something that is unique, portable and useful to the point where shadow issues are easily overlooked by the user. I really don't see anything in the wording of my original post that suggested otherwise.
Maybe you're just not used to being presented with more than one opinion at a time? Does looking at a design problem from more than one perspective confuse you?
=Smidge=
Yes, they DO talk about two different things... that's why I made them seperate paragraphs.
My first comment was in direct reply to the parent. The current setup is not that portable, and using two projectors would be even less so - not only because it's twice the equipment, but because they would have to be carefully aligned and spaced. And you would still have "shadows" in that setup - areas of the display that are half as bright.
My second paragraph was my own comment that a shadow is not a big deal for a compact, portable, "use anywhere" device.
=Smidge=
Congratulations on being able to completely avoid the second paragraph of my post.
=Smidge=
Or do what other multitouch systems do - rear projection. The short-throw projector still has an advantage because it allows the table to be thinner.
The only way this would be truly unique is if you combine the short-throw projector optics with those pocket-sized projectors and have the motion sensing cameras built into the same unit as well... then you would literally have a pocket-sized, large area multitouch interface that could be used on any surface.
Does anyone know if someone's gotten multitouch input to work with AutoCAD? An "interactive" drafting table is something I've wanted to build for years...
=Smidge=
That is not an artile. That is a blog entry that copy and pasted a paragraph and stole a photo from an article. This is the article. Notice the difference: The blog contains a whopping 13 words, none of which actually relate to the story. The article, on the other hand, is a full page with lots of information and in-context quotes.
Everything I said here applies yet again. If the purpose of the Internet is to serve as an open forum for disseminating information, then the typical blog is the antithesis of that purpose; the worst thing to happen to the Internet since AOL.
=Smidge=
Not to excuse them, but at least it's a different article on a different website, and at least it's not another worthless copy+paste blog "article" from over a year ago. This dupe is pretty high standard compared to some.
=Smidge=
Hey look, 20% off on "Fatal Exceptions" and a 2-for-1 deal on "General Protection Faults" with cupon!
=Smidge=
Moving the mouse counts as a step? Holy shit... maybe you should include "breathing" and "blinking" as steps too, just in case.
I bet setting up a bluetooth mouse on a Mac is so easy, you don't even have to take it out of the box! I'm sure as soon as it detects a Mac in the area, it unpacks and configures itself just before filing your tax returns, washing your car and sucking you off...
Still waiting for an answer about that network drive.
=Smidge=
Actually I'd say the starting point for US cars is around 100HP, 4 cylinder.
Also worth mentioning is that, just because it supposedly gets 54 MPG, it still may not meet emissions requirements in most US states. The article does not say what emissions control systems, if any, are present. Catalytic converter? Crankcase ventilation? Fuel vapor recycling?
=Smidge=
Excuse the bold... botched the closing tag.
=Smidge=
You're doing that "windos" thing again. I'm afraid I'll never be able to take you seriously if you insist on doing that.
So you think OSX / Linux is more intuitive than Windows? I can also tell you how many steps it takes to install a Bluetooth mouse in windows, but unlike you I'll actually give a number: 3. The first is to plug in the USB adapter, and the second and third are to click "OK"/"Next" on the "New Hardware" dialog and the one telling you the driver isn't signed. (You may not even get the new hardware dialog in XP)
So how many steps does it take to mount a drive shared over a network so that it remounts automatically at login in OSX or Linux? Either is fine. If it's more than 3 you lose to Windows.
=Smidge=
Then I apologize and retract portions of my comment. The "juvenile software ideology" part stays, though, perhaps moreso.
The last time I spent any amount of time fighting with my computer to get it working was, amusingly, trying to get the network/internet working on a copy of OSX Leopard (x86) I installed in a VMWare environment. Granted that's a special case, but my Windows system never gives me problems. This is because, like you and your favorite OS, I know how to set things up the way I like it and then everything works fine from there on out.
"It just works" as they say.
=Smidge=
More than two cores. 2K supports up to 2 CPUs and does not distinguish between CPU sockets and multi-core packages. By the current cycle of things, my Core 2 Duo system will "need replacing" by about 2010. I'll see where things stand when the time comes.
What do I need that Linux doesn't provide? Hmm. The biggest item on the list is AutoCAD Building Systems, currently 2008 version. (Wine doesn't cut it, BTW.) Without that I don't get a paycheck, so once that's settled we can discuss the other software I need/want.
I'd also like to reinforce the fact that I am NOT defending Windows on the XO. It's an amazingly stupid idea no matter how you slice it.
=Smidge=
Perhaps your definition of "use" isn't typical. For the vast majority of people, "usable" means they get their work done at the end of the day.
A configuration of Linux does not exist that satisfies everything I require of a computer. Windows does. Windows 2000 Professional specifically, though if I upgrade to anything with more than 2 CPU cores I'll be forced to go at least as far as XP Pro. If it was possible to make Linux do everything I need and want to do with my computer then I'd probably use it, and to those whose needs are met by it I extend my best regards.
All your bitching and moaning does absolutely nothing to make Linux half the OS you believe it is. This doesn't mean I'm a Microsoft fanboy or think Windows is the best thing ever... it certainly has its problems and so does Linux. Franky, though, your type of juvenile software ideology can eat a bowl of dicks.
Also, are you deliberately misspelling "windows" or are you just retarded?
That said: unless Microsoft is going to subsidize the costs of the hardware - not even offering the OS for free, but actually PAYING OLPC for doing this - then OLPC is going to get anally raped by the whole deal some time in the very near future.
=Smidge=
Aha. The article says 0.02ms response time not refresh rate. Very different measurement there. The incorrect summary fogged my mind when reading the article... 0.02ms response time is slightly more believable.... not my much though. It's about 100x faster than current consumer-grade units (2-3ms).
=Smidge=
I noticed the seams too. It's actually a tad unreasonable to actually make one huge curved LCD panel... manufacturing alone would be a challange.
It may be an effect of the video camera, though, that makes it look so noticible. You know how LCD panels look offcolor and dim when viewed from an angle... so if you are sitting the proper distance from the unit, all the panels would be facing directly at you and it might look very nice.
What gets me is the "0.02ms refresh" thing. 0.00002 second refresh rate? 50,000Hz refresh? Really? I'd believe a 2.0ms (100Hz) refresh rate, but 50kHz - if that's even possible - is wildly impractical. Anything more than the game's rendering FPS is technically a waste.
=Smidge=
Since the average Windows user is probably buying a brand name PC, there is no excuse for not enabling the BIOS MBR protection at the factory. Those who are smart enough to install their own OS are *probably* smart enough to notice the warnign and turn it off themselves.
=Smidge=
Read it carefully for the doublethink!
"A file format isn't insecure -- it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure."
Read it again if you didn't catch it.
=Smidge=
Uh, yeah. You might want to do a little searching before you call me a member of some "atheist kumbaya." I made that post (and this one) because I think it's important to distance passionate athiests like myself from militant dickheads like you.
Clearly the "quick jokes" (which you didn't hesitate to expand into multi-paragraph essays) are wasted here. Your joke was an obvious troll and I'm sure you just couldn't wait to start shit over the word "bible" in a headline. There are plenty of opportunities to argue about religion in places where people who willing to argue are already looking to do so. It's bad enough that the jesus freaks take every opportunity to shove their bullshit superstitions in everyone's face and there's no advantage to acting the same way.
Also remember that the majority of the religious consider direct and rabid confrontation like yours to be reinforcing of their beliefs. Random bile spewing is not going to cure anyone of their delusions. If that wasn't your intention to begin with, which I suspect is what you're going to say, then you're just a run-of-the-mill non-theistic fuckwit. Have a nice day.
Go firebomb a church or something. I'm sure that'll teach 'em.
=Smidge=
I'm glad you "won't get into it" because this isn't the place for such arguments.
As an athiest, I would like to thank you in advance for shutting the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look bad.
Save the anti-religion vile for a topic that's actually about religion. This topic is about a comic strip that has nothing to do with religion except to occasionally mock it, and even then such comics are few and far between.
I'll see you in the next proper religious-involved topic, and I'll probably be agreeing with most of what you say. For now, though, just... shut up already.
=Smidge=
Slashdot differs from a blog in two important aspects.
First, articles are user submitted. Most blogs have one person or maybe a small group of people who add all the "news" to the site. This technically makes Slashdot a news aggregation site, not a blog.
Second, Slashdot has structured and filterable discussion. This, along with a strong and generally knowledgeable user base, ADDS VALUE to the news in the way of useful comments. A threaded discussion model enhances this greatly, over the typical "list of replies" most blogs use. In this way, a Slashdot story as a whole often becomes more than the just a headline and summary. Added value makes a difference.
=Smidge=
If you want to duplicate and archive that's fine. But copy and pasting the same shit over and over with a new date is at best a lazy effort to get attention and at worst a dishonest excuse to keep the cobwebs off your otherwise worthless website. I would not criticize anyone for making a deliberate attempt to archive news, even trivial news. The "victories" of the Blogosphere are few and far between, and those victories are credited to that vanishingly small percentage of Blogs that actually do something relevant.
And that is still no excuse for not adding to it. You can copy an article verbatim and still improve it's value by making some addition to it, either as a personal comment, further research into the topic, or a retrospective analysis of the article itself.
The "Information Revolution" is more like an "Information Echo Box" - Plagarism is not revolutionary.
=Smidge=
In most science, the evidence comes FIRST. Then you try to explain it, then make predictions based on that explanation. To say you perform experiments to find evidence is misleading. Science is basically about trying to prove an idea wrong, rather than trying to find evidence that supports an idea. The whole concept of "falsifiable" relies on the idea that any valid theory can be tested and, if incorrect, be shown to be false. There is no concept of "truthifiable."
Saying reality as we know it is just a simulation is not falsifiable. That is, any outcome of any test made against it can be explained as a limitation or condition of the simulation environment. In that respect, it's truly no better than "God works in mysterious ways." There is no conceivable benchmark by which we can measure and compare the nature of our known existence that is outside of our known existence, and so there is no difference between "real reality" and "simulated reality."
The whole thing is little more than a protracted session of mental masturbation. Fun, but not very productive.
=Smidge=
This is a problem with the "Blogosphere" in general. The vast majority (not all but certainly most) just echo news from other sources, or worse other blogs. They do not offer any insight, commentary or additional information on top of their source information. It's a crapshoot whether or not they actually write ANYTHING original rather than copy+paste.
The worst is when you have a blog linking to a blog linking to the original info. FFS people...
The net effect is old news gets constantly recycled and real news gets diluted. How many times have you seen a new blog post about something that actually happened months ago? The "9V battery contains AAAA cells" thing stands out as the most recent example for me: here (2 Jan 2008), here (9 Jan 2007), here (3 Jan 2007), here (23 Dec 2006). You have a "story" at LEAST a year old that has been copied verbatim at least four times!
Original here (No date) as far as I can tell, since all of the above blogs link to it.
Plus, all of these blogs have comment sections, which make them twice as redundant because the comments themselves also fail to add anything most of the time. If they do you'll never find them because there are so many other palces that run the same "story."
Fight the watering down of information! NEVER link to a blog unless it provides something EXTRA to the news! ALWAYS take a few minutes to get as close to the original source as possible! If you run a blog yourself, work to ADD to articles you link to - personal thoughts, additional information, insightful discussion on the topic at hand - be UNIQUE. That's how you get a readership... by having something worth reading.
=Smidge=