Maybe in the future all controllers will be touch screen
Ugh, I hope not. No analog sensitivity, no tactile feel and no raised buttons. It'd be an absolute nightmare - imagine the simple on/off of a PC keyboard compared to the 2cm travel of an Xbox pad shoulder button. Imagine having to look down at the controls rather than just feel a large, well placed button like on a Cube pad. No thanks.
Well you can't have met very many dumb people. Hell, you probably haven't met many 'average' people - plenty of them think that Uri Geller really is psychic and I'm sure if you showed them the link to the fake moon landing 'evidence' site they'd believe that too because it's 'scientific'.
I've said this further up, but I'll say it again - the fundamental idea you give is right but why risk messing with spinning bits of plastic for 3 months? Old MP3 players cost no more and don't have anything to wear out.
As for heavy duty buttons (and I'm repeating myself again) get arcade machine ones - I've used them myself and they really are indestructible.
Get arcade machine buttons - they are available for a few $ on eBay, usually sold to people building MAME cabinets. Since they're designed to withstand years of drink spills, cig burns and general abuse I'm sure they'd be fine in a museum for a few months. You should be able to find a bag of 10 for less than $50. Wire them into the play connections on cheap 16MB MP3 players as mentioned above, hook up some el-cheapo portable active speakers, seal it all into a box with a power lead coming out the back and you're good to go.
I'd reccomend MP3 players over CDs simply because the price is similar and no moving parts is better than disk spinning at speed when we want unsupervised use.
But it's the P2P client that hashes the files and compares the outcome. If the script is embedded in the client program then there will be multiple sources with different ID3 tags not being an issue.
Many phones already have cameras, updating them in order to read a semacode from a picture they just took is a software upgrade. No phones that I know of come with RFID recievers, you would need a hardware replacement to use this meaning it would be even less likely to take off than semacode which is compatible without buying a new and expensive phone.
The industry execs truly need to be slammed in the head repeatedly with a clue-by-four. They haven't just shot themselves in the foot, they've dived onto a landmine.
Let's face it, the RIAA member companies are approaching if not already at redundancy. They are the ones depriving artists of their fair share of what they created, they are little more than middlemen. If they got out of the way artists could make more money while selling their music considerably cheaper than it is now.
Somehow their massive FUD campaigns have convinced people that the RIAA is the artist, and that the labels should be compensated for "their" creations. I'm not saying that the true creators shouldn't be compensated, but the RIAA member labels sure as hell aren't the creators of the music, it's the artists who do that.
They should be breathing a sigh of relief that artists still want them, they should be thanking $diety that the public still have few other choices than to pay them for music and they should be grateful that people still think it acceptable to pay them for other people's creations. Finally a reasonable compromise with not-too-bad (although not too good either) DRM is implimented and becomes popular. The RIAA tries to destroy it rather than embracing what could be their last chance - if the RIAA take on Apple, they may win. If the RIAA take on online music, the artists will soon learn to bypass them and get a better deal.
I'm sure this is a dumb question, but why does the price of RAM fluctuate? Hard drives and processors are getting continually cheaper yet I've seen memory jump up and down by almost 50% each way, and I don't see why.
Actually I'd rephrase that to 'Any commercially supported Linux distribution will offer updates that can be installed by your mother if she can use Windows Update.'
The Sony Ericsson merger proved that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts IMO. The Ericsson infuence is stronger but some small but useful features from Sony (they did make a few, distinctly average GSM phones before) have crept in (the wheel used on the Clies and original Sony mobiles, for instance). The P800/900 are very similar in design to the original Ericsson SmartPhone, which featured the touchscreen and flipdown keypad so I guess you're right in that respect, but Sony have restyled the Ericssons which were quite frankly ugly and bulky.
As for Bluetooth, I would've thought that they'd want to use their own 'Greentooth' or something but I can't think of an SE phone that doesn't have it, even the ones from the era when no Nokias used it. Good marketing decision I guess:-)
I'm in the UK so we only have GSM and 3G. When some decent 3G handsets come out I might buy one, but until then I've been very happy with my T610 and then P900.
Actually I wasn't talking Clie when I said Sony PDA, I meant the P900 PDA/Phone combo. In my experience (I've used nearly every phone on the market through my work) it is far superior to any other solutions. The only thing that comes close is the iMate and they're too big to carry/use like a conventional phone which was a big swing in my purchasing decision.
Unfortunately there are a few markets where Sony make the best products meaning that you have to be tied into their overpriced memory format or settle for a device with standard memory but fewer features. For the sake of a premium on the memory I'll go with the best device - however much it pains me to support proprietary formats like Memory Stick Duo it's not a big enough problem for me to compromise on my 450+ PDA. This is what Sony count on - I buy their PDA because it's better, I'm tied into giving them 20 extra for every memory stick I buy for said PDA.
I'm happy to leave my main computer on all the time meaning that I don't need to have all my movies and music mirrored onto all the machines on my network, but in an environment where a full machine running 24/7 is undesirable it'd be a waste of space and effort keeping 80GB of files synched on even my little 3 machine network, so for a large home network or small business centralised storage is a good idea.
True, but the article says that each of the 120,000+ characters in the battle had its own AI. Computing that data in order to calculate where all the polygons should be when it comes down to rendering sounds like a traditional 'really big computer' kind of task.
Having a set of machines that need to be switched from distributed massive AI calculations to render farm work (or setting them to work out the movements based on AI and then render the frame, rinse and repeat) doesn't sound like the kind of job that many other clusters are made for.
Apart from solvent fumes, the weakening effect on her immune system from nuking bacteria she would otherwise simply become resistant to is a bad thing.
I would pay it if I could get this kind of innovation
I am in the UK and I am wishing that this can be true but having read the article the cynic in me wouldn't count on getting this yet. Firstly, the trial they have proposed is only to see if the system is feasible, it's not saying that it will definitely go public. It also says that after the initial 500 BBC employees try it out then it will be made available to 'AOL, BT and Tiscali broadband subscribers', this interests me since I am assuming that the service is to be paid from the license fee yet they are going to limit the initial rollout to the three best funded and most expensive per month ISPs in the country. Hmmm.
I would think any half decent human would not want to take a charity to court unless it was a major issue that was affecting them negatively. I don't think that the Red Cross accepting donations is really a great loss of income to the patent holders, so despite the legalities and even ignoring basic compassion shouldn't PR dictate that it's not right to sue?
The US legal system isn't so good. If it worked as it should then companies would not be scared into declaring that 'coffee is hot' or 'cape does not enable wearer to fly' in order to avoid getting sued. If the legal system worked then cases based on things that obvious wouldn't even be brought up.
Lies! Go to China, sit in a cafe in a bamboo forest next to a stream and have a glass of green tea. The tranquility of that is something I'm sure I'll remember for some time:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well you can't have met very many dumb people. Hell, you probably haven't met many 'average' people - plenty of them think that Uri Geller really is psychic and I'm sure if you showed them the link to the fake moon landing 'evidence' site they'd believe that too because it's 'scientific'.
Look at Costco, they've managed to make entire paragraphs blink using 1337 CSS skills, not just your old blink tags.
I've said this further up, but I'll say it again - the fundamental idea you give is right but why risk messing with spinning bits of plastic for 3 months? Old MP3 players cost no more and don't have anything to wear out.
As for heavy duty buttons (and I'm repeating myself again) get arcade machine ones - I've used them myself and they really are indestructible.
Get arcade machine buttons - they are available for a few $ on eBay, usually sold to people building MAME cabinets. Since they're designed to withstand years of drink spills, cig burns and general abuse I'm sure they'd be fine in a museum for a few months. You should be able to find a bag of 10 for less than $50. Wire them into the play connections on cheap 16MB MP3 players as mentioned above, hook up some el-cheapo portable active speakers, seal it all into a box with a power lead coming out the back and you're good to go.
I'd reccomend MP3 players over CDs simply because the price is similar and no moving parts is better than disk spinning at speed when we want unsupervised use.
But it's the P2P client that hashes the files and compares the outcome. If the script is embedded in the client program then there will be multiple sources with different ID3 tags not being an issue.
Many phones already have cameras, updating them in order to read a semacode from a picture they just took is a software upgrade. No phones that I know of come with RFID recievers, you would need a hardware replacement to use this meaning it would be even less likely to take off than semacode which is compatible without buying a new and expensive phone.
The industry execs truly need to be slammed in the head repeatedly with a clue-by-four. They haven't just shot themselves in the foot, they've dived onto a landmine.
Let's face it, the RIAA member companies are approaching if not already at redundancy. They are the ones depriving artists of their fair share of what they created, they are little more than middlemen. If they got out of the way artists could make more money while selling their music considerably cheaper than it is now.
Somehow their massive FUD campaigns have convinced people that the RIAA is the artist, and that the labels should be compensated for "their" creations. I'm not saying that the true creators shouldn't be compensated, but the RIAA member labels sure as hell aren't the creators of the music, it's the artists who do that.
They should be breathing a sigh of relief that artists still want them, they should be thanking $diety that the public still have few other choices than to pay them for music and they should be grateful that people still think it acceptable to pay them for other people's creations. Finally a reasonable compromise with not-too-bad (although not too good either) DRM is implimented and becomes popular. The RIAA tries to destroy it rather than embracing what could be their last chance - if the RIAA take on Apple, they may win. If the RIAA take on online music, the artists will soon learn to bypass them and get a better deal.
I'm sure this is a dumb question, but why does the price of RAM fluctuate? Hard drives and processors are getting continually cheaper yet I've seen memory jump up and down by almost 50% each way, and I don't see why.
Actually I'd rephrase that to 'Any commercially supported Linux distribution will offer updates that can be installed by your mother if she can use Windows Update.'
I know many people who can't, sad though that is.
The Sony Ericsson merger proved that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts IMO. The Ericsson infuence is stronger but some small but useful features from Sony (they did make a few, distinctly average GSM phones before) have crept in (the wheel used on the Clies and original Sony mobiles, for instance). The P800/900 are very similar in design to the original Ericsson SmartPhone, which featured the touchscreen and flipdown keypad so I guess you're right in that respect, but Sony have restyled the Ericssons which were quite frankly ugly and bulky.
:-)
As for Bluetooth, I would've thought that they'd want to use their own 'Greentooth' or something but I can't think of an SE phone that doesn't have it, even the ones from the era when no Nokias used it. Good marketing decision I guess
I'm in the UK so we only have GSM and 3G. When some decent 3G handsets come out I might buy one, but until then I've been very happy with my T610 and then P900.
Actually I wasn't talking Clie when I said Sony PDA, I meant the P900 PDA/Phone combo. In my experience (I've used nearly every phone on the market through my work) it is far superior to any other solutions. The only thing that comes close is the iMate and they're too big to carry/use like a conventional phone which was a big swing in my purchasing decision.
Unfortunately there are a few markets where Sony make the best products meaning that you have to be tied into their overpriced memory format or settle for a device with standard memory but fewer features. For the sake of a premium on the memory I'll go with the best device - however much it pains me to support proprietary formats like Memory Stick Duo it's not a big enough problem for me to compromise on my 450+ PDA. This is what Sony count on - I buy their PDA because it's better, I'm tied into giving them 20 extra for every memory stick I buy for said PDA.
I'm happy to leave my main computer on all the time meaning that I don't need to have all my movies and music mirrored onto all the machines on my network, but in an environment where a full machine running 24/7 is undesirable it'd be a waste of space and effort keeping 80GB of files synched on even my little 3 machine network, so for a large home network or small business centralised storage is a good idea.
Don't worry, the user that submitted this has just slashdotted their own server. You have to love poetic justice >:-)
True, but the article says that each of the 120,000+ characters in the battle had its own AI. Computing that data in order to calculate where all the polygons should be when it comes down to rendering sounds like a traditional 'really big computer' kind of task.
Having a set of machines that need to be switched from distributed massive AI calculations to render farm work (or setting them to work out the movements based on AI and then render the frame, rinse and repeat) doesn't sound like the kind of job that many other clusters are made for.
I'll take silence over ignorance any day!
Apart from solvent fumes, the weakening effect on her immune system from nuking bacteria she would otherwise simply become resistant to is a bad thing.
The article also assumes, however, that you must browse the advertised site for 90+ seconds to qualify a proper 'click through'.
I would pay it if I could get this kind of innovation
I am in the UK and I am wishing that this can be true but having read the article the cynic in me wouldn't count on getting this yet. Firstly, the trial they have proposed is only to see if the system is feasible, it's not saying that it will definitely go public. It also says that after the initial 500 BBC employees try it out then it will be made available to 'AOL, BT and Tiscali broadband subscribers', this interests me since I am assuming that the service is to be paid from the license fee yet they are going to limit the initial rollout to the three best funded and most expensive per month ISPs in the country. Hmmm.
I would think any half decent human would not want to take a charity to court unless it was a major issue that was affecting them negatively. I don't think that the Red Cross accepting donations is really a great loss of income to the patent holders, so despite the legalities and even ignoring basic compassion shouldn't PR dictate that it's not right to sue?
The US legal system isn't so good. If it worked as it should then companies would not be scared into declaring that 'coffee is hot' or 'cape does not enable wearer to fly' in order to avoid getting sued. If the legal system worked then cases based on things that obvious wouldn't even be brought up.
Lies! :-)
Go to China, sit in a cafe in a bamboo forest next to a stream and have a glass of green tea. The tranquility of that is something I'm sure I'll remember for some time
Indeed. You'd better work M$ in there too ;-)