In Issue 205 of ZZZ Online, we discussed the HelioDisplay. There are some really cool holographic systems out there, but they're expensive and not quite what I think anyone expected.
The cool think about things like the HelioDisplay is that it uses water vapor to make the projection. I didn't see any of that around Princess Leia. I think the biggest obstacle has been trying to make holographic projections appear in space without having some kind of hard media (glass, crystal, etc.) surrounding it.
It's coming, just give it some time. If someone ever discovers Hard Light, I'd like to talk to them.
It's about time... and to think, before this I would have been happy with uploading my consciousness to the internet!
Seriously though, most of the world is going to have to prepare for the concept of living virtually forever. If this is coming sooner than later, we have to think about the burgeoning population problem in the 3rd world. There are billions of impoverished people and it's going to get messy with 100, 200, 300+ year old people taking up space. Additionally, we have to keep people busy and productive.
Obviously, it's time to get to thinking seriously about colonizing space. It's going to get rather close here on Earth!
I'm intrigued by this... Hopefully it's sooner than 20 years, but we really need it now for obvious reasons.
I'm tired of speeding tickets, idiot drivers, traffic jams, absoulte boredom, etc. Additionally, do we really need these huge "Suburban Assault Vehicles"? Hell, I'd be happy with some kind of FROG (free ranging on-grid) system. Pick me up, drop me off, come get me later without some ignorant taxi driver espousing his beliefs on my trip to whereever.
Although, the DARPA Challenge earlier this year was somewhat of a disaster. And god forbid the onboard computers run Windows.
I tend to agree with this viewpoint. I did the same research for an upgrade to ZZZ Online, but came up short. Typically, depending on the needs of the customer (even if it is yourself), are going to demand extensive changes to the code. Usually, this is enough to make you run screaming when the originators of whatever source you original used upgrades things due to "security concerns"
My suggestion is to download a bunch of different CMS systems and outline the functionality you really need most. If you pick something, make sure it's easy to understand and extensible.
This kind of thought-process scare me... so what happens if P2P technologies are ultimately outlawed, just to "filter" out illegal uses of P2P?
In my mind, pretty much everything on P2P could be defined (loosely) as illegal. Fine, government declares P2P sharing as a narcotic next and busts down your door because you happen to have "backed up" your aging collection of Blake's Seven from video tape to DVD or something? What happens is that the rest of the world continues to use P2P, the technology advances, and ultimately nothing really changes except that in the US people end up behind bars for trading MP3s and pr0n?
Trying to make this stuff illegal seems to me to be the ultimate in Indian Giving. Hmmm, let's make a bunch of technology and deliver extremely powerful tools to people in the form of a computer... include a CD-RW/DVD-RW, a broadband connection, and make all of it cheap, then BAN it!
Stuff's going to get copied (backed up). Things are going to get shared. We're on our way to the Star Trek kind of digital universe where art/literature/entertainment ultimately go to free. The unfortunate reality is that there's going to be a continuous back and forth between the security freaks and the hackers, constantly breaking down barriers as fast as they are erected.
I believe that the only way to regulate P2P sharing is to make broadband, recording devices, and computers in general illegal. Like that's going to happen, so people better get used to the idea that P2P's here to stay!/p?
It's the same old story... whining over our technological prowess. The fact remains is that if we have the technology to copy videos, music, or other things, then we WILL copy those things. Eliminating or otherwise inhibiting that ability seems to be "indian giving".
I don't really understand why the NFL should care much about this though; the last time I checked with my friends who watch a lot of sports, there's still this big stigma about them "not being able to watch a recorded game" anyway. I don't know anyone who would get a "season pass" on TiVo to their fav football team (or whatever) and watch them all at some later time.
Great to see Realistic Musicians ...
on
TMBG on DRM
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm glad that TMBG is realistic about the future of digital media. My money is on the future where musicans realize that their bread and butter lies in making life performances and distributing merchandise like t-shirts, posters, etc.
The record industry, specifically the RIAA, are holding onto an anachronism... they don't create the music, they help to distribute it. Unfortunately what they don't understand (and some artists do) is that free distribution gives people the chance to get into an artist's music. And when an enthusiast is serious, they'll pay for the quality that comes from having a clean and attractively packaged CD.
Good job, TMBG! Now the rest of musicians need to fire their record labels...
Wonderful... but from a paranoid's perspective how do you know that tracking employees or worse yet, citizen/terrorists (so confusing these days) already? I've had an RFID badge on my to get into various buildings at multiple workplaces for years. I could walk past a detector that just doesn't emit a pleasing "beep". They track bathroom visits now, I imagine, and see how many times the smokers hit the smoking lounge in a given day.
Didn't somebody have a program that tracked the position of US dollar bills around the country (or was that just an episode of Seven Days?).
One can't be paranoid enough, it seems. I've simply watched WAY too much Sci-Fi.
Ahhh, ArsTechnica... what a refreshing way to start a Monday than to relive my geek heritage. I still have my first Pentium computer in my closet at home. Large paperweight, I presume, but it may still run Linux. I've been thinking of making a wall-mounted collection of all my used processors for posterity.
I could stand to forget about Win95 though... (shudders). Nothing worse than having to reformat one's hard drive every 3-6 months!
For all the disparaging comments, the one good thing that comes of all this is this: Cheap Hardware. I've built a lot of machines and only once had a problem with overheating when I didn't quite get the heatsink on the CPU perfectly... no burning smell, just the temp in BIOS rising swiftly was enough to make me pull the plug.
I've got another "jinx" friend who fries motherboards and graphics cards regularly. I laugh at him quietly so as not to give myself bad computer karma and realize that the more people feel that they can DIY, the cheaper components will get. Good can come from idiots of the world, however reading this is like reading Darwin Awards for computer retards.
Not so long ago, I went to a LAN Party and watched an acquaintance of mine sit through the entire thing playing "There" while the rest of enjoyed "real" games. Honestly, I couldn't believe he even bothered coming to the LAN in the first place.
After a while, he went on about how cool it was and showed us all his "flirting" with his "online wife". Knowing that he was married with a newborn child, I asked him, "What does your REAL wife think about all this?" He replied, "She does it TOO!".
I gulped and listened to him ramble on about the fact that his REAL wife was even planning to go meet her ONLINE HUSBAND. Obviously the guy had serious marital problems burgeoning, but he was alas unaware. I'm sure that by now he's either divorced or practicing online swinging (shudders)
Geeks all have this problem with balancing computer time vs. their relationships. It's hard, but that's why I end up staying awake into the wee hours of the night. Also, another rule: Play games you know you can put down. This is why LAN parties are good... you go, play all night, and then it's out of your system (hopefully). Elsewise, join "Gamer's Anonymous" and realize that you're no different than a Crack Smoker.
For your "Average Joe Computer User" or "Joe Corporate Guy", this might be fine. My Mom would obviously benefit from this, but for power users and hardware enthusiasts, this is doesn't make sense. Big corporations may be ok too as you don't need much to run Microsoft Office really.
The high-cost of hardware components like top end video cards, for example, is what drives profits for the manufacturers, sells games, and continues to press the envelope of tech forward. It also seems to be the hallmark of the true computer geek. Who's going to go to a LAN with a "free" rig and would it actually play anything decent?... Sheesh, that'd be like having an "all Playstation" LAN (shudders).
Computers aren't like cell phones or XBoxes... if you take what "they" give you for free, it's going to be junk. Furthermore, I can imagine the chaos that would ensue when hackers get their hands on this stuff. Hardware hacks (chipmods and stuff) go deeper underground and the software AND hardware companies lose even more money.
This is a nice comparison for would-be bloggers, but I'm honestly suprised that PHP-Nuke wasn't mentioned. For a relatively easy to setup CMS, PHP-Nuke has come a long way...
Some would say, though, that "blogging is dead" or at least experiencing the "long slow slide of weblogs into irrelevance". My hope for anyone wanting to set up their own blog is that they find something useful to write about or turn instead to good 'ol pen and paper whilst they ponder the stealing their neighbor's cat (as get read often on Unscrewed at TechTV).
Those of us over at ZZZ Online have been developing our own CMS after doing a similar review of popular systems. I've tinkered with LiveJournal, Moveable Type, Greymatter, and even pMachine and found each of them to be somehow lacking when you really want to make a "hands off" kind of site.
We're trying to steer away from simple blogging though as we think that collaboration reader-focused content is much more important than the mindless banter that some people like to fill their ISP's servers with.
Alas, I loved Farscape... watched every episode and enjoyed most of them.
The Lexx was also good, but rather cheezy. I have faith that Farscape will return, though.
The problem is, we geeks get the shaft while everyone else obsesses about "American Idol" or "Joe Dumb@ss" or whatever. Battlestar Galactica 2003 might be nice, however;)
I think, more than anything, that much of this would be fixed by a national attitude adjustment.
American Labor Unions are killing the U.S. For example, a chemical plant I worked for (as a scientist) settled the last union labor negotiations with the union folks making $33/hour. Largely, these were unskilled, high-school educated (maybe) people.
In contrast, most of the lab personnel supporting the plant had at least undergraduate degrees (Chemistry, Biology, etc.) and many were contract employees making $12/hour.
The math? Straight up, the laborer makes $68,640/year. The contract lab worker makes $24,960/year. But the clincher is that the union folks make mandatory overtime at 1.5 to up to 3 times the normal rate. Overtime comes in when you work something more than eight hours per day. The story is likely the same everywhere in the U.S.
I don't think the problem is at all about foreigners working for less money. Rather, I think the problem is that many Americans simply expect too much for what they're really worth, particularly uneducated, unskilled laborers. Anyone can screw a bolt into a damn car, and people in other countries are willing to do it longer hours and for a lot less, likely without medical benefits.
Unfortunately there's not an easy solution to the problem other than to start realizing that rampant over-consumerism under the guise of the perceived need for luxury SUVs, sprawling homes, and other unnecessary materialism is the real culprit. Spend less, need less. That's really hard to do once you're spoiled;)
Sure, and that is totally pathetic... A plant that I worked at had settled on a Union contract where uneducated laborers were to make $33/hour. Even PhD scientists started to think seriously about pulling levers for a living.
Until the US kills Union mentality and starts rewarding people for their technical abilities, we'll see this trend continuing.
Slashdot Mirror
In Issue 205 of ZZZ Online, we discussed the HelioDisplay. There are some really cool holographic systems out there, but they're expensive and not quite what I think anyone expected.
The cool think about things like the HelioDisplay is that it uses water vapor to make the projection. I didn't see any of that around Princess Leia. I think the biggest obstacle has been trying to make holographic projections appear in space without having some kind of hard media (glass, crystal, etc.) surrounding it.
It's coming, just give it some time. If someone ever discovers Hard Light, I'd like to talk to them.
It's about time ... and to think, before this I would have been happy with uploading my consciousness to the internet!
Seriously though, most of the world is going to have to prepare for the concept of living virtually forever. If this is coming sooner than later, we have to think about the burgeoning population problem in the 3rd world. There are billions of impoverished people and it's going to get messy with 100, 200, 300+ year old people taking up space. Additionally, we have to keep people busy and productive.
Obviously, it's time to get to thinking seriously about colonizing space. It's going to get rather close here on Earth!
I'm intrigued by this ... Hopefully it's sooner than 20 years, but we really need it now for obvious reasons.
I'm tired of speeding tickets, idiot drivers, traffic jams, absoulte boredom, etc. Additionally, do we really need these huge "Suburban Assault Vehicles"? Hell, I'd be happy with some kind of FROG (free ranging on-grid) system. Pick me up, drop me off, come get me later without some ignorant taxi driver espousing his beliefs on my trip to whereever.
Although, the DARPA Challenge earlier this year was somewhat of a disaster. And god forbid the onboard computers run Windows.
killdashnineI tend to agree with this viewpoint. I did the same research for an upgrade to ZZZ Online, but came up short. Typically, depending on the needs of the customer (even if it is yourself), are going to demand extensive changes to the code. Usually, this is enough to make you run screaming when the originators of whatever source you original used upgrades things due to "security concerns"
My suggestion is to download a bunch of different CMS systems and outline the functionality you really need most. If you pick something, make sure it's easy to understand and extensible.
Good Luck
killdashnineThis kind of thought-process scare me ... so what happens if P2P technologies are ultimately outlawed, just to "filter" out illegal uses of P2P?
In my mind, pretty much everything on P2P could be defined (loosely) as illegal. Fine, government declares P2P sharing as a narcotic next and busts down your door because you happen to have "backed up" your aging collection of Blake's Seven from video tape to DVD or something? What happens is that the rest of the world continues to use P2P, the technology advances, and ultimately nothing really changes except that in the US people end up behind bars for trading MP3s and pr0n?
Trying to make this stuff illegal seems to me to be the ultimate in Indian Giving. Hmmm, let's make a bunch of technology and deliver extremely powerful tools to people in the form of a computer ... include a CD-RW/DVD-RW, a broadband connection, and make all of it cheap, then BAN it!
Stuff's going to get copied (backed up). Things are going to get shared. We're on our way to the Star Trek kind of digital universe where art/literature/entertainment ultimately go to free. The unfortunate reality is that there's going to be a continuous back and forth between the security freaks and the hackers, constantly breaking down barriers as fast as they are erected.
I believe that the only way to regulate P2P sharing is to make broadband, recording devices, and computers in general illegal. Like that's going to happen, so people better get used to the idea that P2P's here to stay!/p?
It's the same old story ... whining over our technological prowess. The fact remains is that if we have the technology to copy videos, music, or other things, then we WILL copy those things. Eliminating or otherwise inhibiting that ability seems to be "indian giving".
I don't really understand why the NFL should care much about this though; the last time I checked with my friends who watch a lot of sports, there's still this big stigma about them "not being able to watch a recorded game" anyway. I don't know anyone who would get a "season pass" on TiVo to their fav football team (or whatever) and watch them all at some later time.
I'm glad that TMBG is realistic about the future of digital media. My money is on the future where musicans realize that their bread and butter lies in making life performances and distributing merchandise like t-shirts, posters, etc.
The record industry, specifically the RIAA, are holding onto an anachronism ... they don't create the music, they help to distribute it. Unfortunately what they don't understand (and some artists do) is that free distribution gives people the chance to get into an artist's music. And when an enthusiast is serious, they'll pay for the quality that comes from having a clean and attractively packaged CD.
Good job, TMBG! Now the rest of musicians need to fire their record labels ...
Wonderful ... but from a paranoid's perspective how do you know that tracking employees or worse yet, citizen/terrorists (so confusing these days) already? I've had an RFID badge on my to get into various buildings at multiple workplaces for years. I could walk past a detector that just doesn't emit a pleasing "beep". They track bathroom visits now, I imagine, and see how many times the smokers hit the smoking lounge in a given day.
Didn't somebody have a program that tracked the position of US dollar bills around the country (or was that just an episode of Seven Days?).
One can't be paranoid enough, it seems. I've simply watched WAY too much Sci-Fi.
Ahhh, ArsTechnica ... what a refreshing way to start a Monday than to relive my geek heritage. I still have my first Pentium computer in my closet at home. Large paperweight, I presume, but it may still run Linux. I've been thinking of making a wall-mounted collection of all my used processors for posterity.
I could stand to forget about Win95 though ... (shudders). Nothing worse than having to reformat one's hard drive every 3-6 months!
For all the disparaging comments, the one good thing that comes of all this is this: Cheap Hardware. I've built a lot of machines and only once had a problem with overheating when I didn't quite get the heatsink on the CPU perfectly ... no burning smell, just the temp in BIOS rising swiftly was enough to make me pull the plug.
I've got another "jinx" friend who fries motherboards and graphics cards regularly. I laugh at him quietly so as not to give myself bad computer karma and realize that the more people feel that they can DIY, the cheaper components will get. Good can come from idiots of the world, however reading this is like reading Darwin Awards for computer retards.
Not so long ago, I went to a LAN Party and watched an acquaintance of mine sit through the entire thing playing "There" while the rest of enjoyed "real" games. Honestly, I couldn't believe he even bothered coming to the LAN in the first place.
After a while, he went on about how cool it was and showed us all his "flirting" with his "online wife". Knowing that he was married with a newborn child, I asked him, "What does your REAL wife think about all this?" He replied, "She does it TOO!".
I gulped and listened to him ramble on about the fact that his REAL wife was even planning to go meet her ONLINE HUSBAND. Obviously the guy had serious marital problems burgeoning, but he was alas unaware. I'm sure that by now he's either divorced or practicing online swinging (shudders)
Geeks all have this problem with balancing computer time vs. their relationships. It's hard, but that's why I end up staying awake into the wee hours of the night. Also, another rule: Play games you know you can put down. This is why LAN parties are good ... you go, play all night, and then it's out of your system (hopefully). Elsewise, join "Gamer's Anonymous" and realize that you're no different than a Crack Smoker.
I wrote an article in Issue 168 of ZZZ Online about some of this that may be of interest.
For your "Average Joe Computer User" or "Joe Corporate Guy", this might be fine. My Mom would obviously benefit from this, but for power users and hardware enthusiasts, this is doesn't make sense. Big corporations may be ok too as you don't need much to run Microsoft Office really.
The high-cost of hardware components like top end video cards, for example, is what drives profits for the manufacturers, sells games, and continues to press the envelope of tech forward. It also seems to be the hallmark of the true computer geek. Who's going to go to a LAN with a "free" rig and would it actually play anything decent? ... Sheesh, that'd be like having an "all Playstation" LAN (shudders).
Computers aren't like cell phones or XBoxes ... if you take what "they" give you for free, it's going to be junk. Furthermore, I can imagine the chaos that would ensue when hackers get their hands on this stuff. Hardware hacks (chipmods and stuff) go deeper underground and the software AND hardware companies lose even more money.
This is a nice comparison for would-be bloggers, but I'm honestly suprised that PHP-Nuke wasn't mentioned. For a relatively easy to setup CMS, PHP-Nuke has come a long way ...
Some would say, though, that "blogging is dead" or at least experiencing the "long slow slide of weblogs into irrelevance". My hope for anyone wanting to set up their own blog is that they find something useful to write about or turn instead to good 'ol pen and paper whilst they ponder the stealing their neighbor's cat (as get read often on Unscrewed at TechTV).
Those of us over at ZZZ Online have been developing our own CMS after doing a similar review of popular systems. I've tinkered with LiveJournal, Moveable Type, Greymatter, and even pMachine and found each of them to be somehow lacking when you really want to make a "hands off" kind of site.
We're trying to steer away from simple blogging though as we think that collaboration reader-focused content is much more important than the mindless banter that some people like to fill their ISP's servers with.
I know HTML, just made an unfortunate mistake. If ./ has an editing feature, I haven't found it yet.
Ahhh, that's nice, but the only thing that keeps me away from being really interested is the lack of a truly integrated cell phone. I know that one business called "TheKompany" has a VoIP solution for it, another place has a bluetooth connection to your cell When you spend that much money anyway, it'd seem fairly easy to add cell capabilities ... what's a litle more weight?
Still ... nice phone, nice review!
Alas, I loved Farscape ... watched every episode and enjoyed most of them.
;)
The Lexx was also good, but rather cheezy. I have faith that Farscape will return, though.
The problem is, we geeks get the shaft while everyone else obsesses about "American Idol" or "Joe Dumb@ss" or whatever. Battlestar Galactica 2003 might be nice, however
At least I still have my TechTV!
I think, more than anything, that much of this would be fixed by a national attitude adjustment.
;)
American Labor Unions are killing the U.S. For example, a chemical plant I worked for (as a scientist) settled the last union labor negotiations with the union folks making $33/hour. Largely, these were unskilled, high-school educated (maybe) people.
In contrast, most of the lab personnel supporting the plant had at least undergraduate degrees (Chemistry, Biology, etc.) and many were contract employees making $12/hour.
The math? Straight up, the laborer makes $68,640/year. The contract lab worker makes $24,960/year. But the clincher is that the union folks make mandatory overtime at 1.5 to up to 3 times the normal rate. Overtime comes in when you work something more than eight hours per day. The story is likely the same everywhere in the U.S.
I don't think the problem is at all about foreigners working for less money. Rather, I think the problem is that many Americans simply expect too much for what they're really worth, particularly uneducated, unskilled laborers. Anyone can screw a bolt into a damn car, and people in other countries are willing to do it longer hours and for a lot less, likely without medical benefits.
Unfortunately there's not an easy solution to the problem other than to start realizing that rampant over-consumerism under the guise of the perceived need for luxury SUVs, sprawling homes, and other unnecessary materialism is the real culprit. Spend less, need less. That's really hard to do once you're spoiled
Sure, and that is totally pathetic ... A plant that I worked at had settled on a Union contract where uneducated laborers were to make $33/hour. Even PhD scientists started to think seriously about pulling levers for a living.
Until the US kills Union mentality and starts rewarding people for their technical abilities, we'll see this trend continuing.