How can the product be an actuator, and consist of sensors? Aren't those like... opposites? Am I just being old-fashioned in thinking of the device as a sensor, used by the computer, to detect brain activity? Is a joystick also an actuator?
That is nice indeed. However, since it's cool to try to be portable, why not code it as
v |= *p ^ '0';
?
This way, you don't depend on the encoding value of zero being known, not even to a human reader of the code. Also, I seem to recall that C insists that the numbers are encoded in adjacent and increasing positions in the encoding (although I don't have time to dig up a reference on that right now), so this should be pretty safe. Personally, I would probably still code it using the + operator since I think that is more logical (no pun intended) for the operation being performed, though.
Uh? Living in Sweden (third place in the iPod index), I certainly hear you. But isn't calling $1500 (simply the difference between the two prices) profit a bit too simplistic? I'm certainly no economist, but you are at least ignoring tariff charges and sales tax/VAT; those are not profit to the distributor, but perhaps to the government.
Clarification: the Amiga analog joysticks worked like that, yes. The default joystick used on the Amiga was digital, though, and just used five (later more) switches to generate the up/down/left/right/fire signals.:)
The automotive term "4x4" I have always guessed means "it has four wheels, of which four are driving, i.e. connected to the engine". I'm not sure how to apply that to a processor, and go from that to "it has two CPUs, each of which has two cores". It's just... weird. It's not as if computers need CPUs that don't compute (like wheels that don't drive) to counter gravity and be stable on the desktop surface. Nope. So, obviously, marketing CPUs is hard, since the industry seems to come up with so much weirdness.
Sounds interesting, the tip about IR-reflective tape especially. It got me thinking... if reflective tape is expensive enough to warrant hunting for cheaper sources... And you also need to get IR light sources, wouldn't it make sense to invert the lighting, and put IR-emissive dots directly on the mocap actor? Something like LED throwies but with IR LED(s) rather than visible light? Perhaps it's still too expensive and/or impractical what with batteries and so on, though. I do wonder how it would compare, brightness-wise. Anyone tried it?
Uh? Aren't the routers... well... just routers? That is, not general-purpose computers, but little boxes specifically designed to do wlan routing? Like, for instance, the Netgear WGU624? I'm sure you could (for some values of "you" and "could") compile your own software on such a router, since they very probably do contain general-purpose processors, but still. It wouldn't be pleasant, and I really have a hard time thinking it would "work well" to build something as targeted at compilation as a compile farm. Maybe I missed your point, though.
Well yes, but since "regalskeppet" simply means "the royal ship" (it's a noun, not a name like "Vasa"), calling it just "The Vasa" doesn't seem far off to me. The museum offically calls itself "The Vasa Museum", for instance. Perhaps I should add that I am, indeed, Swedish. Glad "we" made the list, heh.:)
The result is that context-switching costs of virtualised Linux are up to thirty times less than in native Linux.
(Emphasis in the original text). This is one of my pet peeves, since I think it's so sloppy use of maths. How can something be "thirty times less?" So, if it takes one second in Linux, it takes them... what? 1 - 30 * 1 = -29 seconds? I guess they mean 1/30:th of a second, but still, that should have been caught before being published, imo. Or maybe it's just because I'm not a native speaker of English, that it annoys me so.
Well... that might solve the problem, but it would also require every point where you use the RFID to be connected to some kind of network, so it can keep in touch with the central registry. Plus, of course, it makes whoever holds the registry into a very central point of failure. Somehow, I don't think connecting every doorlock to the Internet would feel like a great solution, in practice. I think it seems easier to use (or wait for, I'm not up to speed here) for tags that are read/write, so that codes can be changed if necessary. One of the links in the blurb mentioned that as a solution for the truly paranoid, I think.
Correct, and a good explanation, except for a minor typo. A nanosecond is in fact 1E-9 seconds, meaning that a nanosecond-precision timer would (if perfect) increment 1,000,000,000 times a second. You confused nanoseconds with microseconds (1E-6).
Sorry for the knee-jerk pet-peeve reaction, but... Philips spells its name with one L only. I guess the tendency to double it is for easier/more natural pronounciation in English, but... It's still not right.:)
Heh. In my native tongue, Swedish, CEO is "verkställande direktör" ("executive director", verbatim). Hilarity ensues when Swedes use the Swedish abbreviation in English, which might happen if they're in a hurry and/or don't have their thinking caps on straight.:)
Wow, someone who actually uses the Insert key for something!! Amazing. I tend to rank it as one of the keys that I personally wouldn't mind losing, since all it seems to ever do is annoy me by switching to overwrite mode. Not that that happens often, heh. Just for your information, there are other keyboard shortcuts that are more well-known for copy and paste: control-c (copy) and control-v (paste). These are typically "advertised" in application menus, even.
Sure, that's a reference to the page being featured on Digg.com. Not sure if it actually has been, haven't checked. But if it has, it wouldn't be the first time Slashdot and Digg post the same stories.
The link in the blurb looks cached, to me at least. Here it is again, just in case: http://members.cox.net.nyud.net:8090/jcmccorm/sant a1.mpeg. I got ~100 KB/s downloading it, which would be surprising from a killed server, so I do think it's a mirror. Aren't those URL:s typical of Corel Cache, or something? Now, if that in fact is a direct link, I'm sorry.:)
Here in Sweden, street prices for a 1 GB MMC RS seem to be virtually identical to those for MemoryStick Duo (around 700 SEK, around $88 US). Both of these are ~25% higher than for 1 GB of Compact Flash, but I guess you get the smaller size for the extra money. In comparison to foreign prices, keep in mind that these prices include the Swedish VAT of 25%.
... and then you learned about strtol() and stopped, right? Why the copying of the argument to a local variable p, by the way? And why isn't the argument const? And why not stop on the first non-decimal digit?
The result is we are able to deliver a collective research and development investment of more than $20 billion annually to meet real customer needs. Dell engineers share their unique knowledge and expertise with counterparts at Intel, Oracle, EMC, Red Hat and other leading innovative companies. Then they assemble technologies from those companies and add a significant layer of innovation to create more powerful, more reliable and less expensive products and services. [...] For Dell, the approach is pragmatic and sustainable, generating more than $9 in operating income for every dollar invested in research and development.
Now, I'm not sure (I couldn't find a breakdown of their employee structure), but it sure sounds as if at least one person at Dell works in something very close to R&D, at least to me. Even if the work is all done by employees at other companies, that's still 20 billion dollars that Dell spent on R&D during 2005. Hardly "no R&D", imo.
Uh, it's also not very useful as a modem, as far as I know. There's no cell phone circuitry of any kind in the 770, just wifi and bluetooth. I may have read the OP wrong, but it sure sounded like he wanted some kind of "dial-up" access through that device?
As very many have already pointed out, that was indeed a crap article. I don't want to spend any time quoting it and going "WTF?!", but I *do* want to link to OpenEXR, which is a file format for managing HDR images. It typically uses 16-bit floating point numbers per pixel, which seems to give a decent brightness range. It's cool to watch the same image rendered using different levels of "virtual exposure". It's by Industrial Light and Magic, which some of you might have heard of. I have, of course, no affiliation with either, just wanted to link to something relevant.
Um, I know you got modded Insightful and all (at least when I write this), and you sure make a few points. But you don't seem to have, well, you know... how do I phrase this... Yeah: read the article! If you had, you would perhaps talk less about visual design of visual things, and more about how Visual Studio (according to Mr Petzold) affects the code. Just a thought.:)
I'm glad you had a "handheld" in the subject line there, or I'd wonder what you'd be eating and so on, heh.
On a more serious note, that's a valid point of course... I *think* the "quick surf at home" usecase is a big one here, and that speaks against including GPS since you're using it at home anyway. But, of course, the device is pocketable so it will hopefully be used by people moving about as well. I guess they have to use an external GPS device for their positioning needs. There are GPS receivers that use Bluetooeth to communicate, so perhaps that's a possibility.
I just wish they would release the device some time soon, I'm very curious about what the actual price will end up at, if it's the rumoured $350 or what. Also it'll be fun to see what that figure translates to in local currency this week, since I'm not in the US.
If you don't feel like digging up an emulator and running the real thing, I've heard from a credible source that Cosmigo's Pro Motion comes pretty close. Free 30-day trial version, or just short of $100 for the full version. There's also a "lite" version, at $30. I've no affiliation with the company, and it's been a while since I looked at it, but whatever version was current then even "inherited" some of the DP III keyboard shortcuts.
Slashdot Mirror
How can the product be an actuator, and consist of sensors? Aren't those like ... opposites? Am I just being old-fashioned in thinking of the device as a sensor, used by the computer, to detect brain activity? Is a joystick also an actuator?
Uh? Living in Sweden (third place in the iPod index), I certainly hear you. But isn't calling $1500 (simply the difference between the two prices) profit a bit too simplistic? I'm certainly no economist, but you are at least ignoring tariff charges and sales tax/VAT; those are not profit to the distributor, but perhaps to the government.
Clarification: the Amiga analog joysticks worked like that, yes. The default joystick used on the Amiga was digital, though, and just used five (later more) switches to generate the up/down/left/right/fire signals. :)
The automotive term "4x4" I have always guessed means "it has four wheels, of which four are driving, i.e. connected to the engine". I'm not sure how to apply that to a processor, and go from that to "it has two CPUs, each of which has two cores". It's just ... weird. It's not as if computers need CPUs that don't compute (like wheels that don't drive) to counter gravity and be stable on the desktop surface. Nope. So, obviously, marketing CPUs is hard, since the industry seems to come up with so much weirdness.
Sounds interesting, the tip about IR-reflective tape especially. It got me thinking ... if reflective tape is expensive enough to warrant hunting for cheaper sources ... And you also need to get IR light sources, wouldn't it make sense to invert the lighting, and put IR-emissive dots directly on the mocap actor? Something like LED throwies but with IR LED(s) rather than visible light? Perhaps it's still too expensive and/or impractical what with batteries and so on, though. I do wonder how it would compare, brightness-wise. Anyone tried it?
Uh? Aren't the routers ... well ... just routers? That is, not general-purpose computers, but little boxes specifically designed to do wlan routing? Like, for instance, the Netgear WGU624? I'm sure you could (for some values of "you" and "could") compile your own software on such a router, since they very probably do contain general-purpose processors, but still. It wouldn't be pleasant, and I really have a hard time thinking it would "work well" to build something as targeted at compilation as a compile farm. Maybe I missed your point, though.
Well yes, but since "regalskeppet" simply means "the royal ship" (it's a noun, not a name like "Vasa"), calling it just "The Vasa" doesn't seem far off to me. The museum offically calls itself "The Vasa Museum", for instance. Perhaps I should add that I am, indeed, Swedish. Glad "we" made the list, heh. :)
(Emphasis in the original text). This is one of my pet peeves, since I think it's so sloppy use of maths. How can something be "thirty times less?" So, if it takes one second in Linux, it takes them
Ick, sounds painful. But ... floats in the kernel? I thought that was forbidden, but perhaps that rule has been relaxed?
Well ... that might solve the problem, but it would also require every point where you use the RFID to be connected to some kind of network, so it can keep in touch with the central registry. Plus, of course, it makes whoever holds the registry into a very central point of failure. Somehow, I don't think connecting every doorlock to the Internet would feel like a great solution, in practice. I think it seems easier to use (or wait for, I'm not up to speed here) for tags that are read/write, so that codes can be changed if necessary. One of the links in the blurb mentioned that as a solution for the truly paranoid, I think.
Correct, and a good explanation, except for a minor typo. A nanosecond is in fact 1E-9 seconds, meaning that a nanosecond-precision timer would (if perfect) increment 1,000,000,000 times a second. You confused nanoseconds with microseconds (1E-6).
Sorry for the knee-jerk pet-peeve reaction, but ... Philips spells its name with one L only. I guess the tendency to double it is for easier/more natural pronounciation in English, but ... It's still not right. :)
Heh. In my native tongue, Swedish, CEO is "verkställande direktör" ("executive director", verbatim). Hilarity ensues when Swedes use the Swedish abbreviation in English, which might happen if they're in a hurry and/or don't have their thinking caps on straight. :)
Wow, someone who actually uses the Insert key for something!! Amazing. I tend to rank it as one of the keys that I personally wouldn't mind losing, since all it seems to ever do is annoy me by switching to overwrite mode. Not that that happens often, heh. Just for your information, there are other keyboard shortcuts that are more well-known for copy and paste: control-c (copy) and control-v (paste). These are typically "advertised" in application menus, even.
Sure, that's a reference to the page being featured on Digg.com. Not sure if it actually has been, haven't checked. But if it has, it wouldn't be the first time Slashdot and Digg post the same stories.
The link in the blurb looks cached, to me at least. Here it is again, just in case: http://members.cox.net.nyud.net:8090/jcmccorm/sant a1.mpeg. I got ~100 KB/s downloading it, which would be surprising from a killed server, so I do think it's a mirror. Aren't those URL:s typical of Corel Cache, or something? Now, if that in fact is a direct link, I'm sorry. :)
Here in Sweden, street prices for a 1 GB MMC RS seem to be virtually identical to those for MemoryStick Duo (around 700 SEK, around $88 US). Both of these are ~25% higher than for 1 GB of Compact Flash, but I guess you get the smaller size for the extra money. In comparison to foreign prices, keep in mind that these prices include the Swedish VAT of 25%.
... and then you learned about strtol() and stopped, right? Why the copying of the argument to a local variable p, by the way? And why isn't the argument const? And why not stop on the first non-decimal digit?
Uh, according to Dell's 2005 Year in Review report:Now, I'm not sure (I couldn't find a breakdown of their employee structure), but it sure sounds as if at least one person at Dell works in something very close to R&D, at least to me. Even if the work is all done by employees at other companies, that's still 20 billion dollars that Dell spent on R&D during 2005. Hardly "no R&D", imo.
Uh, it's also not very useful as a modem, as far as I know. There's no cell phone circuitry of any kind in the 770, just wifi and bluetooth. I may have read the OP wrong, but it sure sounded like he wanted some kind of "dial-up" access through that device?
As very many have already pointed out, that was indeed a crap article. I don't want to spend any time quoting it and going "WTF?!", but I *do* want to link to OpenEXR, which is a file format for managing HDR images. It typically uses 16-bit floating point numbers per pixel, which seems to give a decent brightness range. It's cool to watch the same image rendered using different levels of "virtual exposure". It's by Industrial Light and Magic, which some of you might have heard of. I have, of course, no affiliation with either, just wanted to link to something relevant.
Um, I know you got modded Insightful and all (at least when I write this), and you sure make a few points. But you don't seem to have, well, you know ... how do I phrase this ... Yeah: read the article! If you had, you would perhaps talk less about visual design of visual things, and more about how Visual Studio (according to Mr Petzold) affects the code. Just a thought. :)
I'm glad you had a "handheld" in the subject line there, or I'd wonder what you'd be eating and so on, heh.
... I *think* the "quick surf at home" usecase is a big one here, and that speaks against including GPS since you're using it at home anyway. But, of course, the device is pocketable so it will hopefully be used by people moving about as well. I guess they have to use an external GPS device for their positioning needs. There are GPS receivers that use Bluetooeth to communicate, so perhaps that's a possibility.
On a more serious note, that's a valid point of course
I just wish they would release the device some time soon, I'm very curious about what the actual price will end up at, if it's the rumoured $350 or what. Also it'll be fun to see what that figure translates to in local currency this week, since I'm not in the US.
If you don't feel like digging up an emulator and running the real thing, I've heard from a credible source that Cosmigo's Pro Motion comes pretty close. Free 30-day trial version, or just short of $100 for the full version. There's also a "lite" version, at $30. I've no affiliation with the company, and it's been a while since I looked at it, but whatever version was current then even "inherited" some of the DP III keyboard shortcuts.