OTOH the wording in the abstract (it's not like I'm desparate enough about "boot games" to try going through a patent;p ) seems to be quite explicit about loading another game while the mini one is running, so perhaps that could be a workaround for an OS. Plus with, say, Google even a chance of any legal struggle might be slim - they managed to make a deal regarding Pacman after all. Then there's the thing of many places where such patent is irrelevant, and an alternative bootup process can be grabbed from repos, etc.
But with movable mirror one would still need to dump the momentum somewhere; counterweight, reaction wheels (ESA mission would probably use those, too, it's mostly a no-brainer; OTOH ion engines, with their very finely metered output, could be perhaps better, simpler & allowing more continuous work...maybe still not enough, apparently) - that still needs dumping accumulated displacement or rotation via thrusters/etc.
And "centimeters per hour" would be several orders of magnitude too big; especially when you can get very few photons per s.
Simple games presented to us while the OS is booting. Kinda like in Tekken (1), where you could play a quick game of Galaga while proper game data are loaded from the CD.
Something that simple (again, Galaga-like; or, for example, clearing one screen of Frozen Bubble-like game; using as basic GFX/toolkit/etc. as possible) shouldn't burden currently available machines too much. You can either play along for dozen or so seconds it currently takes to, basically, stare at a loading screen...or ignore it, no harm done (hm, or OTOH have an option to continue, clearing few more screens;p ). Could be fun on mobile phones, too, many recent ones have not exactly instant booting... (and I can certainly imagine Google giving such option in Android; they had Pacman in mainsite logo already)
You can, in fact, randomly browse FFS... Notice how linked xkcd mentions not only a site by Wikimedia; it's just that those two choices are apparently what's most appreciated by Randall "when broke and drunk in a strange city."
For "free." Assuming you already want an ebook reader, free cellular access isn't much of a premium. And considering I recharged my mobile phone account 3 months ago, with ~$2 and there's still something left...data credit even for similarly basic browsing would quickly top the premium for cellular-enabled ereader. Even if Amazon would cease that offer at some point (though they might leave it for "subpar" e-ink Kindles...we'll see), the premium would easily pay for itself by then.
(plugged into a charger? Please, my mobile phone is actually mobile, I recharged the battery around a week ago last time)
Meh, taking notes - also a society that can't remember things. Narrators wandering from town to town, telling texts of great literary works from memory - that was the real deal.
Oh well, maybe at least "lesser" Kindles will have it enabled free for a long time - those where it's damn usefull, but not so "nice" as on a hypothetical future one with "fast" screen. Or at least continuing access to Wikimedia projects...
3G makes no sense at all unless it lets people randomly surf. (Which, in turn, would require a monthly plan.)
But it does just that. In many countries now, using single "plan"...only there's no plan! It's a h2g2 come true.
And while we can assume almost anybody has an access to a PC if he wants it, that's often not "being able to install / do whatever one wants" or having it with you at all times (which is easy with Kindle, among other types of devices; and no, that's not a bad thing - or do you prefer journeys across the country to take years, with half of travellers dying of dysentery? Easy communication accesible almost anywhere is damn useful, those "instant gratification" things being just a nice bonus - why do we have to be chained to one place while working, et al?)
It's quite alive, if you want to toy around you can start from basic level of "pure" Free Pascal DOS-like IDE, and take it from there with whatever tools and toolkits you like. Or Lazarus. There's still good old Delphi of course. Wikipedia pages and categories are, as usual, a good starting point to finding related projects & communities.
But that's dynamically basically equivalent, from the perspective of a spacecraft obviously not anchored anywhere (interference relies on timing of signals); especially considering that single observations, collecting those scarce photons, take a long time.
the concept of sharing and borrowing is being lost in this digital generation
I don't really think that's happening, quite the contrary. Sure, publishers/etc. are trying to block it (which deep down is of course an act of trying to legislate competition away - look at Sweden, the cradle of TPB...and the only place in the world with sustained physical sales of CDs; but labels hate it - most of those CDs are indy acts), but...
So, is it already to the point of "the scene" taking titles sold by Barnes & Noble or Amazon, stripping away the DRM, and...releasing something just as good on the level of publication quality?
New Kindles use AT&T for some time now, IIRC...or some other US GSM carrier. Which is, frankly, a grat change - even GPRS speeds are good enough for something like Kindle; but now the free web access can function in quite large part of the planetary surface. It's getting really close to your own h2g2... (Nook in comparison is quite limited)
Quite a lot of GSM phones nowadays don't sit, most of the time, on what could be strictly called a GSM network, too; they use UMTS (accidentally, also utilising a form of CDMA - why this one consortium insisted on using the name of a basic radio method as their branding?).
So, what, the setup also jamms UMTS? I don't think a 3G phone will really try to use the GSM/TDMA network, as long as UMTS is present...
They seem to be pretty close already - now with a decent browser engine (IIRC it was Netfront previously; good for so called "feature phones", but...), and a speculation of "faster" screen in the future. With webapps...doesn't that give pretty much the essence of what Google ChromeOS tablets are meant to be?
Then perhaps you're stumbling upon not exactly a representative slice of reviews. Anyway, why those people weren't buying ereaders with backlights? (which didn't completelly cease to be available until few years ago...tells a lot about their uptake)
Oh, and check how long your phone goes with backlight constantly on (plus - really, a day? That's a benchmark?)
I don't hold much hope, even though I do have a fair chance of living at least 50 years more (also, imagine repositioning / between acquiring one planetary image times for this thing). Oh well - determining atmosphere & surface spectrum plus some rough rotational color map should be here relatively soon; and plenty fun, considering the possibility of discovering alien biospheres (with such event always having a slight chance of motivating us, but I most likely won't see the effects of this one)
Yeah, that's what the linked ESA mission was about... (well, not two but three/four, depending how you want to count - a problem of similar scope anyway; and also about which my example was - I assumed it was clear with "outgoing light" pathway and "hub" parts) Didn't really seem to simplify things.
Well, if the precision needed surpasses practical approaches possible to us, that's moderately close to fundamental, as far as seing it soon goes... Or perhaps, at the least, you'd probably need zero drag spacecraft; while doing it with a large part containing mirrors plus including all the "portholes" for incoming and outgoing (to the hub) light...fun.
There are certainly good reasons why one ESA mission was put on hold (without managing to determine if what they want to do, with only 3 spacecraft, is technically feasible), or that one NASA interferometer, one spacecraft relying on rigid frame, needed a decade of technical feasibility studies (again, rigid), and still probably won't launch for another decade... And none of the two above can give actual "pretty pictures" (about which the initial post was), merely finally resolve the dot of a terrestrial planet (more or less). We should see Pluto-like images (those before New Horizons; and not the best out of those, too) in our lifetimes, I guess; anything more - better don't count on it too much.
Since around a decade ago, for a few years, there were lots of e-book readers with backlight screens. They were promptly ignored, and for good reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering a typical size of such thing and how fast this one will get here, there's not much of a difference between the two descriptions.
Oh well...5 more years to go?
OTOH the wording in the abstract (it's not like I'm desparate enough about "boot games" to try going through a patent ;p ) seems to be quite explicit about loading another game while the mini one is running, so perhaps that could be a workaround for an OS. Plus with, say, Google even a chance of any legal struggle might be slim - they managed to make a deal regarding Pacman after all.
Then there's the thing of many places where such patent is irrelevant, and an alternative bootup process can be grabbed from repos, etc.
But with movable mirror one would still need to dump the momentum somewhere; counterweight, reaction wheels (ESA mission would probably use those, too, it's mostly a no-brainer; OTOH ion engines, with their very finely metered output, could be perhaps better, simpler & allowing more continuous work...maybe still not enough, apparently) - that still needs dumping accumulated displacement or rotation via thrusters/etc.
And "centimeters per hour" would be several orders of magnitude too big; especially when you can get very few photons per s.
Simple games presented to us while the OS is booting. Kinda like in Tekken (1), where you could play a quick game of Galaga while proper game data are loaded from the CD.
Something that simple (again, Galaga-like; or, for example, clearing one screen of Frozen Bubble-like game; using as basic GFX/toolkit/etc. as possible) shouldn't burden currently available machines too much. You can either play along for dozen or so seconds it currently takes to, basically, stare at a loading screen...or ignore it, no harm done (hm, or OTOH have an option to continue, clearing few more screens ;p ). Could be fun on mobile phones, too, many recent ones have not exactly instant booting... (and I can certainly imagine Google giving such option in Android; they had Pacman in mainsite logo already)
You can, in fact, randomly browse FFS... Notice how linked xkcd mentions not only a site by Wikimedia; it's just that those two choices are apparently what's most appreciated by Randall "when broke and drunk in a strange city."
For "free." Assuming you already want an ebook reader, free cellular access isn't much of a premium. And considering I recharged my mobile phone account 3 months ago, with ~$2 and there's still something left...data credit even for similarly basic browsing would quickly top the premium for cellular-enabled ereader. Even if Amazon would cease that offer at some point (though they might leave it for "subpar" e-ink Kindles...we'll see), the premium would easily pay for itself by then.
(plugged into a charger? Please, my mobile phone is actually mobile, I recharged the battery around a week ago last time)
Verizon took action to maintain proper service; it's like people saying how spam zombies should be disconnected and eveyrbody nodding in unison.
With his old password, anybody had access from the outside.
w8, is that some sort of reverse Godwin?
It's not like (many) Hubble images have much in common with reality, with their long exposures, et al...
Meh, taking notes - also a society that can't remember things. Narrators wandering from town to town, telling texts of great literary works from memory - that was the real deal.
Oh well, maybe at least "lesser" Kindles will have it enabled free for a long time - those where it's damn usefull, but not so "nice" as on a hypothetical future one with "fast" screen. Or at least continuing access to Wikimedia projects...
3G makes no sense at all unless it lets people randomly surf. (Which, in turn, would require a monthly plan.)
But it does just that. In many countries now, using single "plan"...only there's no plan! It's a h2g2 come true.
And while we can assume almost anybody has an access to a PC if he wants it, that's often not "being able to install / do whatever one wants" or having it with you at all times (which is easy with Kindle, among other types of devices; and no, that's not a bad thing - or do you prefer journeys across the country to take years, with half of travellers dying of dysentery? Easy communication accesible almost anywhere is damn useful, those "instant gratification" things being just a nice bonus - why do we have to be chained to one place while working, et al?)
It's quite alive, if you want to toy around you can start from basic level of "pure" Free Pascal DOS-like IDE, and take it from there with whatever tools and toolkits you like. Or Lazarus. There's still good old Delphi of course. Wikipedia pages and categories are, as usual, a good starting point to finding related projects & communities.
But that's dynamically basically equivalent, from the perspective of a spacecraft obviously not anchored anywhere (interference relies on timing of signals); especially considering that single observations, collecting those scarce photons, take a long time.
the concept of sharing and borrowing is being lost in this digital generation
I don't really think that's happening, quite the contrary. Sure, publishers/etc. are trying to block it (which deep down is of course an act of trying to legislate competition away - look at Sweden, the cradle of TPB...and the only place in the world with sustained physical sales of CDs; but labels hate it - most of those CDs are indy acts), but...
So, is it already to the point of "the scene" taking titles sold by Barnes & Noble or Amazon, stripping away the DRM, and...releasing something just as good on the level of publication quality?
New Kindles use AT&T for some time now, IIRC...or some other US GSM carrier. Which is, frankly, a grat change - even GPRS speeds are good enough for something like Kindle; but now the free web access can function in quite large part of the planetary surface. It's getting really close to your own h2g2... (Nook in comparison is quite limited)
A relativelly small settlements, as most of them are, don't exactly have a guarantee of impacting bottom lines; especially if the costs are passed on.
Now, if people stopped buying products or services of particular company due to user-driven pressure group...
Quite a lot of GSM phones nowadays don't sit, most of the time, on what could be strictly called a GSM network, too; they use UMTS (accidentally, also utilising a form of CDMA - why this one consortium insisted on using the name of a basic radio method as their branding?).
So, what, the setup also jamms UMTS? I don't think a 3G phone will really try to use the GSM/TDMA network, as long as UMTS is present...
They seem to be pretty close already - now with a decent browser engine (IIRC it was Netfront previously; good for so called "feature phones", but...), and a speculation of "faster" screen in the future. With webapps...doesn't that give pretty much the essence of what Google ChromeOS tablets are meant to be?
And hey, Kindle already has a keyboard ;)
Then perhaps you're stumbling upon not exactly a representative slice of reviews. Anyway, why those people weren't buying ereaders with backlights? (which didn't completelly cease to be available until few years ago...tells a lot about their uptake)
Oh, and check how long your phone goes with backlight constantly on (plus - really, a day? That's a benchmark?)
I don't hold much hope, even though I do have a fair chance of living at least 50 years more (also, imagine repositioning / between acquiring one planetary image times for this thing). Oh well - determining atmosphere & surface spectrum plus some rough rotational color map should be here relatively soon; and plenty fun, considering the possibility of discovering alien biospheres (with such event always having a slight chance of motivating us, but I most likely won't see the effects of this one)
Yeah, that's what the linked ESA mission was about... (well, not two but three/four, depending how you want to count - a problem of similar scope anyway; and also about which my example was - I assumed it was clear with "outgoing light" pathway and "hub" parts) Didn't really seem to simplify things.
Well, if the precision needed surpasses practical approaches possible to us, that's moderately close to fundamental, as far as seing it soon goes... Or perhaps, at the least, you'd probably need zero drag spacecraft; while doing it with a large part containing mirrors plus including all the "portholes" for incoming and outgoing (to the hub) light...fun.
There are certainly good reasons why one ESA mission was put on hold (without managing to determine if what they want to do, with only 3 spacecraft, is technically feasible), or that one NASA interferometer, one spacecraft relying on rigid frame, needed a decade of technical feasibility studies (again, rigid), and still probably won't launch for another decade...
And none of the two above can give actual "pretty pictures" (about which the initial post was), merely finally resolve the dot of a terrestrial planet (more or less). We should see Pluto-like images (those before New Horizons; and not the best out of those, too) in our lifetimes, I guess; anything more - better don't count on it too much.
Since around a decade ago, for a few years, there were lots of e-book readers with backlight screens. They were promptly ignored, and for good reasons.
Though with cellular access, it is pretty much h2g2 (finally); and with "article mode" in the browser it might be even decent non-hitchikng scenarios.