You've made a bad assumption here. I don't mind buying gen-1, imperfect hardware; it encourages the manufacturer. If they came out with (for instance) an iPad that had 2 gb of ram, real multitasking... I'd buy a pair of them immediately, too, and hand off the old ones to someone who could use them. Then when they come out with one with an IR port... you guessed it, I'll buy another pair. And so on. But see, right now, they haven't come with *any* improvements, so I'm not even thinking about buying. Get it now?
One more thing: That the iPad needs improvements, sure, I'm all about that. I posted here because this is one of Apple's brag days for the device, and because the upshot of it was a big yawn to me, and I think that's significant because I *am* a pro-Apple person and a potential buyer.
But if you ask me if the iPad is a technology / device that enables me and improves my life, I could bend your ear/eye for many, many paragraphs while saying yes, yes, yes. I am HUGELY pro-iPad. There's nothing like it out there (yet), and even if you duplicated or exceeded the hardware, the app space... wow. All I can say is good luck. And I *knew* I was getting something great, because we had iPod Touches prior to the iPad and *those* were just stunning little gems of tech. Which ALSO needed improvement (and are getting a little love this time around... camera, for instance.)
I don't know why people think you have to become a blind supporter just because you buy something, or why you're supposed to claim a device is perfect as-is, or why you're not supposed to buy it if it isn't absolutely exactly what you want. Something weird about all that I just can't connect with.
The system requirements for Windows 3.1 was 2MB (4MB recommended). Computers have been fast "enough" for most people for a long time, and I can't really see why you'd try abusing an iPad into running anything like a workstation load.
Look. When Windows 3.1 was current, applications were written in C, generally were pretty darned small and efficient. Today, an "app" is a huge, bloated hunk of binary -- a quick look in my apps folder and a few info commands reveal app sizes from 7 mb to 165 mb -- and IOS won't fit on a few floppies, either. Looking at the iPad system stats, it shows that right now, I have 112 mb of system memory available to load an app into. Anything larger, and it'll page (or if it loads a part of the OS that isn't presently in memory.) The thing is grievously under-supplied with RAM, it just barely works as is. You try to truly multitask a couple apps, and it's going to defecate right down its leg. So they're not going to do that. Instead, they're going to give us some os services they deem important (playing music, some IM oriented stuff, like that) and that's it.
I can't really see why you'd try abusing an iPad into running anything like a workstation load.
I have a workstation on my desk. 8 Cores, 3 GHz, 8 GB of ram, multiple monitors, etc. It is *very* empowering. That's why I have it.
Now, the reason I want the iPad to be available in a ram-sufficient format that can multitask (hardly a "workstation" criteria, btw... a stinking Android phone can multitask... so could 6809-OS/9 in the 1970's in about 32k of ram) is because multitasking is highly enabling, and THAT is what I like my stuff to do for me.
Some things you might naturally pause - a game - when running something else. Other things, like an aurora warning application, need to run when they need to run, period. Yet other things, like a terminal window, need to be running all the time so you can see what's going on with whatever process you are running. And you need windowing to go along with that. This... this... "thing" they're going to put out in November... it is a serious ball of fail. Will it make the iPad better? Sure. Will it get the iPad even *close* to what it could be? No. And it can't. Because there's not enough ram, and the apps are bloated beyond belief.
you sound like you're on an anti-Apple rant
I'm not too happy with them right now, true enough. But I'm not savaging them for fun, or from the POV of someone who prefers something else; my investment in Apple "stuff" is pretty significant. That's why I'm so interested; because what these products do, and how they develop over time, really means a lot to me. with hundreds of apps purchased, a bunch of Macs and other Apple hardware in hand as well, I become very, very interested in just where Apple places its feet, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to become a sycophant just because you're invested: You're far better off to speak up if you think things can be improved. And brother (or sister), could things ever be improved!
maybe they were referring to a cable connected to a computer instead of a wall outlet?
No. I'd like a surface I can put the iPad down on, or lean it against (upright would be awesome) where the thing is inductively coupled to a charger. It's perfectly reasonable to do; my toothbrush uses this method, in fact. I am not a fan of cables tying down my supposedly portable devices. At all. When I want to carry it away, I don't want to have to unplug it. I just want to grab it and go.
Likewise, when I want to sync it, I don't want to get off the couch or out of the tub to do so -- I just want it to get it done over the air, in the background, just like it installs and/or updates apps from the app store while you do other stuff. In fact, I don't see why I should be manually syncing the thing at all. OS updates... no, not them, either.
you should know that they will not ever, at least as long as Jobs is around, produce a consumer tower.
And I will never stop asking for them. And I fully expect to outlast mr. Jobs.
As for cable charging, what other kind of charging do you suggest? Power does not travel through the air well, that whole inverse square law bites you in the ass.
Inductive coupling works very well indeed when the coupling is close and the Q is high. See that nasty, otherwise utterly useless (well, it has a use as a gripping surface, but that's just because they failed badly on the design of the back, which should have had a combo stand/handgrip) fracking HUGE bezel around the iPad? That right there is an invitation for inductive charging, and reasonably efficiently, too.
So... what you're saying is that Apple can only be looked to for features already found in other products? I guess I'm not following you.
The reason I want the feature is because it's (a) practical and (b) useful and (c) reduces screwing with the device. I thought that was enough, but I guess I'll have to add "after microsoft does it"?
I suppose. For me -- and I'm really invested in Apple hardware, both for myself and my family (5 mac users) -- there's nothing here of interest.
The iPad (which yes, we own two of) still lacks cameras and IR emission, needs a flat, un-wobbly back, still has enough wasted sq inches of bezel area to fit an iPod Touch into, still is bound to AT&T, still is too low-res to properly display even 720p, still lacks CF, SD and USB connections, still syncs by cable, still charges by cable, and still has a paltry 512 mb of memory, which, when they eventually get around to implementing multitasking, means that what you're actually going to get is something on the order of windows 3.1 multitasking with a few services, not actual task switching, etc. And it still costs *way* too much.
The iPhone... still bound to AT&T, still missing features other phones have had for quite some time. Can't use it here because of the AT&T monopoly, so it isn't worth anything to me.
Mac Mini... from a $499 (barely) entry mac with a great footprint to a seriously overpriced block that eats way more desk space...
Still no reasonable desk mac or straight up tower mac (not talking macpro... talking *reasonable*.)
Still got those OSX widgets stuck back on an invisible screen, where they're utterly useless to us... (luckily, there's Yahoo Widgets, which actually work like you'd want them to)
The iPod Touch... mm, nice new display and camera, they almost got me there, but considering the ios4 fake multitasking... I'll wait for one with a couple gigs of memory and some better battery technology so the thing can *actually* multitask.
Aperture still doesn't support stacked plugins... and we're on major release 3... oy. Likewise, Logicpro... still buggy as heck, still hasn't been updated.
And as for trying to sell me 99 cent TV shows... now that's simply straight-up funny.
Honestly, I think they're losing it. I have money, I like the gear, and it doesn't even seem like they are *trying* to get me to hand it to them.
Besides, it was obvious that I was talking about situations where no violence was initiated in the first place. Self defense is fine.
Ok. I guess I'll spell it out, just for grins, since you entirely missed the point.
So your one kid puts your other kid's hand on the stove. It's happening right now. What do you do? Do you waggle your finger? Launch into a pompous explanation of what heat is? What do you think is called for here?
You find your kid torturing a kitten. What do you do? How fast do you do it? Is there any pain involved for your kid?
You find your kid shooting out the neighbor's windows, not only causing property damage, but endangering everyone who might be in his line of fire. What do you do?
You going to put them in the corner for a little "quiet time"? Explain those burns in terms of hugs and kisses, or maybe hold back a baseball lesson? Send the kid to an NRA class?
C'mon, let's see your answers.
Re:The originals really are something else
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One mans troll is another's disagree.
I don't think a GNAA post is anyone's "disagree"; so I'm just going to have to disagree.
I do not think that there is anything one can only say as an AC.
That only reflects your shallow understanding, based on your limited experience. Suppose the poster has been forbidden to use the Internet by the courts? Do you think it's wise to expose your username to Google under those conditions? And do you think the courts are always right, *especially* when it comes to freedom of expression? Suppose what you have to say on subject X might reflect badly on you in your work role? What if you're in prison? Want to advertise that? I mean really, come on. Just think a bit.
If nothing else we need to see the posts that challenge our bias more than reinforce them.
That is the only way that we can learn and grow.
No, actually, it isn't, but thanks for that bit of touchy-feelie absurdity.
But hey that is just my opinion and you can agree or not.
So you're seriously suggesting that someone who fills a terabyte hard drive with raw HD video is a normal computer user?
Yes, of course. Plug the USB cable in, drag the icon for your HD video... keep doing that, you'll fill the drive. Why take all those videos? Apparently you've never been a parent (but that's ok, most people eventually are parents.) So yeah, normal computer users.
Or that someone who uses a pro-grade NLE, and a graphic editor that costs $700 is a normal computer user?
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't. But that wasn't the issue at hand; the issue at hand was, will normal users use up a terabyte, and the answer to that is still yes.
But someone sitting in an edit bay using over 2 grand worth of software is not a normal computer user.
You need to learn to parse English. No one has suggested any such thing here; where you got it, I don't know. But, since you seem to be ignorant of the details, of the software I mentioned, some of it is $50 (new) and some of it is more; all of it enables working with very large data files, some of it makes them out of thin air (no input video required.) People own those programs for various reasons, most of them *not* because they are "pro" users. And again, they're quite capable of chewing up a terabyte without breaking a sweat.
Heck, I've got a terabyte used here and there's almost nothing on that drive but JPEGs and RAWs from my consumer DSLR, a Canon.
Well, look. You're wrong, and every day that passes, you're just going to get more wrong, so by all means, have the last word. Perhaps it'll stand in for the feeling you'd get if you were actually correct.:)
This isn't your merchant-princes of old, sitting on warehouses piled high. Inventory that isn't flowing like shit through a goose is considered a failure...
Sir! Sir! Yes, you! I have a package for you here; it's a plaque from from the "most awesome remarks ever" voting board. Yes, that's right, sign here, initial there. Yes, you too sir. Have a good day, sir.
As it should be. Do you go around hitting strangers when they say or do something that you don't like?
If they put my daughter's hand on a stove, or I found them torturing a kitten, or I saw them point a firearm at someone, or quite a long list of other things; Yes, I surely would, and that would only be the beginning. And if you wouldn't react similarly, you're a complete failure as a human being.
needlessly resorting to violence (hitting, spanking, etc) is another
No one said anything about "needless" except you. There are times a spanking or a slap on the hand is called for.
ultimately ineffective and can cause many more problems down the road.
Ah, sweeping generalizations. One more certain indicator you have no idea what you're talking about.
I don't hit people when I don't like what they say or do. Why? It just shows that you can't resolve your differences without resorting to violence.
What you've shown them is that you value their dignity and pain threshold over their adherence to correct behavior, and no doubt at all that kind of misguided parenting will lead them to think that stepping out of line in the real world will lead to some kind of painless reaction, if it gets one at all.
But the real world is full of very painful, very harsh events and reactions. When a happy, never been spanked, "I am so entitled" kid steps out of line, gets tasered, arrested, stomped by the courts, stuck in prison for a few years, experiences all the joys of the system... that's when all this parenting failure you espouse comes home to roost.
Kids need to know that errors in judgment and breaking rules lead to entirely undesirable consequences, sometimes severe, because if they don't learn it at home, the world will teach them for you, much more thoroughly and violently than you ever thought of, and you know what? It'll be all your fault.
Here's how it works in the US. Parent smacks, spanks, or slaps kid. Or perhaps doesn't. Kid calls/contacts social services, claims to have been "abused."
Parents are now on a free, no-exit, hugely expensive, massively time-consuming joyride with lawyers and social services. They face potential loss of their children, even jail time is possible. Regular visits by invasive, opinionated people are a certainty.
Next time the kid needs a whack, do you think they'll get it, after one such experience, or the report of one from a neighbor? Generally, the answer is no.
Unfortunately, some parents are abusive, and its reasonable to think their kids need protection.
But the end result or the present method has been the inability to safely use reasonable physical discipline as a parent, and even worse than that, the provision of an enormously powerful lever the kids can use without the presence of any physical discipline at all.
I really don't think it's working out very well, long term, either. Yes, a few kids are saved from actual abuse. But unfortunately, a huge number of them don't get their hand smacked when they need it, and it's turning out very unpleasant people by the boatload. One of those very nasty social conundrums.
Just my opinion as an old guy (50's.) I'm *really* glad my kids are grown up and that I didn't have to deal with this.
Re:The originals really are something else
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It's not a problem with the ability to post AC; it's a problem with slashdot's moderation, which is hugely broken. -1, troll, is the same as -1, disagree - and they're both very common. If you turn off by points, you turn off the comments the moderators disagree with, and those are quite often every bit as interesting and valid as something modded up to five. Likewise, some things can only be said as an AC; and that's why the role needs to remain, and why again, if you turn them off, you miss comments of value.
If an abusive post as AC resulted in something concrete for the account that posted it, we'd be saved from these idiots. But because the moderation is as much "disagree" as it is "troll", slashdot can't control the situation.
What they need to do is remove the downmods, so that "disagree" isn't possible. If someone is found to upmod a troll, that account never gets modpoints again, *and* that moderator's upmods are removed. Accounts need to be tied to something of value, like a $ubscription. Moderation needs to be accountable: everyone should be able to see who modded what posts up. Lastly, trolling should be accountable also: You get caught posting straight up abusive nonsense, the ability to post as AC goes away. Get caught again, your account goes away. Want back in? Fine. That'll be another $ubscription.
This would serve to (a) make sure that something found interesting, etc., rises. (b) trolling would be too expensive to pursue. (c) bad moderation would be too expensive to pursue. (d) the noise level would drop enormously. (e) We could begin to trust the moderators and (f) We could even browse by which moderators we are in sympathy with.
It won't happen, though, nor will any other fix; slashdot is frozen in time. So we just have to deal with the mod system in place, which, unfortunately, doesn't work worth a darn.
Even simpler: Put them to work supporting themselves. Building simple huts, farming, plumbing, electricity, etc. This way they learn useful skills, but they don't get to unbalance the economy. Of course, this eliminates the "jail cell" prison in favor of a "community prison", but that's a good thing, I think.
Most importantly, give them a chance to restart after they get out. This whole "registered criminal for life" thing doesn't work, it just ensures they have no hope in the normal order of things, and consequently encourages them to pursue a criminal lifestyle so they *do* have some hope.
Isn't this heading toward a system of slave labor.
Heading towards? Heck, man, it was *designed* that way. Check out the 13th amendment:
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Doesn't get any more straight-forward and basic than being specified in plain English in the constitution, does it?
Not saying I think it's a good idea (I really don't), but it certainly is the status quo.
[Parents] often become controlling and pretend that they have power where, in reality, none exists.
You mean, "[Parents] often become controlling and presume that they have power where, in reality, those powers, which they think they ought to have, and which existed without break until the 20th century, have been made illegal."
Re:The originals really are something else
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Better automation tends to be a needs event. Robots aren't going to be invented unless there's a function to perform.
You misunderstand me. I don't think it's a matter of building a particular-purpose chassis; that's a relatively simple engineering problem.
It's about a robotic ability to (a) do a job and (b) understand enough about what it is doing so that it can cope with whatever it encounters, fix itself, know it needs to move on, etc. Those are general robotic intelligence problems, and likely (very likely!) the same solutions that work for us here on earth will work for deep space mining.
And we *are* working on those problems. I expect them to be solved before very long, a few decades at most, and at that point, everything is going to change. I think it'll be the largest social and technological upheaval we've ever seen.
There's also an impact around building rockets to loft mining gear and lower metals in large quantities. I have no idea which is worse (or is necessarily worse, more precisely), but I doubt it's that one-sided.
It's still better to go for the asteroids. Put up basic mining and manufacturing; mining does not have to be hi-tech to start with, neither does manufacturing. Go after the low-hanging fruit, the metallic asteroids. Build an industrial base out there; use that base to build the more sophisticated tools, and the entire process decouples from the earth, meaning, no more lift costs, no more material costs, no more mine dumps, no more toxic waste, no more holes in the ground, etc. Deliver it in aerodynamic bodies that de-orbit and glide at relatively low velocities into a shallow sea area. Splash. No fire, no crater, no fuel, just moving water around a bit and then using hooks to retrieve the goodies.
Or leave it in space and build more cool stuff there - like wheelworlds and multi-million mile baseline interferometry-based telescope arrays and zero-g ball-bearing and crystallization factories...
While the cost is no doubt high in the short run, in the long run, it has to be *way* lower.
Personally, I think we need to wait on more sophisticated robots before actually we try this, because I don't think people will do well with the long-term requirements of mining out that far, especially in the first stages when amenities are lacking, so when we can create autonomous mining engines, that's the time to begin the reach out there. In the meantime, though, we should be working on the problem of space drives (and we are.) For robots, speed isn't a huge deal. For people it is; speed buys time, and time is the one thing we're really short of.
Might be interesting in combination with other technology, though... your idea of a projector incorporates magnification. What if the magnification was in your eye? Imagine a biomod that gives you up to 8x optical magnification; switch it in, and you'd be looking at the details on the display, if you wanted to -- they'd be there all the time.
Another thing is stereo output (mistakenly characterized as "3d" by today's marketing droids.) With pixels this tiny, it might be a lot easier to have a set for each eye that are set into what amounts to a wrinkled substrate; one set would direct light at the left eye, while the other did so at the right. Resolution wouldn't suffer because it's still below your ability to resolve the pixels.
You could put a full-HD display in just a corner of your sunglasses, and drop an optical layer over it so that when you were looking into it, you could see detail, depending on the angle your eye created against the optical layer; that would also help manage focus distance issues.
HUDs might be implemented better because the pixels are so small that they just wouldn't be visible when off; a (very) thin line of this material would be like an ultra-thin wire in the glass... but when emitting light at night, would become strikingly visible... depending on the light output, that might even work in the day. Depends on where they're getting the light from, I would think
Instruments like microscopes, telescopes, binoculars, cameras... anything you put your eye to, really... the could benefit from a very tiny display and some small optics to give you status / info on what you were observing.
And hey, how fun would it be for an electronics tech to have an oscilloscope display built into his safety goggles?
I could see a day when the entire multicore computer is in your glasses. You talk to it; it talks to you through the earpiece; display is both full-screen in one corner, and HUD all over the glass; antennae are in the arms of the glasses.
Anyway, just some ideas. There must be tons of applications for really tiny displays, as opposed to big displays with pixels you can't resolve.
Well, I'm not going to claim to be a philosopher onb the level of Stallman, but I do have somewhat coherent aims for the code I give away, and those aims are:
Share my code without compromising developer freedom
Cut lawyers out of the process
Avoid creating legal roadblocks for developers
Reduce development load
Learn for myself
Encourage sharing w/o classism
Enable the student
Enable the freeware folks
Enable the dev lab workers
Enable scientists
Enable technologists
Create a shared sense of community
Basically, Stallman considers commercial developers to be the enemy, but is more than willing to support lawyers. I consider lawyers to be the enemy, but am more than willing to support commercial developers.
This difference has led us in two very different directions.
I think the problem here is that the industry is moving away from media that can be passed around. And that's what printed matter is. Passing has always been a losing proposition, and that is where the whole thrust for DRM has arisen from.
The benefits of passing around are debatable, and that's part of the problem - there are pros and cons - but since there are cons, the people selling don't really want much part of them.
One of the big draws for authors here is that when you buy a book, it is difficult for you to lend it out or resell it. They're counting on this to bring income in line with the actual number of readers. I don't know if it will actually work out that way (I'm kind of with the group that says if A develops a lock, B..Z will work out a way to pick it) but I do know that's the thinking.
Still, there's nothing stopping you from approaching Amazon and asking, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
You've made a bad assumption here. I don't mind buying gen-1, imperfect hardware; it encourages the manufacturer. If they came out with (for instance) an iPad that had 2 gb of ram, real multitasking... I'd buy a pair of them immediately, too, and hand off the old ones to someone who could use them. Then when they come out with one with an IR port... you guessed it, I'll buy another pair. And so on. But see, right now, they haven't come with *any* improvements, so I'm not even thinking about buying. Get it now?
One more thing: That the iPad needs improvements, sure, I'm all about that. I posted here because this is one of Apple's brag days for the device, and because the upshot of it was a big yawn to me, and I think that's significant because I *am* a pro-Apple person and a potential buyer.
But if you ask me if the iPad is a technology / device that enables me and improves my life, I could bend your ear/eye for many, many paragraphs while saying yes, yes, yes. I am HUGELY pro-iPad. There's nothing like it out there (yet), and even if you duplicated or exceeded the hardware, the app space... wow. All I can say is good luck. And I *knew* I was getting something great, because we had iPod Touches prior to the iPad and *those* were just stunning little gems of tech. Which ALSO needed improvement (and are getting a little love this time around... camera, for instance.)
I don't know why people think you have to become a blind supporter just because you buy something, or why you're supposed to claim a device is perfect as-is, or why you're not supposed to buy it if it isn't absolutely exactly what you want. Something weird about all that I just can't connect with.
Look. When Windows 3.1 was current, applications were written in C, generally were pretty darned small and efficient. Today, an "app" is a huge, bloated hunk of binary -- a quick look in my apps folder and a few info commands reveal app sizes from 7 mb to 165 mb -- and IOS won't fit on a few floppies, either. Looking at the iPad system stats, it shows that right now, I have 112 mb of system memory available to load an app into. Anything larger, and it'll page (or if it loads a part of the OS that isn't presently in memory.) The thing is grievously under-supplied with RAM, it just barely works as is. You try to truly multitask a couple apps, and it's going to defecate right down its leg. So they're not going to do that. Instead, they're going to give us some os services they deem important (playing music, some IM oriented stuff, like that) and that's it.
I have a workstation on my desk. 8 Cores, 3 GHz, 8 GB of ram, multiple monitors, etc. It is *very* empowering. That's why I have it.
Now, the reason I want the iPad to be available in a ram-sufficient format that can multitask (hardly a "workstation" criteria, btw... a stinking Android phone can multitask... so could 6809-OS/9 in the 1970's in about 32k of ram) is because multitasking is highly enabling, and THAT is what I like my stuff to do for me.
Some things you might naturally pause - a game - when running something else. Other things, like an aurora warning application, need to run when they need to run, period. Yet other things, like a terminal window, need to be running all the time so you can see what's going on with whatever process you are running. And you need windowing to go along with that. This... this... "thing" they're going to put out in November... it is a serious ball of fail. Will it make the iPad better? Sure. Will it get the iPad even *close* to what it could be? No. And it can't. Because there's not enough ram, and the apps are bloated beyond belief.
I'm not too happy with them right now, true enough. But I'm not savaging them for fun, or from the POV of someone who prefers something else; my investment in Apple "stuff" is pretty significant. That's why I'm so interested; because what these products do, and how they develop over time, really means a lot to me. with hundreds of apps purchased, a bunch of Macs and other Apple hardware in hand as well, I become very, very interested in just where Apple places its feet, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to become a sycophant just because you're invested: You're far better off to speak up if you think things can be improved. And brother (or sister), could things ever be improved!
No. I'd like a surface I can put the iPad down on, or lean it against (upright would be awesome) where the thing is inductively coupled to a charger. It's perfectly reasonable to do; my toothbrush uses this method, in fact. I am not a fan of cables tying down my supposedly portable devices. At all. When I want to carry it away, I don't want to have to unplug it. I just want to grab it and go.
Likewise, when I want to sync it, I don't want to get off the couch or out of the tub to do so -- I just want it to get it done over the air, in the background, just like it installs and/or updates apps from the app store while you do other stuff. In fact, I don't see why I should be manually syncing the thing at all. OS updates... no, not them, either.
And I will never stop asking for them. And I fully expect to outlast mr. Jobs.
Inductive coupling works very well indeed when the coupling is close and the Q is high. See that nasty, otherwise utterly useless (well, it has a use as a gripping surface, but that's just because they failed badly on the design of the back, which should have had a combo stand/handgrip) fracking HUGE bezel around the iPad? That right there is an invitation for inductive charging, and reasonably efficiently, too.
So... what you're saying is that Apple can only be looked to for features already found in other products? I guess I'm not following you.
The reason I want the feature is because it's (a) practical and (b) useful and (c) reduces screwing with the device. I thought that was enough, but I guess I'll have to add "after microsoft does it"?
I suppose. For me -- and I'm really invested in Apple hardware, both for myself and my family (5 mac users) -- there's nothing here of interest.
The iPad (which yes, we own two of) still lacks cameras and IR emission, needs a flat, un-wobbly back, still has enough wasted sq inches of bezel area to fit an iPod Touch into, still is bound to AT&T, still is too low-res to properly display even 720p, still lacks CF, SD and USB connections, still syncs by cable, still charges by cable, and still has a paltry 512 mb of memory, which, when they eventually get around to implementing multitasking, means that what you're actually going to get is something on the order of windows 3.1 multitasking with a few services, not actual task switching, etc. And it still costs *way* too much.
The iPhone... still bound to AT&T, still missing features other phones have had for quite some time. Can't use it here because of the AT&T monopoly, so it isn't worth anything to me.
Mac Mini... from a $499 (barely) entry mac with a great footprint to a seriously overpriced block that eats way more desk space...
Still no reasonable desk mac or straight up tower mac (not talking macpro... talking *reasonable*.)
Still got those OSX widgets stuck back on an invisible screen, where they're utterly useless to us... (luckily, there's Yahoo Widgets, which actually work like you'd want them to)
The iPod Touch... mm, nice new display and camera, they almost got me there, but considering the ios4 fake multitasking... I'll wait for one with a couple gigs of memory and some better battery technology so the thing can *actually* multitask.
Aperture still doesn't support stacked plugins... and we're on major release 3... oy. Likewise, Logicpro... still buggy as heck, still hasn't been updated.
And as for trying to sell me 99 cent TV shows... now that's simply straight-up funny.
Honestly, I think they're losing it. I have money, I like the gear, and it doesn't even seem like they are *trying* to get me to hand it to them.
Ok. I guess I'll spell it out, just for grins, since you entirely missed the point.
So your one kid puts your other kid's hand on the stove. It's happening right now. What do you do? Do you waggle your finger? Launch into a pompous explanation of what heat is? What do you think is called for here?
You find your kid torturing a kitten. What do you do? How fast do you do it? Is there any pain involved for your kid?
You find your kid shooting out the neighbor's windows, not only causing property damage, but endangering everyone who might be in his line of fire. What do you do?
You going to put them in the corner for a little "quiet time"? Explain those burns in terms of hugs and kisses, or maybe hold back a baseball lesson? Send the kid to an NRA class?
C'mon, let's see your answers.
I don't think a GNAA post is anyone's "disagree"; so I'm just going to have to disagree.
That only reflects your shallow understanding, based on your limited experience. Suppose the poster has been forbidden to use the Internet by the courts? Do you think it's wise to expose your username to Google under those conditions? And do you think the courts are always right, *especially* when it comes to freedom of expression? Suppose what you have to say on subject X might reflect badly on you in your work role? What if you're in prison? Want to advertise that? I mean really, come on. Just think a bit.
No, actually, it isn't, but thanks for that bit of touchy-feelie absurdity.
That part, at least, you got right.
Yes, of course. Plug the USB cable in, drag the icon for your HD video... keep doing that, you'll fill the drive. Why take all those videos? Apparently you've never been a parent (but that's ok, most people eventually are parents.) So yeah, normal computer users.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't. But that wasn't the issue at hand; the issue at hand was, will normal users use up a terabyte, and the answer to that is still yes.
You need to learn to parse English. No one has suggested any such thing here; where you got it, I don't know. But, since you seem to be ignorant of the details, of the software I mentioned, some of it is $50 (new) and some of it is more; all of it enables working with very large data files, some of it makes them out of thin air (no input video required.) People own those programs for various reasons, most of them *not* because they are "pro" users. And again, they're quite capable of chewing up a terabyte without breaking a sweat.
Heck, I've got a terabyte used here and there's almost nothing on that drive but JPEGs and RAWs from my consumer DSLR, a Canon.
Well, look. You're wrong, and every day that passes, you're just going to get more wrong, so by all means, have the last word. Perhaps it'll stand in for the feeling you'd get if you were actually correct. :)
Sir! Sir! Yes, you! I have a package for you here; it's a plaque from from the "most awesome remarks ever" voting board. Yes, that's right, sign here, initial there. Yes, you too sir. Have a good day, sir.
If they put my daughter's hand on a stove, or I found them torturing a kitten, or I saw them point a firearm at someone, or quite a long list of other things; Yes, I surely would, and that would only be the beginning. And if you wouldn't react similarly, you're a complete failure as a human being.
No one said anything about "needless" except you. There are times a spanking or a slap on the hand is called for.
Ah, sweeping generalizations. One more certain indicator you have no idea what you're talking about.
What you've shown them is that you value their dignity and pain threshold over their adherence to correct behavior, and no doubt at all that kind of misguided parenting will lead them to think that stepping out of line in the real world will lead to some kind of painless reaction, if it gets one at all.
But the real world is full of very painful, very harsh events and reactions. When a happy, never been spanked, "I am so entitled" kid steps out of line, gets tasered, arrested, stomped by the courts, stuck in prison for a few years, experiences all the joys of the system... that's when all this parenting failure you espouse comes home to roost.
Kids need to know that errors in judgment and breaking rules lead to entirely undesirable consequences, sometimes severe, because if they don't learn it at home, the world will teach them for you, much more thoroughly and violently than you ever thought of, and you know what? It'll be all your fault.
Here's how it works in the US. Parent smacks, spanks, or slaps kid. Or perhaps doesn't. Kid calls/contacts social services, claims to have been "abused."
Parents are now on a free, no-exit, hugely expensive, massively time-consuming joyride with lawyers and social services. They face potential loss of their children, even jail time is possible. Regular visits by invasive, opinionated people are a certainty.
Next time the kid needs a whack, do you think they'll get it, after one such experience, or the report of one from a neighbor? Generally, the answer is no.
Unfortunately, some parents are abusive, and its reasonable to think their kids need protection.
But the end result or the present method has been the inability to safely use reasonable physical discipline as a parent, and even worse than that, the provision of an enormously powerful lever the kids can use without the presence of any physical discipline at all.
I really don't think it's working out very well, long term, either. Yes, a few kids are saved from actual abuse. But unfortunately, a huge number of them don't get their hand smacked when they need it, and it's turning out very unpleasant people by the boatload. One of those very nasty social conundrums.
Just my opinion as an old guy (50's.) I'm *really* glad my kids are grown up and that I didn't have to deal with this.
It's not a problem with the ability to post AC; it's a problem with slashdot's moderation, which is hugely broken. -1, troll, is the same as -1, disagree - and they're both very common. If you turn off by points, you turn off the comments the moderators disagree with, and those are quite often every bit as interesting and valid as something modded up to five. Likewise, some things can only be said as an AC; and that's why the role needs to remain, and why again, if you turn them off, you miss comments of value.
If an abusive post as AC resulted in something concrete for the account that posted it, we'd be saved from these idiots. But because the moderation is as much "disagree" as it is "troll", slashdot can't control the situation.
What they need to do is remove the downmods, so that "disagree" isn't possible. If someone is found to upmod a troll, that account never gets modpoints again, *and* that moderator's upmods are removed. Accounts need to be tied to something of value, like a $ubscription. Moderation needs to be accountable: everyone should be able to see who modded what posts up. Lastly, trolling should be accountable also: You get caught posting straight up abusive nonsense, the ability to post as AC goes away. Get caught again, your account goes away. Want back in? Fine. That'll be another $ubscription.
This would serve to (a) make sure that something found interesting, etc., rises. (b) trolling would be too expensive to pursue. (c) bad moderation would be too expensive to pursue. (d) the noise level would drop enormously. (e) We could begin to trust the moderators and (f) We could even browse by which moderators we are in sympathy with.
It won't happen, though, nor will any other fix; slashdot is frozen in time. So we just have to deal with the mod system in place, which, unfortunately, doesn't work worth a darn.
Parents, not schools.
Even simpler: Put them to work supporting themselves. Building simple huts, farming, plumbing, electricity, etc. This way they learn useful skills, but they don't get to unbalance the economy. Of course, this eliminates the "jail cell" prison in favor of a "community prison", but that's a good thing, I think.
Most importantly, give them a chance to restart after they get out. This whole "registered criminal for life" thing doesn't work, it just ensures they have no hope in the normal order of things, and consequently encourages them to pursue a criminal lifestyle so they *do* have some hope.
You mean, "hey, at least then we can TAG THE CHILDREN!"
No charge for the editing.
Heading towards? Heck, man, it was *designed* that way. Check out the 13th amendment:
Doesn't get any more straight-forward and basic than being specified in plain English in the constitution, does it?
Not saying I think it's a good idea (I really don't), but it certainly is the status quo.
You mean, "[Parents] often become controlling and presume that they have power where, in reality, those powers, which they think they ought to have, and which existed without break until the 20th century, have been made illegal."
I agree, I always wondered about that couch. :)
You misunderstand me. I don't think it's a matter of building a particular-purpose chassis; that's a relatively simple engineering problem.
It's about a robotic ability to (a) do a job and (b) understand enough about what it is doing so that it can cope with whatever it encounters, fix itself, know it needs to move on, etc. Those are general robotic intelligence problems, and likely (very likely!) the same solutions that work for us here on earth will work for deep space mining.
And we *are* working on those problems. I expect them to be solved before very long, a few decades at most, and at that point, everything is going to change. I think it'll be the largest social and technological upheaval we've ever seen.
It's still better to go for the asteroids. Put up basic mining and manufacturing; mining does not have to be hi-tech to start with, neither does manufacturing. Go after the low-hanging fruit, the metallic asteroids. Build an industrial base out there; use that base to build the more sophisticated tools, and the entire process decouples from the earth, meaning, no more lift costs, no more material costs, no more mine dumps, no more toxic waste, no more holes in the ground, etc. Deliver it in aerodynamic bodies that de-orbit and glide at relatively low velocities into a shallow sea area. Splash. No fire, no crater, no fuel, just moving water around a bit and then using hooks to retrieve the goodies.
Or leave it in space and build more cool stuff there - like wheelworlds and multi-million mile baseline interferometry-based telescope arrays and zero-g ball-bearing and crystallization factories...
While the cost is no doubt high in the short run, in the long run, it has to be *way* lower.
Personally, I think we need to wait on more sophisticated robots before actually we try this, because I don't think people will do well with the long-term requirements of mining out that far, especially in the first stages when amenities are lacking, so when we can create autonomous mining engines, that's the time to begin the reach out there. In the meantime, though, we should be working on the problem of space drives (and we are.) For robots, speed isn't a huge deal. For people it is; speed buys time, and time is the one thing we're really short of.
Oh yes, open source is "cheat proof." Just take the source code, and:
if me (add points) .7)
if them (success_probability *
if me (armor x5)
if them (speed *.88)
if me (radar_range x 2)
if them (fuel_consumption * 1.25)
Might be interesting in combination with other technology, though... your idea of a projector incorporates magnification. What if the magnification was in your eye? Imagine a biomod that gives you up to 8x optical magnification; switch it in, and you'd be looking at the details on the display, if you wanted to -- they'd be there all the time.
Another thing is stereo output (mistakenly characterized as "3d" by today's marketing droids.) With pixels this tiny, it might be a lot easier to have a set for each eye that are set into what amounts to a wrinkled substrate; one set would direct light at the left eye, while the other did so at the right. Resolution wouldn't suffer because it's still below your ability to resolve the pixels.
You could put a full-HD display in just a corner of your sunglasses, and drop an optical layer over it so that when you were looking into it, you could see detail, depending on the angle your eye created against the optical layer; that would also help manage focus distance issues.
HUDs might be implemented better because the pixels are so small that they just wouldn't be visible when off; a (very) thin line of this material would be like an ultra-thin wire in the glass... but when emitting light at night, would become strikingly visible... depending on the light output, that might even work in the day. Depends on where they're getting the light from, I would think
Instruments like microscopes, telescopes, binoculars, cameras... anything you put your eye to, really... the could benefit from a very tiny display and some small optics to give you status / info on what you were observing.
And hey, how fun would it be for an electronics tech to have an oscilloscope display built into his safety goggles?
I could see a day when the entire multicore computer is in your glasses. You talk to it; it talks to you through the earpiece; display is both full-screen in one corner, and HUD all over the glass; antennae are in the arms of the glasses.
Anyway, just some ideas. There must be tons of applications for really tiny displays, as opposed to big displays with pixels you can't resolve.
Well, I'm not going to claim to be a philosopher onb the level of Stallman, but I do have somewhat coherent aims for the code I give away, and those aims are:
Basically, Stallman considers commercial developers to be the enemy, but is more than willing to support lawyers. I consider lawyers to be the enemy, but am more than willing to support commercial developers.
This difference has led us in two very different directions.
I think the problem here is that the industry is moving away from media that can be passed around. And that's what printed matter is. Passing has always been a losing proposition, and that is where the whole thrust for DRM has arisen from.
The benefits of passing around are debatable, and that's part of the problem - there are pros and cons - but since there are cons, the people selling don't really want much part of them.
One of the big draws for authors here is that when you buy a book, it is difficult for you to lend it out or resell it. They're counting on this to bring income in line with the actual number of readers. I don't know if it will actually work out that way (I'm kind of with the group that says if A develops a lock, B..Z will work out a way to pick it) but I do know that's the thinking.
Still, there's nothing stopping you from approaching Amazon and asking, eh?