Denied. The dog never turns off and is wasting its heat
Look, that dog is clearly offsetting global cooling. In such a role, this pet is an environmental treasure. We need more heat, and more CO2; just ask any plant.
This device could drive large numbers of companies out of business, companies who invested a lot of money in those businesses.
This is a terrible example, because this *particular* example relieves the need for anyone to run a company, work at a company, or buy anything from a company. Food, clothing, people, pets, shelter, medicine... anything could be duplicated. No one would need money (and if they did, they could duplicate it.)
Such a machine would reset our entire society -- and it should.
The only reason anyone needs to make money is because money is the machine of "matter duplication", speaking very loosely; it allows you to get "your copy" of the food, property, etc. The only reason this in itself is the process is because things are, relatively speaking, scarce and expensive. Your machine would eliminate both issues.
The potential for a literal utopia would loom. Most likely to be destroyed immediately by massive duplication of weapons, but still, the potential would have been there.
The actual issue with intangible property is that by taking it and not complying with the terms of the rights owners, in the process reducing or eliminating return from said property, the motivation for the rights owners to continue to produce these things for society is damaged, and consequently, society is damaged (and will inevitably develop a means of recourse.) All the excuses in the world cannot get around this; and that is why it is wrong. It does real harm. Directly to the property owner, and indirectly, but very broadly, to the rest of society.
If you (not you in particular, but those reading this that think taking software without the rights/property owner's stipulated recompense is somehow ok) want free software, find some software that someone offers for free, because supporting themselves isn't the motive.
There's plenty of it, too. Like my free tiny database software, here. Or this massive, feature-heavy - yet still free - database package, here.
But if you elect to take property / rights that is offered in exchange for some fee or service you decline to provide, you're an antisocial, simple-minded scumbag. It's exactly as simple as that. And it doesn't matter a flying fuck if the software has a free variant or not, or if you "need" it, or if you "want" it.
People who create - music, art, software - are of much greater value to society than people who steal, and they always will be. And society will always come down on their side for that very reason. And that's just how it should be.
I'd go so far as to say that in a society where the above machine existed, people who create new things would be the most respected members of all. Because duplication is not invention, and invention can, and often does, improve everyone's lot. And what would that get them? Attention, appreciation, and to some degree, power - because people will wish to please them. They'd be rock stars.
...remove the links, scripts and images from the emails before they get to the end user. If your users really can't be trusted with certain things, then why are you giving them the very things they can't be trusted with?
No sensible person or company puts those things in an email any more, anyway. If you need to go do something with your account at your bank, the email just says, "Please go to your account and check your status." Anything further is probably spam, mal-something, or straight-up clueless.
This claim is very much debatable. If your vision is very poor (meaning, you can't read an iPod), then sure, you need a big reader. But there are very few other features the Kindle offers that actually make it a better choice when you actually look at them carefully.
You're right: I'm not typical. I read a lot - I read one book a week
A book a week? I read a book a day. Here's some of my library, all pre-e-reader. I have more books just packed into the shelves on the ceiling -- well over a thousand -- than most people even own. Reading a book has always been part of my daily routine. So I really don't have time for e-ink to ghost up into readability. When I turn a page, I want to continue reading. And I read fast... my page consumption, with the smallest font, is quick on either Kindle or iPod. But the Kindle makes me wait after every page. The iPod does not.
I don't read in the dark
[laughs] of course you don't -- you have a Kindle, you can't read in the dark.
As for speed, it's only unreadable for half a second or less - about as long as it takes to turn a real page
And you think this is a good thing? You turn the page on an iPod, there's zero lag, you're reading instantly. One tap and you're there. And I think your 1/2 second estimate for a page turn is way out of line. I hold a physical book with the next page ready to flip, and flip it in a small fraction of a second. I think most serious readers do the same; otherwise, again, you're losing time and breaking rhythm. I'd estimate physical real-page turn time at about 50 ms, or a 20th of a second, max. Less for a paperback.
If you have a device with a large screen, like a Kindle, you're not turning the page more than 2-3 times a minute.
Ok. Kindle:.5 second for the text to come up; 3 pages a minute; 1.5 seconds; 1.5/60ths, or 2.5% of your reading time shot. A minute and a half per hour. iPod touch: Doesn't matter how fast you turn the page, because there's no delay. No reading time lost. Zero. touch is about 50 chars/line (in portrait... in landscape, it's about 75.) This is pretty much right where you want to be for maximum comprehension if you don't have to move your eyes. Consequently, page turning is perfectly reasonable; better yet, because the screen is small, there is little eye movement required and this also speeds up your reading if you are reading at a reasonable level (which I know you are because you say you can get through a book a day on vacation.) Finally, the contrast on the touch fonts is much higher than that on the Kindle; this makes a significant difference in readability. All these things lead to fewer breaks in concentration, less strain when reading (given that you have normal vision), and higher reading speeds.
I'm happy you're happy with your Kindle; but as I say, we own both, and the Kindle is a pale shadow of the reader that the Kindle app on the iPod touch is. With both at hand, the choice for readability, storage, flexibility, convenience and comfort is easy: it's the iPod. And as I said initially, when there is a real tablet out there - not e-ink, and not just a reader - that'll be the end of the readers. e-ink is to LCD as McDonald's "eggs" are to a gourmet breakfast. LCD's offer glorious color, high contrast, high speed, high resolution, ability to read in any light, and when that LCD is on a general purpose tablet, functionality that exceeds that of a dedicated reader by an almost incomprehensible degree. Because the iPod touch is small, there will be many users that cannot deal with the small fonts, and for them, the Kindle and devices like it are the only fallback available. Tablets will eliminate that one failing, and that'll pretty much be the end of it unless e-ink comes a very long way forward.
My sweetheart has the latest Kindle. We both have iPod touches. We both prefer the touches. They're easier to handle, store and carry, a *lot* faster for page changes and etc., and you can read them all night in a pitch dark bedroom without disturbing the other and with less physical accommodation. And they do about a million other things the Kindle can't do. Kindle is a total loss by comparison, *plus* it costs far more for what it does. You prefer a one-job, slow, cumbersome, B&W reader that costs you hundreds for no particular added functionality? Fine. But I'm not betting you're typical. The market has more sense. That's why iPod touches sell in numbers Amazon can only dream about for the Kindle.
What's not to like about Barnes and Noble's new e-book reader?
The price. They need to use a razor blade model; reader cheap and easily replicable, media priced as market value has it.
Why? Because when an e-book is $9.99, and a paperback is the same (or less), and the paperback continues to offer advantages over the e-book (like, actually owning the damned thing and not requiring batteries), the value of the reader as an usurper of your rights is more than a little questionable.
For instance, the Kindle app for the iPod adds no cost to the iPod; but turns the iPod into a full-fledged reader with a metric poop-ton more capability than any standalone reader. That's the way to do a reader. Standalone readers that cost more than say, a book does, are silly. They're crippled as compared to most general purpose devices, they fiddle with your ownership of the media in various ways, and consequently they really don't deserve the under-the-arm or handbag space that, say, a general purpose tablet or iPod does.
When I see a dedicated reader they want hundreds of dollars for, I just laugh. And... the moment a viable tablet computer comes out (probably in the spring, and probably from Apple), that will be the end of e-readers unless, as I suggested above, they adopt the razor blade model.
Which supports what I said in the first place; stereo media is easily made, as it's just two flat images or streams of images -- two cameras instead of one -- 3D media, with complete visual information on every angle of a scene, is neither easy to make or readily available unless it is sourced from a computer model.
This, or something else truly 3D (as opposed to stereo tech), will no doubt be scalable. The problem we have, really, is there is no 3D media. No movies, TV shows, etc. Only computer generated imagery is readily available in 3D at this point.
Making stereo media is almost trivial. 3D is a whole nuther ball of wax. Highly desirable, but no less difficult for that.
Under a definition like "calls open source code", anything that runs under Linux would then be a derivative work. Because Linux operating system functions (like allocating memory for the executable, obtaining a socket, getting output to the display, reading keystrokes, creating threads, etc.) have to be called in order for anything to function. Even scripting. A Python script must run under Python, Python runs under Linux, etc.
Personally, I think the OS community is reaping the "benefits" of having ever tried to use the legal system to "protect" what they do. The legal system is a complete failure at serving the people. It may have (at one time, long, long ago) been designed to do so, but that is no longer its function. Now, it serves only to make money and consolidate power for itself and those who patronize it (by which I mean inject large sums of money into it.)
ALL human 3D vision is 'stereo'; we only have two eyes!
No, human vision rides on a chassis that can give you a stereo (or mono) look at a scene from any angle. The reason looking from any angle is useful and interesting is because scenes differ hugely depending on the angle of view, and completely different information is available from differing angles. A stereo display would provide no extra information to a person with one eye; a 3D display, however, would.
Stipulating that people's heads are stapled to the floor is absurd. In the normal course of things, people move. Their heads move, their shoulders move, their very eyes move, and their bodies move. In your example of Hawking, his wheelchair moves. As these things happen, the scene in front of the person changes -- this is normal and natural as a consequence of the scene having 3 real dimensions.
When display technology provides this, we'll have 3D display technology. Until then, we don't. Stereo displays give you one fixed viewpoint with the illusion of depth that evaporates immediately if you move anything, because depth is not what you're seeing -- you're seeing stereo (two fixed images, each without depth.) No amount of arguing on your part will give stereo display even a fraction of the capability that a real 3D display has.
When you can walk around the back of a stereo display which keeps itself orthogonally aligned to your viewpoint, and when you are at 180 to your original viewing angle, you can see the commentator's back, then you'll have a valid point to make -- until then, stereo displays are unworthy the moniker "3D." Even then, you're going to annoy the living heck out of anyone else trying to watch the same scene on your display device as the stereo display rotates away from their observation point (because it's tracking you.)
A real 3D display will give you one viewpoint, and the person sitting next to you another. Because it provides an actual third dimension which interacts with your vision and position just as it happens in nature. If you walk around the display and observe the rear of the scene, the person remaining seated in the front would continue to see the front of the same scene. That, my friend, is a 3D display.
Ever pick up a "Viewmaster", a toy that's been around since the 1930's? Whip that puppy up to your eyes, look at a stereo image of [anything], then wish you could see the rest of the object? But you can't -- because there is no 3D recording of the object to retrieve the information from. It's just stereo. Two flat pictures. Same limitations in the end as a stereo video display. A Viewmaster is to a modern photo as stereo displays are to standard displays. None of which are 3D.
Think of poor Stephen Hawking, confined to a wheelchair and unable to move his head.
Hawking can perceive the 3D nature of what's in front of him by moving his chair, or having it moved for him, or when the scene itself changes perspective, as a 3D display rotated by indirect control (his, or a 3rd party) would. As he moves through the world, he sees it from many different angles. So it is in no way correct to assume that his perspective is limited to stereo, or that stereo somehow equates to 3D because Hawking, or anyone else, has a disability.
A 3D display puts you in control over what part of the scene you're looking at in the form of an unlimited number of perspectives. Stereo, however, provides you with exactly one perspective which you cannot alter.
A 3D display produces a 3D representation; that is, if you change your angle of view, what you see changes accordingly. Likewise, if the display is turned 180 degrees, you'd be looking at the back of the scene being displayed.
Stereo displays provide a fixed perspective generated by providing two single-angle images of a scene that are designed to replicate the angles your eyes would achieve from the (single, unchangeable) desired vantage point. Moving your head will not reveal other portions of the scene in any way, nor will moving the display.
Stereo image technologies can become 3D when they use the actual angle of view of your eyes and change the stereo angle appropriately. This requires far more interaction with your eyes and physical orientation, not to mention actual 3D media to display. A half-measure most of us are familiar with can be observed in a game like Mechwarrior (XBox), where you can change your angle on the scene by moving your mech's position or rotating its turret; here, we have the 3D media that is required, but we still don't have the eye and body tracking that would give you the sense that you're looking at something in full 3D.
There's a huge push right now to get the public to call stereo, "3D." As proper geeks, we should resist this strongly, not only as a matter of incorrect (highly exaggerated) terminology, but to make it clear that there is a long way to go yet before we actually get 3D displays, and that we're interested in getting them.
Quite aside from the issue that until or unless we're all normally wearing display capable contacts or something similar that conveniently and as a matter of course feeds us dual images, the entire "here, put these glasses on" approach is a sorry mess. No matter what technology the glasses use.
Everything the FCC touches is inflated. The actual cost of a radio, in active parts, that is stable and doesn't produce spurious output and interference: In the hundreds of dollars. Antenna, less. It's just folded and formed metal, very few active components, if any. Sturdy tower, 2-5 thousand, including a stable concrete base and mount. How do we know? Because ham radio operators put up very similar gear all the time. On many frequencies, some similar, some not, using many modes of transmission, again, some similar, some not.
Cost of "FCC type-approved" transmit equipment: In the tens of thousands. To which, as someone else pointed out, you have to add the cost of lawyers, licenses, land, VERY expensive type-approved towers, surveys, antennae, inspections, the hiring of FCC-approved engineers... it goes on and on. The benefit of all these extra processes? Basically zero. Well, other than lining the pockets of lawyers and vendors of type approved equipment, of course.
This is the cost of handing the government control of the spectrum. They make using it many times more expensive than it needs to be. The same thing they do to everything else. Why? Because they have absolutely no motive to bring down costs or make a profit, and if they fail to serve the people's needs, the people have no recourse -- we don't have any control over the FCC or any other embedded government operation.
For instance, you want to put a 100 watt FM broadcast station up at your house? It can be done for well under $500. You want to do it with FCC approval? Maybe, just maybe, you could do it for $50,000.00. But I doubt it. The difference in reliability, signal purity, stability, transmit coverage and quality because of cost alone? Zero.
The FCC's job here should be limited to coming out to the site before it's powered up, being there when that happens, taking a look at the output spectrum, taking a ride around to measure the coverage, measuring the tower/antennae assembly height to ensure it isn't in the way of the local aircraft patterns, if any, and handing over a signed operating license. For the cost of about half a day's pay for the inspector. The rest should be none of their business.
The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.
OTOH, if Apple doesn't start letting other companies than ATT into the game so that rural areas can have the phone, there will always be an opening for other phones.
Where did all that water come from originally if we were "seeded" by meteors and such?
Hydrogen and Oxygen. Stellar fusion. Etc. Nothing magical about it; without (yet) knowing the specifics, we can still reasonably intuit the processes at large.
...nobody who wants to make a change should be uninformed.
This is a fine sentiment, but... look, did you ever see that video where Penn and Teller go to an environmental thing-in and circulate a petition against H20? They got signature after signature, after describing it as erosive, able to kill people if it got in their lungs, that sort of thing.
I think what people need to do is find someone known to be the median IQ. That's 100 (by definition.) Half the people (actually more, since the peak is highly populated) are 100 or under, again by definition. Have a conversation about complex political issues -- the fed, the constitution, lobbying, the various wars, medical care -- with this person.
At that point, sit back and ask yourself if you really believe that those people are going to become informed voters. Ever.
Personally, I'm convinced that the founders had the right idea when they decided upon a representative form of government. But the field from which the representatives now come from is no longer naturally self-selecting wealthy, intelligent, civil-minded folk. Instead, we're getting not-too-awfully-bright people who are, in general, highly indebted to the political party and sub-rosa process that selected them, and are now in for a term (or many) of making deals to address that debt. The deals themselves are an unholy mix of corporate lobby input, tit-for-tat about the last vote, donations from special interest groups, and pure idiocy ("The Internet... is like a series of tubes..." etc.) Just watch congresscritters speak to one another for a while, it's downright painful.
And as if that weren't enough, one can simply look at the end result: of the ten amendments in the bill of rights, only amendments 3 and 7 remain relatively unscathed. Elsewhere, the prohibition against ex post facto law, explicitly directed to both the state and federal governments, has been run over roughshod. The commerce clause, clearly limiting the federal authority to interstate commerce, has been flipped topsy-turvy into an all-purpose tool to meddle with intrastate commerce (and more than commerce) to any degree the feds decide is convenient on any particular day.
The system is flipping bustamente. I can't see how it can possibly be fixed without a serious revamp that takes into account the things the founders tried that simply don't work. Like - for instance - expressing the federal limits in a constitution that has no teeth - no punishment for violation whatsoever. Or like the whole ignoring the amendment process in favor of just using the judiciary - who have NO constitutional authority to amend whatsoever - to meddle with the content to any degree they like.
I know. Grim. But that's how I see it. We have a government that is operating well outside of its valid constituting authority, and we do not have control of this entity. Quite the reverse. Our currency has been printed into worthlessness and is continuing on inertia, no more... it could crash any day now. We have no real manufacturing, no real creation of material value left because we allowed unions and their cohorts to price labor out of the market. Darned near every market. And NOW they want to get rid of the immigrants, people who ARE willing to do real work for wages that make the work practical. Ugh. What a mess.
What things can OS X do better, than no other OS can do?
I think it does most thing a little better, a few things a lot better, and the occasional thing windows can't do at all.
In my experience, OSX provides the runs-for-months reliability that linux does, at least until Apple forces me to reboot because there's an OS update; has a wide variety of applications I've found useful, and misses only one that I actually need (my security DVR monitoring software.) These applications share with (possibly because of) the OS a reliability I find startling after years of Windows use.
The GUI is nice, I have some gripes, but far fewer than with Windows -- system control via prefs is far less complex and more obvious than via Windows various control panels up to XP (I stopped upgrading Windows at XP, so that's where my observations end.)
I really like the way my 8-core machine is fully utilized by my photo software, Aperture; my camera, a Canon EOS 50D, produces 15 mp images and being able to do live adjustment on the entire image is pleasant, to say the least, as is the ability to create a full res JPEG from a RAW using all the cores. As I understand it, the graphics processor is involved as well at times; I have no way to measure or estimate when or where, but I can tell you my 8 core, 3 GHz, 8 GB MacPro *rips* through my imaging work.
I like being able to run linux and XP in virtual machines, sharing my desktop; I write code for a large windows graphics application, and it's very pleasant to just rip open a window, fire up the MS developer system, pound out some C code, and go back to the Mac. I keep the Windows machine in a no-network sandbox, and that's kept it clean and relatively reliable, which is also nice. If it were my primary system, I'd have to have it on the net, and I know that's not a good idea, my oldest (35) makes a living out of the consequences of taking Windows online.
Similarly, I do support for an e-commerce system I built some years back, linux based, and its very handy to open up linux and work from there in that case. I can hop around all I need, SSH over to the installation, it's all very smooth.
I enjoy not ripping adware and worms and viruses out, or even really giving them a thought. My Mac online experience is wonderful.
I enjoy the system's built-in ability to constantly back itself up via time machine without any attention from me at all. It also never gets in my way, yet is backed up every hour.
I'd sum it up as a mostly positive experience incorporating power, flexibility, reliability, a broad range of useful application software, and smooth concurrent cross-platform capability.
It's not the hardware. It's OSX, and the applications that run under OSX. The hardware is nice, sure, but it really isn't the point -- computing is the point.
I use linux, windows and OSX every day, and it is Apple/OSX I've chosen for my main workhorse, hands down. If I need windows or linux, I just run them concurrently in virtual machines under Parallels.
You really bought a backup PS3 just so you could keep playing PS2 games?
Not "a", several. Yes.
How often do you even care about playing a PS2 game?
I play them quite a bit, actually. I'm particularly fond of the original Maximo, before they "manned him up", but also Crash Bandicoot and some of the early Tekkens (we've got Tekken on all manner of hardware.) We've probably got over 100 different PS2 titles, and *way* more than 100 games. A lot more than we have for the PS3, in fact. Also well over 100 titles for the XBox, and the XBox360. Not very many for the Wii or gamecube... we're not really Nintendo oriented, no young kids in the house.
My absolute favorite game is previous gen XBox; it's "Mechassault." In any case, we have plenty of reason to keep older hardware around, or compatible newer hardware. I expect to be able to play these games until I go nipples north. at 54, I probably only need another decade or two.:)
I find it almost unbelievable you would bother to spend all that money on a redundant PS3, or a whole new set of PSPs.
The hardware investment is nothing compared to the loss for the software if we abandon the games. At about $50 each, it only takes a few games to equal the cost of the hardware, and as I say, we're *way* beyond that. I find it... not sensible... to spend thousands and thousands on games, only to balk at a few hundred bucks for each console.
Hell, by the time your current lot start to break noticeably (and by that I mean more than one goes, because do you really need all 5 at the same time?) someone will likely have cracked the Go anyway.
I don't use cracks. So it makes no difference to me who cracks what, other than it keeps the damned manufacturers churning around in circles, screwing up legitimate backup capability and generally making things work less well than they otherwise could. I'm not a fan of that kind of hacking.
As for not needing them at the same time, the boys have their own homes, Deb has hers setup in the library with her game collection, and mine is on the main system (here), where I get the benefits of the big screen. When the boys visit, we often use the big system, and Deb plays the various guitar hero / rockband type titles with me, and them, there. There are *tons* of single player games, though, and yes, everyone uses their own machines and has good reason to do so.
Each family member that plays a game owns a legitimate copy. For instance, we have four copies of each Tekken (the lady of the house doesn't do Tekken.) We have three copies of the Burnout we like; this is because two boys and myself play. And so on; we don't share games. Nor did I say we did. So what are you talking about?
I have never bought a UMD movie, nor am I interested in watching a movie on a small screen. One of the kids bought one at a pawnshop once, and his comment on the viewing experience was "lame."
My entire concern here is that my family has a large number of games on the format (we have five people, and five PSPs -- many games we have 2 or more copies of so we can play machine to machine -- Tekken, race games, etc.), and the new machine won't play them. At all. As in we supported Sony and the game manufacturers, and they, in turn, have said "So what?" clearly and without any doubt WRT the new machine.
Consequently, we won't be buying the new machine.
It isn't even a matter of "voting with our wallets"; I mean, Sony didn't even give us a reason to buy the new machine. None. Zilch. Nada. Why in the *world* would we obsolete our PSP game library?
What we will probably do is pick up a full replacement set of the UMD-playing model so that our investment in games -- which is far more than our investment in the machines -- doesn't suddenly turn into nothing.
The same thing happened with the PS3s; we have PS3's with PS2 emulation hardware in them. Why would we buy PS3's without and obsolete all those PS2 games? We purchased backup machines with PS2 capability to protect the software investment and simply ignore the new, crippled machines.
Sony comes up with some fabulous products from time to time; but I think they make next-gen product decisions with a "lucky 8-ball" or something similar. The new PSP... complete non-starter around here.
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Look, that dog is clearly offsetting global cooling. In such a role, this pet is an environmental treasure. We need more heat, and more CO2; just ask any plant.
This is a terrible example, because this *particular* example relieves the need for anyone to run a company, work at a company, or buy anything from a company. Food, clothing, people, pets, shelter, medicine... anything could be duplicated. No one would need money (and if they did, they could duplicate it.)
Such a machine would reset our entire society -- and it should.
The only reason anyone needs to make money is because money is the machine of "matter duplication", speaking very loosely; it allows you to get "your copy" of the food, property, etc. The only reason this in itself is the process is because things are, relatively speaking, scarce and expensive. Your machine would eliminate both issues.
The potential for a literal utopia would loom. Most likely to be destroyed immediately by massive duplication of weapons, but still, the potential would have been there.
The actual issue with intangible property is that by taking it and not complying with the terms of the rights owners, in the process reducing or eliminating return from said property, the motivation for the rights owners to continue to produce these things for society is damaged, and consequently, society is damaged (and will inevitably develop a means of recourse.) All the excuses in the world cannot get around this; and that is why it is wrong. It does real harm. Directly to the property owner, and indirectly, but very broadly, to the rest of society.
If you (not you in particular, but those reading this that think taking software without the rights/property owner's stipulated recompense is somehow ok) want free software, find some software that someone offers for free, because supporting themselves isn't the motive.
There's plenty of it, too. Like my free tiny database software, here. Or this massive, feature-heavy - yet still free - database package, here.
But if you elect to take property / rights that is offered in exchange for some fee or service you decline to provide, you're an antisocial, simple-minded scumbag. It's exactly as simple as that. And it doesn't matter a flying fuck if the software has a free variant or not, or if you "need" it, or if you "want" it.
People who create - music, art, software - are of much greater value to society than people who steal, and they always will be. And society will always come down on their side for that very reason. And that's just how it should be.
I'd go so far as to say that in a society where the above machine existed, people who create new things would be the most respected members of all. Because duplication is not invention, and invention can, and often does, improve everyone's lot. And what would that get them? Attention, appreciation, and to some degree, power - because people will wish to please them. They'd be rock stars.
No sensible person or company puts those things in an email any more, anyway. If you need to go do something with your account at your bank, the email just says, "Please go to your account and check your status." Anything further is probably spam, mal-something, or straight-up clueless.
Oh. Well, if the marketing folk call it "3D porn", that settles it, doesn't it?
You need to turn in your geek card, fella.
This claim is very much debatable. If your vision is very poor (meaning, you can't read an iPod), then sure, you need a big reader. But there are very few other features the Kindle offers that actually make it a better choice when you actually look at them carefully.
A book a week? I read a book a day. Here's some of my library, all pre-e-reader. I have more books just packed into the shelves on the ceiling -- well over a thousand -- than most people even own. Reading a book has always been part of my daily routine. So I really don't have time for e-ink to ghost up into readability. When I turn a page, I want to continue reading. And I read fast... my page consumption, with the smallest font, is quick on either Kindle or iPod. But the Kindle makes me wait after every page. The iPod does not.
[laughs] of course you don't -- you have a Kindle, you can't read in the dark.
And you think this is a good thing? You turn the page on an iPod, there's zero lag, you're reading instantly. One tap and you're there. And I think your 1/2 second estimate for a page turn is way out of line. I hold a physical book with the next page ready to flip, and flip it in a small fraction of a second. I think most serious readers do the same; otherwise, again, you're losing time and breaking rhythm. I'd estimate physical real-page turn time at about 50 ms, or a 20th of a second, max. Less for a paperback.
Ok. Kindle: .5 second for the text to come up; 3 pages a minute; 1.5 seconds; 1.5/60ths, or 2.5% of your reading time shot. A minute and a half per hour. iPod touch: Doesn't matter how fast you turn the page, because there's no delay. No reading time lost. Zero. touch is about 50 chars/line (in portrait... in landscape, it's about 75.) This is pretty much right where you want to be for maximum comprehension if you don't have to move your eyes. Consequently, page turning is perfectly reasonable; better yet, because the screen is small, there is little eye movement required and this also speeds up your reading if you are reading at a reasonable level (which I know you are because you say you can get through a book a day on vacation.) Finally, the contrast on the touch fonts is much higher than that on the Kindle; this makes a significant difference in readability. All these things lead to fewer breaks in concentration, less strain when reading (given that you have normal vision), and higher reading speeds.
I'm happy you're happy with your Kindle; but as I say, we own both, and the Kindle is a pale shadow of the reader that the Kindle app on the iPod touch is. With both at hand, the choice for readability, storage, flexibility, convenience and comfort is easy: it's the iPod. And as I said initially, when there is a real tablet out there - not e-ink, and not just a reader - that'll be the end of the readers. e-ink is to LCD as McDonald's "eggs" are to a gourmet breakfast. LCD's offer glorious color, high contrast, high speed, high resolution, ability to read in any light, and when that LCD is on a general purpose tablet, functionality that exceeds that of a dedicated reader by an almost incomprehensible degree. Because the iPod touch is small, there will be many users that cannot deal with the small fonts, and for them, the Kindle and devices like it are the only fallback available. Tablets will eliminate that one failing, and that'll pretty much be the end of it unless e-ink comes a very long way forward.
My sweetheart has the latest Kindle. We both have iPod touches. We both prefer the touches. They're easier to handle, store and carry, a *lot* faster for page changes and etc., and you can read them all night in a pitch dark bedroom without disturbing the other and with less physical accommodation. And they do about a million other things the Kindle can't do. Kindle is a total loss by comparison, *plus* it costs far more for what it does. You prefer a one-job, slow, cumbersome, B&W reader that costs you hundreds for no particular added functionality? Fine. But I'm not betting you're typical. The market has more sense. That's why iPod touches sell in numbers Amazon can only dream about for the Kindle.
The price. They need to use a razor blade model; reader cheap and easily replicable, media priced as market value has it.
Why? Because when an e-book is $9.99, and a paperback is the same (or less), and the paperback continues to offer advantages over the e-book (like, actually owning the damned thing and not requiring batteries), the value of the reader as an usurper of your rights is more than a little questionable.
For instance, the Kindle app for the iPod adds no cost to the iPod; but turns the iPod into a full-fledged reader with a metric poop-ton more capability than any standalone reader. That's the way to do a reader. Standalone readers that cost more than say, a book does, are silly. They're crippled as compared to most general purpose devices, they fiddle with your ownership of the media in various ways, and consequently they really don't deserve the under-the-arm or handbag space that, say, a general purpose tablet or iPod does.
When I see a dedicated reader they want hundreds of dollars for, I just laugh. And... the moment a viable tablet computer comes out (probably in the spring, and probably from Apple), that will be the end of e-readers unless, as I suggested above, they adopt the razor blade model.
That's not 3D porn. That's stereo porn.
Which supports what I said in the first place; stereo media is easily made, as it's just two flat images or streams of images -- two cameras instead of one -- 3D media, with complete visual information on every angle of a scene, is neither easy to make or readily available unless it is sourced from a computer model.
This, or something else truly 3D (as opposed to stereo tech), will no doubt be scalable. The problem we have, really, is there is no 3D media. No movies, TV shows, etc. Only computer generated imagery is readily available in 3D at this point.
Making stereo media is almost trivial. 3D is a whole nuther ball of wax. Highly desirable, but no less difficult for that.
Under a definition like "calls open source code", anything that runs under Linux would then be a derivative work. Because Linux operating system functions (like allocating memory for the executable, obtaining a socket, getting output to the display, reading keystrokes, creating threads, etc.) have to be called in order for anything to function. Even scripting. A Python script must run under Python, Python runs under Linux, etc.
Personally, I think the OS community is reaping the "benefits" of having ever tried to use the legal system to "protect" what they do. The legal system is a complete failure at serving the people. It may have (at one time, long, long ago) been designed to do so, but that is no longer its function. Now, it serves only to make money and consolidate power for itself and those who patronize it (by which I mean inject large sums of money into it.)
No, human vision rides on a chassis that can give you a stereo (or mono) look at a scene from any angle. The reason looking from any angle is useful and interesting is because scenes differ hugely depending on the angle of view, and completely different information is available from differing angles. A stereo display would provide no extra information to a person with one eye; a 3D display, however, would.
Stipulating that people's heads are stapled to the floor is absurd. In the normal course of things, people move. Their heads move, their shoulders move, their very eyes move, and their bodies move. In your example of Hawking, his wheelchair moves. As these things happen, the scene in front of the person changes -- this is normal and natural as a consequence of the scene having 3 real dimensions.
When display technology provides this, we'll have 3D display technology. Until then, we don't. Stereo displays give you one fixed viewpoint with the illusion of depth that evaporates immediately if you move anything, because depth is not what you're seeing -- you're seeing stereo (two fixed images, each without depth.) No amount of arguing on your part will give stereo display even a fraction of the capability that a real 3D display has.
When you can walk around the back of a stereo display which keeps itself orthogonally aligned to your viewpoint, and when you are at 180 to your original viewing angle, you can see the commentator's back, then you'll have a valid point to make -- until then, stereo displays are unworthy the moniker "3D." Even then, you're going to annoy the living heck out of anyone else trying to watch the same scene on your display device as the stereo display rotates away from their observation point (because it's tracking you.)
A real 3D display will give you one viewpoint, and the person sitting next to you another. Because it provides an actual third dimension which interacts with your vision and position just as it happens in nature. If you walk around the display and observe the rear of the scene, the person remaining seated in the front would continue to see the front of the same scene. That, my friend, is a 3D display.
Ever pick up a "Viewmaster", a toy that's been around since the 1930's? Whip that puppy up to your eyes, look at a stereo image of [anything], then wish you could see the rest of the object? But you can't -- because there is no 3D recording of the object to retrieve the information from. It's just stereo. Two flat pictures. Same limitations in the end as a stereo video display. A Viewmaster is to a modern photo as stereo displays are to standard displays. None of which are 3D.
Hawking can perceive the 3D nature of what's in front of him by moving his chair, or having it moved for him, or when the scene itself changes perspective, as a 3D display rotated by indirect control (his, or a 3rd party) would. As he moves through the world, he sees it from many different angles. So it is in no way correct to assume that his perspective is limited to stereo, or that stereo somehow equates to 3D because Hawking, or anyone else, has a disability.
A 3D display puts you in control over what part of the scene you're looking at in the form of an unlimited number of perspectives. Stereo, however, provides you with exactly one perspective which you cannot alter.
Do you understand the difference now?
I meant to say "MechAssault", rather than "MechWarrior." Sorry. Mechwarrior is a similar (for the purposes of my example) PC game.
A 3D display produces a 3D representation; that is, if you change your angle of view, what you see changes accordingly. Likewise, if the display is turned 180 degrees, you'd be looking at the back of the scene being displayed.
Stereo displays provide a fixed perspective generated by providing two single-angle images of a scene that are designed to replicate the angles your eyes would achieve from the (single, unchangeable) desired vantage point. Moving your head will not reveal other portions of the scene in any way, nor will moving the display.
Stereo image technologies can become 3D when they use the actual angle of view of your eyes and change the stereo angle appropriately. This requires far more interaction with your eyes and physical orientation, not to mention actual 3D media to display. A half-measure most of us are familiar with can be observed in a game like Mechwarrior (XBox), where you can change your angle on the scene by moving your mech's position or rotating its turret; here, we have the 3D media that is required, but we still don't have the eye and body tracking that would give you the sense that you're looking at something in full 3D.
There's a huge push right now to get the public to call stereo, "3D." As proper geeks, we should resist this strongly, not only as a matter of incorrect (highly exaggerated) terminology, but to make it clear that there is a long way to go yet before we actually get 3D displays, and that we're interested in getting them.
Quite aside from the issue that until or unless we're all normally wearing display capable contacts or something similar that conveniently and as a matter of course feeds us dual images, the entire "here, put these glasses on" approach is a sorry mess. No matter what technology the glasses use.
So... what part of having the FCC "taking a look at the output spectrum" prior to issuing a license did you not understand?
Everything the FCC touches is inflated. The actual cost of a radio, in active parts, that is stable and doesn't produce spurious output and interference: In the hundreds of dollars. Antenna, less. It's just folded and formed metal, very few active components, if any. Sturdy tower, 2-5 thousand, including a stable concrete base and mount. How do we know? Because ham radio operators put up very similar gear all the time. On many frequencies, some similar, some not, using many modes of transmission, again, some similar, some not.
Cost of "FCC type-approved" transmit equipment: In the tens of thousands. To which, as someone else pointed out, you have to add the cost of lawyers, licenses, land, VERY expensive type-approved towers, surveys, antennae, inspections, the hiring of FCC-approved engineers... it goes on and on. The benefit of all these extra processes? Basically zero. Well, other than lining the pockets of lawyers and vendors of type approved equipment, of course.
This is the cost of handing the government control of the spectrum. They make using it many times more expensive than it needs to be. The same thing they do to everything else. Why? Because they have absolutely no motive to bring down costs or make a profit, and if they fail to serve the people's needs, the people have no recourse -- we don't have any control over the FCC or any other embedded government operation.
For instance, you want to put a 100 watt FM broadcast station up at your house? It can be done for well under $500. You want to do it with FCC approval? Maybe, just maybe, you could do it for $50,000.00. But I doubt it. The difference in reliability, signal purity, stability, transmit coverage and quality because of cost alone? Zero.
The FCC's job here should be limited to coming out to the site before it's powered up, being there when that happens, taking a look at the output spectrum, taking a ride around to measure the coverage, measuring the tower/antennae assembly height to ensure it isn't in the way of the local aircraft patterns, if any, and handing over a signed operating license. For the cost of about half a day's pay for the inspector. The rest should be none of their business.
The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.
OTOH, if Apple doesn't start letting other companies than ATT into the game so that rural areas can have the phone, there will always be an opening for other phones.
Hydrogen and Oxygen. Stellar fusion. Etc. Nothing magical about it; without (yet) knowing the specifics, we can still reasonably intuit the processes at large.
This is a fine sentiment, but... look, did you ever see that video where Penn and Teller go to an environmental thing-in and circulate a petition against H20? They got signature after signature, after describing it as erosive, able to kill people if it got in their lungs, that sort of thing.
I think what people need to do is find someone known to be the median IQ. That's 100 (by definition.) Half the people (actually more, since the peak is highly populated) are 100 or under, again by definition. Have a conversation about complex political issues -- the fed, the constitution, lobbying, the various wars, medical care -- with this person.
At that point, sit back and ask yourself if you really believe that those people are going to become informed voters. Ever.
Personally, I'm convinced that the founders had the right idea when they decided upon a representative form of government. But the field from which the representatives now come from is no longer naturally self-selecting wealthy, intelligent, civil-minded folk. Instead, we're getting not-too-awfully-bright people who are, in general, highly indebted to the political party and sub-rosa process that selected them, and are now in for a term (or many) of making deals to address that debt. The deals themselves are an unholy mix of corporate lobby input, tit-for-tat about the last vote, donations from special interest groups, and pure idiocy ("The Internet... is like a series of tubes..." etc.) Just watch congresscritters speak to one another for a while, it's downright painful.
And as if that weren't enough, one can simply look at the end result: of the ten amendments in the bill of rights, only amendments 3 and 7 remain relatively unscathed. Elsewhere, the prohibition against ex post facto law, explicitly directed to both the state and federal governments, has been run over roughshod. The commerce clause, clearly limiting the federal authority to interstate commerce, has been flipped topsy-turvy into an all-purpose tool to meddle with intrastate commerce (and more than commerce) to any degree the feds decide is convenient on any particular day.
The system is flipping bustamente. I can't see how it can possibly be fixed without a serious revamp that takes into account the things the founders tried that simply don't work. Like - for instance - expressing the federal limits in a constitution that has no teeth - no punishment for violation whatsoever. Or like the whole ignoring the amendment process in favor of just using the judiciary - who have NO constitutional authority to amend whatsoever - to meddle with the content to any degree they like.
I know. Grim. But that's how I see it. We have a government that is operating well outside of its valid constituting authority, and we do not have control of this entity. Quite the reverse. Our currency has been printed into worthlessness and is continuing on inertia, no more... it could crash any day now. We have no real manufacturing, no real creation of material value left because we allowed unions and their cohorts to price labor out of the market. Darned near every market. And NOW they want to get rid of the immigrants, people who ARE willing to do real work for wages that make the work practical. Ugh. What a mess.
I think it does most thing a little better, a few things a lot better, and the occasional thing windows can't do at all.
In my experience, OSX provides the runs-for-months reliability that linux does, at least until Apple forces me to reboot because there's an OS update; has a wide variety of applications I've found useful, and misses only one that I actually need (my security DVR monitoring software.) These applications share with (possibly because of) the OS a reliability I find startling after years of Windows use.
The GUI is nice, I have some gripes, but far fewer than with Windows -- system control via prefs is far less complex and more obvious than via Windows various control panels up to XP (I stopped upgrading Windows at XP, so that's where my observations end.)
I really like the way my 8-core machine is fully utilized by my photo software, Aperture; my camera, a Canon EOS 50D, produces 15 mp images and being able to do live adjustment on the entire image is pleasant, to say the least, as is the ability to create a full res JPEG from a RAW using all the cores. As I understand it, the graphics processor is involved as well at times; I have no way to measure or estimate when or where, but I can tell you my 8 core, 3 GHz, 8 GB MacPro *rips* through my imaging work.
I like being able to run linux and XP in virtual machines, sharing my desktop; I write code for a large windows graphics application, and it's very pleasant to just rip open a window, fire up the MS developer system, pound out some C code, and go back to the Mac. I keep the Windows machine in a no-network sandbox, and that's kept it clean and relatively reliable, which is also nice. If it were my primary system, I'd have to have it on the net, and I know that's not a good idea, my oldest (35) makes a living out of the consequences of taking Windows online.
Similarly, I do support for an e-commerce system I built some years back, linux based, and its very handy to open up linux and work from there in that case. I can hop around all I need, SSH over to the installation, it's all very smooth.
I enjoy not ripping adware and worms and viruses out, or even really giving them a thought. My Mac online experience is wonderful.
I enjoy the system's built-in ability to constantly back itself up via time machine without any attention from me at all. It also never gets in my way, yet is backed up every hour.
I'd sum it up as a mostly positive experience incorporating power, flexibility, reliability, a broad range of useful application software, and smooth concurrent cross-platform capability.
It's not the hardware. It's OSX, and the applications that run under OSX. The hardware is nice, sure, but it really isn't the point -- computing is the point.
I use linux, windows and OSX every day, and it is Apple/OSX I've chosen for my main workhorse, hands down. If I need windows or linux, I just run them concurrently in virtual machines under Parallels.
Yeah, no doubt.
Not "a", several. Yes.
I play them quite a bit, actually. I'm particularly fond of the original Maximo, before they "manned him up", but also Crash Bandicoot and some of the early Tekkens (we've got Tekken on all manner of hardware.) We've probably got over 100 different PS2 titles, and *way* more than 100 games. A lot more than we have for the PS3, in fact. Also well over 100 titles for the XBox, and the XBox360. Not very many for the Wii or gamecube... we're not really Nintendo oriented, no young kids in the house.
My absolute favorite game is previous gen XBox; it's "Mechassault." In any case, we have plenty of reason to keep older hardware around, or compatible newer hardware. I expect to be able to play these games until I go nipples north. at 54, I probably only need another decade or two. :)
The hardware investment is nothing compared to the loss for the software if we abandon the games. At about $50 each, it only takes a few games to equal the cost of the hardware, and as I say, we're *way* beyond that. I find it... not sensible... to spend thousands and thousands on games, only to balk at a few hundred bucks for each console.
I don't use cracks. So it makes no difference to me who cracks what, other than it keeps the damned manufacturers churning around in circles, screwing up legitimate backup capability and generally making things work less well than they otherwise could. I'm not a fan of that kind of hacking.
As for not needing them at the same time, the boys have their own homes, Deb has hers setup in the library with her game collection, and mine is on the main system (here), where I get the benefits of the big screen. When the boys visit, we often use the big system, and Deb plays the various guitar hero / rockband type titles with me, and them, there. There are *tons* of single player games, though, and yes, everyone uses their own machines and has good reason to do so.
Each family member that plays a game owns a legitimate copy. For instance, we have four copies of each Tekken (the lady of the house doesn't do Tekken.) We have three copies of the Burnout we like; this is because two boys and myself play. And so on; we don't share games. Nor did I say we did. So what are you talking about?
I have never bought a UMD movie, nor am I interested in watching a movie on a small screen. One of the kids bought one at a pawnshop once, and his comment on the viewing experience was "lame."
My entire concern here is that my family has a large number of games on the format (we have five people, and five PSPs -- many games we have 2 or more copies of so we can play machine to machine -- Tekken, race games, etc.), and the new machine won't play them. At all. As in we supported Sony and the game manufacturers, and they, in turn, have said "So what?" clearly and without any doubt WRT the new machine.
Consequently, we won't be buying the new machine.
It isn't even a matter of "voting with our wallets"; I mean, Sony didn't even give us a reason to buy the new machine. None. Zilch. Nada. Why in the *world* would we obsolete our PSP game library?
What we will probably do is pick up a full replacement set of the UMD-playing model so that our investment in games -- which is far more than our investment in the machines -- doesn't suddenly turn into nothing.
The same thing happened with the PS3s; we have PS3's with PS2 emulation hardware in them. Why would we buy PS3's without and obsolete all those PS2 games? We purchased backup machines with PS2 capability to protect the software investment and simply ignore the new, crippled machines.
Sony comes up with some fabulous products from time to time; but I think they make next-gen product decisions with a "lucky 8-ball" or something similar. The new PSP... complete non-starter around here.