I have a cell phone plan that doesn't limit data access at all.
Sprint has an 'unlimited vision' plan added to my phone, and I get internet through their network. The speed isn't so bad, and it is even better if you have extra image compression (done on sprint's side to minimize image file sizes, which bothers some, but can be turned off). I only travel to large-ish cities and haven't really run into an area without their 'vision' (3G isn't it?) service.
Because nothing I need is very latency specific, I have often considered killing my cable modem. The cell phone cable was $5 from eBay (go look, USB cables for any phone can be had for next to nothing), connects to my USB port, I dial #777 with my phone authenticating my account (no user/pass).
Just scanning through slashdot for mentions of Sony, lets see what the company is up to:
They control what we see (MPAA, Sony music and picture industries), what we see it on (newer, flatter, sharper displays), how it gets rendered (new graphics chip on the way). How long do you think it will be till they put a copy protection scheme in effect on both their monitors and the graphic subsystem? I know this sounds silly now, but then again, the whole content control system going into effect now would have seemed ridiculous as well a year ago.
Well, at least they haven't moved in on the simple pleasures of life: pets (oh, wait), human companions (uhhhhh)... oh forget it. Sony will be introducing a MIPs powered girlfriend next year, and somehow she will deter you from watching your movies over the Internet.
> Again, implementations vary, but the message
> issued in this circumstance by all three common
> Unix SSH packages, is in fact quite a bit more
> strenuous than this suggests:
> @ WARNING: HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
So in Unix, the clients privledges to proceed if the sever host key has changed are souly determined by the sysadmin's policy with the SSH client program?
So windows users are more likely to bypass such a message because a) their client SSH program doesn't present the message in a serious enough mannor b) because the user isn't educated enough to know how to set the attributes of a security scheme.
A security scheme includes both the server and client systems. What this all boils down to is that SSH provides a safe scheme of encrypted communication when both ends of the scheme are under control of a smart admin. Unfortunately that bites into the realm of personal computing. How many people would download an SSH client that didn't allow them to proceed even if the server's key didn't look right? Given the option, even I would download a "slightly less secure" client program just to have the option.
SSH just provides a secure platform in ideal controlled inviroments. That doesn't help me,my backbone is the psycic friends netowrk.
bortbox
First of all MIDI audio data? No, midi doesn't carry audio. It carries SYSEX not information. Its been discussed several times before. And if you are working with DSPs, compressed audio is exactly what you DON'T want, especially if you are attempting to do it realtime. Not only does the computer have to apply algorythms to the audio, but uncompress it first?
How does that make sence. Anyone in any graphic/audio/video work knows you compress AFTER everything is DONE. And if you are doing anything professionally, compressed audio isn't good enough. Every bit counts.
bortbox
Okay, I think the apple comment was all in humor. If any of you are actually thinking that this powerPC-isque chip has any potential to see daylight at Apple, it sure isn't as a product offering. Apple does NOT market high end servers, it does NOT sell number crunchers, and if you think you are going to EVER see a Power4 in a translucent case then I hope your holding your breath, because darwin is waiting for you.
The PowerX line of chips don't run word, they don't process photoshop filters real well, and they need MASSIVE cooling. In fact, I don't see anything at all that would appeal to an actual Macintosh customer. What DO the chips do?
Well they crunch numbers, run molecular simulations, etc... I do know enough about the Power4 to give a decent speach on the target market and application uses, however all I wish to do is say upfront, that if your comment has anything to do with Apple and the Power4, you are waisting time, and most of all, showing your lack of knowledge when it comes to computing. Forgive the typos, I have to get back to hour 37 of work.
Rapid prototyping??? Been around for years, however the costs seem to be comming down.
In school a couple years ago, we were working on a portible rapid prototyping machine that could be used in all weather conditions. The idea was that a computer was carried around with a CAD catalog of parts for tanks and other equipment. Instead of carrying several tons of spare parts for a military campeign, someone could just fill the machine with epoxy, and in a couple minuites, have whatever part needed. Other aplications were space, as you can imagine such a machine could reduce payload weights tremendously. However getting the machine to work in microgravity seemed to be a rather large block when using liquids in a gravity dependant process.
bort
(a million things to say, and two minuites to say it in, sorry about not proofreading this.
Re:Can someone please explain: Why?
on
Pilot Synthesis
·
· Score: 2
Is there a market? Well yamaha has a QY-70 handheld midi composer ( http://www.yamaha.com/cgi-win/webcgi.exe/DsplyMode l/?gSEQ00005QY70 ) and roland has its own palm-pilot(esq) midi sequencer as well (url please). I am not aware of a dance/electronica muscian that doesn't drool at a portable device with a 16 step drum programmer,personally, i think this product is amazing.
Am I to understand that this whole article is about WHAT IF there were digital fingerprints on color copies/prints. I work for a certian company.. lets call it company X (or company that starts with X. Now company X CURRENTLY and HAS for a LONG TIME put a series of yellow dots (yellow ink is hard to see.. and the dots are VERY small) that corispond to the machines serial number. Now if you know ANYTHING about company X, and have ever called in a machine FROM company X.. as soon as you rattle off the serial number, they know EXACTLY where the machine is.
I have PERSONALLY testified against 3 people who were doing fraudulant things on high end color machines. Using this series of dots was the thing that caught them. I could give a list of machines that encode the serial number, but I am unsure of what I am supposed to say as outlined by my contract with company X. NEEDLESS to say, if any of you have GONE to Kinkos or resonable faximile, that machine DOES have said encoding. Just thought I would set that straight.
Woa! Stevie Wonder has been a KEY PLAYER in the development of sound and music technology. First of all is anyone knows anything about midi or sampling, you owe most of the modern wonders of sampled waveforms to Stevie. He has thrown money into wonderful projects such as the Kurzweil line of keyboards, as well as giving money to several start up companies that eventually failed, but whose engineers went on to pioneer the soundest for the Amiga, Advanced Logic Audio, and a dozen other top plays in the multimedia and music production field. His contributions in the development of synthesizers and college aged dreamers are to be commended. I don't have proper links off hand (at work) but I can easily obtain stories upon stories of advancements made as a direct result of his ideas as well as the amount of money he gave/lent to tinker's.
Just thought I would throw a line out there for those who don't know, and personally I don't care much for his music.
But the guy who figured out the difference betweem a 720k disk and a 1.44 disk was the hole in the upper left hand should be giving SOMETHING. I know it saved me a budle when the differnce between the two was $5.
Does cross have a similar device? the pad is tethered.. but at the tip of the pen is a ball. The pen transmits a radio signal to the drawing pad, and the who idea is having a pad that feels a lot like writing on a real peice of paper. Personally I love the product ( ipen pro) http://www.cross-pcg.com/products/index.html .
Its seems from the article that Compaq is releasing the Vista, although it says in the slashdot jib that Dell making it. Did I read something wrong? Are one of these sources wrong? Hmmm.. Bortbox
A subject on slashdot that I know a little about. First of all I would like to give out thanks to some people:
Thank you Elisha Gray for early work if not the first electronic ocillator, you started it all!
Thank you Lev Sergievitch Termen for inventing the theremen. Waveing hands of physics!
Thank you Wendy Carlos. He (now SHE) did the work on clockwork orange. Now remeber the Beethoven music done on synths? Well that was done on MONOPHONIC synths (one note at a time) and a LOT of recording, re-takes, and tape splicing. This hard working individual said that more than background toons could be hacked out of these spacy, modular beasts.
Thank you Rober Moog. Inventer of a lot of good sounds, inspiration of a lot of good bands, a smart man, a good teacher. What is MOOG you ask? oh pleeeeze. heh (by the way bob, if you read slashdot, email me.. been forever). Moogs will never go out of fasion.
Thank you Devo, Kraftwork, and Brian Eno. Household names for the electronic muscian, and all around cutting edge people. Half the stuff that came from Devo is STILL taboo in some states (heh).
Thank you roland for mass production of some decent gear (no thanks to the people who ruined the sound of the 303).
Now there are a lot of other people who deserve credit. A lot of work was put into early disco, early techno, and even rock and roll (hammond co and Rhodes too). One final note.
Thank you David Bowie for nothing. You made some good tunes, but over all, thank you for jack shit. Thank you for another useless bland ISP with a theme, and riding on the coat-tails of great men.
Is generative music life imitating art? or the other way around. All too often I see a group of people who define their attitude, their culture, and even their beleif systems upon a muscian or band (Townshend = God... hmmm). What are the social ramifications of having music based on your personality?
I can name a couple albums, or sounds or even muscians that have changed who I am and even broadened my perspective through music. Not only through the lyrics but thought provocing instrumentals. Although generative music is a cool concept, what about the sharing of idea through music. Music based on one's current self is a bit stagnant, and could have the social implemintaion of inbreading. Just re-enforcing your current ideas untill they mutate into dilusions. Of coarse I am going way out on a limb here.
Now back to the people mentioned previously, I think that in some cases certian people lack self esteem to the point that their identity souly defined by the music they listen and to some extent the music that is popular at the time. Generative music may be a tool that can be used to open a path to self-relization. Answer the questions honestly, or really express yourself truely and the end result may suprise or enlighten you.
As a muscian I use music for self-enlightenment, to share ideas, and to grow. I enjoy making music according to my own tastes, but listen to everyone elses compositions for inpiration and creative prosparity. I could also see genertive music being used as a tool to form compositions around muy feelings easier than playing an intrument, but then again leanring an instrument is a disciplin that is VERY charecter building. I know I am conflicting in all my arguments, but I have the firm beleif that music isn't just always playing around. Its very much a foundation of society, and can influence it in negative ways.
Oh well... so much more to say, but I feel I have made enough grammatical and spelling errors tonight.
Wow, someone finally recognizes the whole MHZ game. MHZ has very little to do with speed. Lets not forget the BUS which is VERY important seeing how your information has to get to peripherals such as your HDD and video card, and other devices such as memory (but who needs memory anyway?).
BUS not a big deal? Well maybe FPU speeds could help out, especially when doing multi-user intensive applications or running a database, like they do on that internet thing, but who uses that?
Okay, have I covered chipset? Fine, your chipset might be faster, but mine WORKS. Does one count reboot time when using benchmarks?
Now lets go a little deeper, remeber the G4s maxing out at 500mhz (at the press release) and hitting a gigaflop sustained? And somehow these 500mhz devils are faster than pentium III 600s? No way! Isn't possible! There is a gap of 100 mhz there, oh wait that whole core architecture/layout thing enters the game doesn't it.
Remeber the DX4-100, now someone is saying that a (re)Pentium 100 is the same speed? There is so much to be concidered when speed is concerened, not to mention what application you are using the computer for (some of those "fastest computers in the world" couldn't run solitare if they tried, but that is vector isn't it). Last I heard, AMD has the fastest BUS, Intel has the winner on the FPU side, AMD at this point has the MHZ, and Intel has the stability on the BUS side (put aside that silly RAMBUS fiasco (heh)).
BortBox
That was my two cents, and it was an advance on my credit card.
A process called "Rapid Prototyping" has a similar application. It works like this: A laser sketches a design, layer by layer on an epoxy solution, and the solution solidifies when the laser hits it. Layer by layer the object is made. You can check out http://nasarp.msfc.nasa.gov/ for NASA's rapid prototyping division. Well usually making artificial bones is a long evolving process, and requires weeks if not months of measuring and careful manufacturing.
With rapid prototyping one could have a program with a catalog or different bones with a selections of sizes. With even current x-ray and stereo photography have a computer render a bone and then having it rapid prototyped can be knocked down to under a weeks worth of work.
I am probably not the first to come up with this idea, but clothing with displays on it could be rather nifty. Think of how well this could work out. You have a bunch of different T-shirts of different colors and you could load logos, bands, or whatever your druthers. Design your own clothing.
I am sure this wouldn't be too hard. You have a small package that consists of a small recharable battery, a DAC, and an ethernet port and you put it in your pocket, if not on your belt. A very flexable and small ribboncable hits the display on the shirt and there you have it. Go up a notch and have the device be a hand held unit that has wireless internet. Faster bandwidth over wireless connections ALREADY has streaming video over it. Load a server full of video clips or things of the sort and transmit them wirelessly to your shirt. Even something as generic as the old eye candy/fractal generators would make good threads (when touring Phish).
Since this article is a little less technical, I'd like to go ahead ad voice a couple thoughts. It is of my opinion that Intel is a much more friendlier company than had been in the past when it comes to the x86 market. Intel most definately has the dough to pour into R&D to stay ahead of the x86 market. It most definately has the cash to through out a chip similiar to the G4 in raw flops, but it hasn't. So Intel doesn't hold the top bang, the top bang for the buck,and most definately hasn't come out with anything incredably exciting in some time. Intel does hold the market share. Sure the their new Merced is building a lot of hype, but when it comes down to actual production, it sure isn't rushing things. Intel has one wonderful thing goinf for it,and that is stability. Now it isn't the most stable of platforms sure, but think about the peice of mind you get when you buy intel. Odd chip sets? Nah, its the VIA and the SiS that put out those "soon to have a patch" chipsets, and wird super socket 7 MBs. Cyrix failed misribly because it wasn't even win98 compatible till way to late. You think that SGI wouldn't have picked AMD hardware if it could have? You think that the G4 is really going to be the way to crunch numbers even though the support hardware is so undeveloped (as compared to that is). MHZ is great, terra-flops: go for it!, but if you can't run the apps and keep em running.. then whats the point. Now I amilling to bet that those pro admins out there.. that if you even remotely suggested to any of the big shoulders at your company to switch from anything Intel on the x86 side, the resistance would almost come like instinct. Intel is (in my opinion) not really the MS of the CPU world as it used to be, simply because its product is tried or true. I see it as a corvette vs. hummer deal.. the army doesn't ride around in vette's for a reason. Bortbox (there goes my karma for sure)
Well this is a great step for printing on the Unix side and a bit late if you ask me. Spending my whole life with printers, espeically high speed print servers I must say that this is really too little too late. Unix is in whole, a multi user platform made for networks, and not necesarily the everyday home user. And so most printers that interface nicely with Unix, by no surprise, are multi user, high-speed printers. Now I am going to use two printers as example to point out printer evolution on Unix platforms.
On the small color end you have the relitively new Tektronix 780, with network features such as:
Built in HTTP server for printer management and set up, FTP server for instand Postscript file upload, SCSI and IDE HD options for job storage as well as buffering space, SNMP, DHCP, and the list goes on. Now to print to one of these small office color machines from Unix, it is recommended that you have your app create a postscript file and have the app FTP the PS file to the printer. Real simple, real fast, very effective. No configuring anything in your OS for printer ports, print servers, or anything..just the specs of your printer to make the post script file. Here at work, we have mounted the printer's HDD to a point on the network where the PS files are automatically saved and printed.
Now on the high end lets look at how Xerox has developed its high end Docutech series. I cannot say enough about the importance the original 1992 Docutech135 has meant to computers in general. It is one of the projects that led Xerox to give us the mouse, the GUI, and ethernet. Moving away from totally cutom gear now that mice and GUI's are a dime a dozen, Xerox moves the central RIP'ing precess and printer control to a nice Sun Ultra 2 (creator 2). Nice move if you ask me. Using SBus's throughput to move paper through a machine 135 times a munite, duplexing, stapleing, binding etc (controlling a printer about the size of a bus in length). Now Xerox writes a SLEW of new apps to controll this printer, and to accept jobs comming in from IPX novell netoworks, Appletalk (handling IPX and appletalk on solaris, Xerox has gonads;) ) Total custom boards, nice printing interface, custom RIP software, no use of lp (lpr) anywhere.
Point in hand.. this app, which is aimed for the home small printer user I am assuming, is nothing real majical, and for most commercial users quit insignifigant. Anyway.. sorry about the spelling grammer etc.. i am in a REAL rush. Bort
You know, Isaac Asimov wrote a short story about this some years ago. I remember reading it in grade school. An author had a robot that did chores and such and followed the three lessons of robotics (Asimov's rules). Well the author kept paying a technician to upgrade the robot, first with grammatics, then a better dictionary, then "senses" such as irony and etc. Well to make things more interesting as time went on the robot would create better and better stories till one of them was good enough to cause the author to want to shut the robot off. The story ends like this: The robot kills the author and runs off with the technician. This is all too scary for me really. I mean how many of Asimov's predictions have already come true? Words are a means of self expression. Giving a machine the power to express itself in words is just one more step in producing true AI. So kudos to the programmers and engineers.
Just one more thought, the robots final story pitted two colleges against each other: one from Yule (Yale) and another from Harvard. Anyway please make all the corrections necessary to my poor recollection of the story.
... the computer. There are a number of comments stating that these terminals are some kind of entry into a market Sun doesn't have. I don't feel this is true. These terminals are just like periferals for their servers. I mean you almost have to buy a Sun server for these terminals, and that is the point. All Sun is trying to do is add more monitors and keyboards to their servers to expand the use of the server itself.
This product shouldn't be a surprise, I mean the whole network is the computer + JINI deal ALL points to this being the next logical step. Next you will have ways of clustering the terminal servers so that one a server get bogged down then a server with less traffic can take some CPU load, then add a little more scalability to the server with greater processor and storage options. Add things like USB Zip drive support and now you can store your files on a zip disk and etc... All seams to be logical steps. Weather they are marketable, who cares... Sun practically HAD to do this in order to keep up with all those nifty vision statements. I mean.. MS is starting to make sure your email isn't stored locally... next thing you know they will have microsoft office running off the web (as star office is close to)... not like MS isn't doing the same thing here. BortBox
Well, personally I think this was almost a no brainer for Mac. Now ATI is known amoung most design professionals to be THE chip to go with since the Mach64. WHY? Well the truth is: color calabration. The ATI line of products offers more options for color calibration and color management than any other line of chips out there. This includes both hardware support (your windows drivers doesn't even SCRATCH the surface of the color support embedded into those chips) and software support. EFI (de facto in meduim sized color print production) has long used ATI gear, and STILL uses its Mach64 in some of its top of the line material. Now MOST users using MacOS are NOT intrested in gaming OR 3d rendering. Lets face it, there isn't MUCH of a market for EITHER. MOST high level 3d work is UNIX work. Most games have windows. Being IN the industry myself, Macs are used for PhotoShop, Quark, and things of the like which require VERY little 3d rendering. And if you know anything about RGB to CMYK conversion for printing, then using an ATI chip is the only real way to go. Despite any person opinion, EFI, Splash, Xerox, Dell's 2d design stations, IBM's own RS6000 2d design stations are packed with SOME variant of an ATI chip. If you are using a Mac for 3d redering, chances are you have a different OS, and then you probably are going to pack it with a different card and so fourth. But since Mac design work goes for 2d work (including film) and COLOR is critical: ATI, hands down, holds the market for entry level-to mid level price range color calibration. BortBox
Slashdot Mirror
I have a cell phone plan that doesn't limit data access at all.
Sprint has an 'unlimited vision' plan added to my phone, and I get internet through their network. The speed isn't so bad, and it is even better if you have extra image compression (done on sprint's side to minimize image file sizes, which bothers some, but can be turned off). I only travel to large-ish cities and haven't really run into an area without their 'vision' (3G isn't it?) service.
Because nothing I need is very latency specific, I have often considered killing my cable modem. The cell phone cable was $5 from eBay (go look, USB cables for any phone can be had for next to nothing), connects to my USB port, I dial #777 with my phone authenticating my account (no user/pass).
-bortbox
Just scanning through slashdot for mentions of Sony, lets see what the company is up to:
They control what we see (MPAA, Sony music and picture industries), what we see it on (newer, flatter, sharper displays), how it gets rendered (new graphics chip on the way). How long do you think it will be till they put a copy protection scheme in effect on both their monitors and the graphic subsystem? I know this sounds silly now, but then again, the whole content control system going into effect now would have seemed ridiculous as well a year ago.
Well, at least they haven't moved in on the simple pleasures of life: pets (oh, wait), human companions (uhhhhh)... oh forget it. Sony will be introducing a MIPs powered girlfriend next year, and somehow she will deter you from watching your movies over the Internet.
bort
> Again, implementations vary, but the message > issued in this circumstance by all three common > Unix SSH packages, is in fact quite a bit more > strenuous than this suggests: > @ WARNING: HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ So in Unix, the clients privledges to proceed if the sever host key has changed are souly determined by the sysadmin's policy with the SSH client program? So windows users are more likely to bypass such a message because a) their client SSH program doesn't present the message in a serious enough mannor b) because the user isn't educated enough to know how to set the attributes of a security scheme. A security scheme includes both the server and client systems. What this all boils down to is that SSH provides a safe scheme of encrypted communication when both ends of the scheme are under control of a smart admin. Unfortunately that bites into the realm of personal computing. How many people would download an SSH client that didn't allow them to proceed even if the server's key didn't look right? Given the option, even I would download a "slightly less secure" client program just to have the option. SSH just provides a secure platform in ideal controlled inviroments. That doesn't help me,my backbone is the psycic friends netowrk. bortbox
First of all MIDI audio data? No, midi doesn't carry audio. It carries SYSEX not information. Its been discussed several times before. And if you are working with DSPs, compressed audio is exactly what you DON'T want, especially if you are attempting to do it realtime. Not only does the computer have to apply algorythms to the audio, but uncompress it first? How does that make sence. Anyone in any graphic/audio/video work knows you compress AFTER everything is DONE. And if you are doing anything professionally, compressed audio isn't good enough. Every bit counts. bortbox
Okay, I think the apple comment was all in humor. If any of you are actually thinking that this powerPC-isque chip has any potential to see daylight at Apple, it sure isn't as a product offering. Apple does NOT market high end servers, it does NOT sell number crunchers, and if you think you are going to EVER see a Power4 in a translucent case then I hope your holding your breath, because darwin is waiting for you.
The PowerX line of chips don't run word, they don't process photoshop filters real well, and they need MASSIVE cooling. In fact, I don't see anything at all that would appeal to an actual Macintosh customer. What DO the chips do?
Well they crunch numbers, run molecular simulations, etc... I do know enough about the Power4 to give a decent speach on the target market and application uses, however all I wish to do is say upfront, that if your comment has anything to do with Apple and the Power4, you are waisting time, and most of all, showing your lack of knowledge when it comes to computing. Forgive the typos, I have to get back to hour 37 of work.
chow
bort
Rapid prototyping??? Been around for years, however the costs seem to be comming down.
In school a couple years ago, we were working on a portible rapid prototyping machine that could be used in all weather conditions. The idea was that a computer was carried around with a CAD catalog of parts for tanks and other equipment. Instead of carrying several tons of spare parts for a military campeign, someone could just fill the machine with epoxy, and in a couple minuites, have whatever part needed. Other aplications were space, as you can imagine such a machine could reduce payload weights tremendously. However getting the machine to work in microgravity seemed to be a rather large block when using liquids in a gravity dependant process.
bort
(a million things to say, and two minuites to say it in, sorry about not proofreading this.
Is there a market? Well yamaha has a QY-70 handheld midi composer ( http://www.yamaha.com/cgi-win/webcgi.exe/DsplyMode l/?gSEQ00005QY70 ) and roland has its own palm-pilot(esq) midi sequencer as well (url please). I am not aware of a dance/electronica muscian that doesn't drool at a portable device with a 16 step drum programmer,personally, i think this product is amazing.
bortbox
i was wondering if they gots one that attaches to your balls.
bortbox
intellegent sig
Am I to understand that this whole article is about WHAT IF there were digital fingerprints on color copies/prints. I work for a certian company.. lets call it company X (or company that starts with X. Now company X CURRENTLY and HAS for a LONG TIME put a series of yellow dots (yellow ink is hard to see.. and the dots are VERY small) that corispond to the machines serial number. Now if you know ANYTHING about company X, and have ever called in a machine FROM company X.. as soon as you rattle off the serial number, they know EXACTLY where the machine is.
I have PERSONALLY testified against 3 people who were doing fraudulant things on high end color machines. Using this series of dots was the thing that caught them. I could give a list of machines that encode the serial number, but I am unsure of what I am supposed to say as outlined by my contract with company X. NEEDLESS to say, if any of you have GONE to Kinkos or resonable faximile, that machine DOES have said encoding. Just thought I would set that straight.
bortbox
Woa! Stevie Wonder has been a KEY PLAYER in the development of sound and music technology. First of all is anyone knows anything about midi or sampling, you owe most of the modern wonders of sampled waveforms to Stevie. He has thrown money into wonderful projects such as the Kurzweil line of keyboards, as well as giving money to several start up companies that eventually failed, but whose engineers went on to pioneer the soundest for the Amiga, Advanced Logic Audio, and a dozen other top plays in the multimedia and music production field. His contributions in the development of synthesizers and college aged dreamers are to be commended. I don't have proper links off hand (at work) but I can easily obtain stories upon stories of advancements made as a direct result of his ideas as well as the amount of money he gave/lent to tinker's.
Just thought I would throw a line out there for those who don't know, and personally I don't care much for his music.
bortbox
But the guy who figured out the difference betweem a 720k disk and a 1.44 disk was the hole in the upper left hand should be giving SOMETHING. I know it saved me a budle when the differnce between the two was $5.
Thanks Guy!
bortbox
Does cross have a similar device? the pad is tethered.. but at the tip of the pen is a ball. The pen transmits a radio signal to the drawing pad, and the who idea is having a pad that feels a lot like writing on a real peice of paper. Personally I love the product ( ipen pro) http://www.cross-pcg.com/products/index.html .
martin
Its seems from the article that Compaq is releasing the Vista, although it says in the slashdot jib that Dell making it. Did I read something wrong? Are one of these sources wrong? Hmmm.. Bortbox
A subject on slashdot that I know a little about.
First of all I would like to give out thanks to some people:
Thank you Elisha Gray for early work if not the first electronic ocillator, you started it all!
Thank you Lev Sergievitch Termen for inventing the theremen. Waveing hands of physics!
Thank you Wendy Carlos. He (now SHE) did the work on clockwork orange. Now remeber the Beethoven music done on synths? Well that was done on MONOPHONIC synths (one note at a time) and a LOT of recording, re-takes, and tape splicing. This hard working individual said that more than background toons could be hacked out of these spacy, modular beasts.
Thank you Rober Moog. Inventer of a lot of good sounds, inspiration of a lot of good bands, a smart man, a good teacher. What is MOOG you ask? oh pleeeeze. heh (by the way bob, if you read slashdot, email me.. been forever). Moogs will never go out of fasion.
Thank you Devo, Kraftwork, and Brian Eno. Household names for the electronic muscian, and all around cutting edge people. Half the stuff that came from Devo is STILL taboo in some states (heh).
Thank you roland for mass production of some decent gear (no thanks to the people who ruined the sound of the 303).
Now there are a lot of other people who deserve credit. A lot of work was put into early disco, early techno, and even rock and roll (hammond co and Rhodes too). One final note.
Thank you David Bowie for nothing. You made some good tunes, but over all, thank you for jack shit. Thank you for another useless bland ISP with a theme, and riding on the coat-tails of great men.
Tis all i have to say.
Bortbox
Is generative music life imitating art? or the other way around. All too often I see a group of people who define their attitude, their culture, and even their beleif systems upon a muscian or band (Townshend = God... hmmm). What are the social ramifications of having music based on your personality?
I can name a couple albums, or sounds or even muscians that have changed who I am and even broadened my perspective through music. Not only through the lyrics but thought provocing instrumentals. Although generative music is a cool concept, what about the sharing of idea through music. Music based on one's current self is a bit stagnant, and could have the social implemintaion of inbreading. Just re-enforcing your current ideas untill they mutate into dilusions. Of coarse I am going way out on a limb here.
Now back to the people mentioned previously, I think that in some cases certian people lack self esteem to the point that their identity souly defined by the music they listen and to some extent the music that is popular at the time. Generative music may be a tool that can be used to open a path to self-relization. Answer the questions honestly, or really express yourself truely and the end result may suprise or enlighten you.
As a muscian I use music for self-enlightenment, to share ideas, and to grow. I enjoy making music according to my own tastes, but listen to everyone elses compositions for inpiration and creative prosparity. I could also see genertive music being used as a tool to form compositions around muy feelings easier than playing an intrument, but then again leanring an instrument is a disciplin that is VERY charecter building. I know I am conflicting in all my arguments, but I have the firm beleif that music isn't just always playing around. Its very much a foundation of society, and can influence it in negative ways.
Oh well... so much more to say, but I feel I have made enough grammatical and spelling errors tonight.
Bortbox
Wow, someone finally recognizes the whole MHZ game. MHZ has very little to do with speed. Lets not forget the BUS which is VERY important seeing how your information has to get to peripherals such as your HDD and video card, and other devices such as memory (but who needs memory anyway?).
BUS not a big deal? Well maybe FPU speeds could help out, especially when doing multi-user intensive applications or running a database, like they do on that internet thing, but who uses that?
Okay, have I covered chipset? Fine, your chipset might be faster, but mine WORKS. Does one count reboot time when using benchmarks?
Now lets go a little deeper, remeber the G4s maxing out at 500mhz (at the press release) and hitting a gigaflop sustained? And somehow these 500mhz devils are faster than pentium III 600s? No way! Isn't possible! There is a gap of 100 mhz there, oh wait that whole core architecture/layout thing enters the game doesn't it.
Remeber the DX4-100, now someone is saying that a (re)Pentium 100 is the same speed? There is so much to be concidered when speed is concerened, not to mention what application you are using the computer for (some of those "fastest computers in the world" couldn't run solitare if they tried, but that is vector isn't it). Last I heard, AMD has the fastest BUS, Intel has the winner on the FPU side, AMD at this point has the MHZ, and Intel has the stability on the BUS side (put aside that silly RAMBUS fiasco (heh)).
BortBox
That was my two cents, and it was an advance on my credit card.
A process called "Rapid Prototyping" has a similar application. It works like this: A laser sketches a design, layer by layer on an epoxy solution, and the solution solidifies when the laser hits it. Layer by layer the object is made. You can check out http://nasarp.msfc.nasa.gov/ for NASA's rapid prototyping division. Well usually making artificial bones is a long evolving process, and requires weeks if not months of measuring and careful manufacturing.
With rapid prototyping one could have a program with a catalog or different bones with a selections of sizes. With even current x-ray and stereo photography have a computer render a bone and then having it rapid prototyped can be knocked down to under a weeks worth of work.
Bort
I am probably not the first to come up with this idea, but clothing with displays on it could be rather nifty. Think of how well this could work out. You have a bunch of different T-shirts of different colors and you could load logos, bands, or whatever your druthers. Design your own clothing.
I am sure this wouldn't be too hard. You have a small package that consists of a small recharable battery, a DAC, and an ethernet port and you put it in your pocket, if not on your belt. A very flexable and small ribboncable hits the display on the shirt and there you have it. Go up a notch and have the device be a hand held unit that has wireless internet. Faster bandwidth over wireless connections ALREADY has streaming video over it. Load a server full of video clips or things of the sort and transmit them wirelessly to your shirt. Even something as generic as the old eye candy/fractal generators would make good threads (when touring Phish).
BortBox
Since this article is a little less technical, I'd like to go ahead ad voice a couple thoughts. It is of my opinion that Intel is a much more friendlier company than had been in the past when it comes to the x86 market. Intel most definately has the dough to pour into R&D to stay ahead of the x86 market. It most definately has the cash to through out a chip similiar to the G4 in raw flops, but it hasn't. So Intel doesn't hold the top bang, the top bang for the buck,and most definately hasn't come out with anything incredably exciting in some time. Intel does hold the market share. Sure the their new Merced is building a lot of hype, but when it comes down to actual production, it sure isn't rushing things. Intel has one wonderful thing goinf for it,and that is stability. Now it isn't the most stable of platforms sure, but think about the peice of mind you get when you buy intel. Odd chip sets? Nah, its the VIA and the SiS that put out those "soon to have a patch" chipsets, and wird super socket 7 MBs. Cyrix failed misribly because it wasn't even win98 compatible till way to late. You think that SGI wouldn't have picked AMD hardware if it could have? You think that the G4 is really going to be the way to crunch numbers even though the support hardware is so undeveloped (as compared to that is). MHZ is great, terra-flops: go for it!, but if you can't run the apps and keep em running.. then whats the point. Now I amilling to bet that those pro admins out there.. that if you even remotely suggested to any of the big shoulders at your company to switch from anything Intel on the x86 side, the resistance would almost come like instinct. Intel is (in my opinion) not really the MS of the CPU world as it used to be, simply because its product is tried or true. I see it as a corvette vs. hummer deal.. the army doesn't ride around in vette's for a reason. Bortbox (there goes my karma for sure)
Well this is a great step for printing on the Unix side and a bit late if you ask me. Spending my whole life with printers, espeically high speed print servers I must say that this is really too little too late. Unix is in whole, a multi user platform made for networks, and not necesarily the everyday home user. And so most printers that interface nicely with Unix, by no surprise, are multi user, high-speed printers. Now I am going to use two printers as example to point out printer evolution on Unix platforms.
;) ) Total custom boards, nice printing interface, custom RIP software, no use of lp (lpr) anywhere.
On the small color end you have the relitively new Tektronix 780, with network features such as:
Built in HTTP server for printer management and set up, FTP server for instand Postscript file upload, SCSI and IDE HD options for job storage as well as buffering space, SNMP, DHCP, and the list goes on. Now to print to one of these small office color machines from Unix, it is recommended that you have your app create a postscript file and have the app FTP the PS file to the printer. Real simple, real fast, very effective. No configuring anything in your OS for printer ports, print servers, or anything..just the specs of your printer to make the post script file. Here at work, we have mounted the printer's HDD to a point on the network where the PS files are automatically saved and printed.
Now on the high end lets look at how Xerox has developed its high end Docutech series. I cannot say enough about the importance the original 1992 Docutech135 has meant to computers in general. It is one of the projects that led Xerox to give us the mouse, the GUI, and ethernet. Moving away from totally cutom gear now that mice and GUI's are a dime a dozen, Xerox moves the central RIP'ing precess and printer control to a nice Sun Ultra 2 (creator 2). Nice move if you ask me. Using SBus's throughput to move paper through a machine 135 times a munite, duplexing, stapleing, binding etc (controlling a printer about the size of a bus in length). Now Xerox writes a SLEW of new apps to controll this printer, and to accept jobs comming in from IPX novell netoworks, Appletalk (handling IPX and appletalk on solaris, Xerox has gonads
Point in hand.. this app, which is aimed for the home small printer user I am assuming, is nothing real majical, and for most commercial users quit insignifigant. Anyway.. sorry about the spelling grammer etc.. i am in a REAL rush.
Bort
You know, Isaac Asimov wrote a short story about this some years ago. I remember reading it in grade school. An author had a robot that did chores and such and followed the three lessons of robotics (Asimov's rules). Well the author kept paying a technician to upgrade the robot, first with grammatics, then a better dictionary, then "senses" such as irony and etc. Well to make things more interesting as time went on the robot would create better and better stories till one of them was good enough to cause the author to want to shut the robot off. The story ends like this: The robot kills the author and runs off with the technician. This is all too scary for me really. I mean how many of Asimov's predictions have already come true?
Words are a means of self expression. Giving a machine the power to express itself in words is just one more step in producing true AI. So kudos to the programmers and engineers.
Just one more thought, the robots final story pitted two colleges against each other: one from Yule (Yale) and another from Harvard. Anyway please make all the corrections necessary to my poor recollection of the story.
Bortbox01
... the computer. There are a number of comments stating that these terminals are some kind of entry into a market Sun doesn't have. I don't feel this is true.
These terminals are just like periferals for their servers. I mean you almost have to buy a Sun server for these terminals, and that is the point. All Sun is trying to do is add more monitors and keyboards to their servers to expand the use of the server itself.
This product shouldn't be a surprise, I mean the whole network is the computer + JINI deal ALL points to this being the next logical step. Next you will have ways of clustering the terminal servers so that one a server get bogged down then a server with less traffic can take some CPU load, then add a little more scalability to the server with greater processor and storage options. Add things like USB Zip drive support and now you can store your files on a zip disk and etc... All seams to be logical steps. Weather they are marketable, who cares... Sun practically HAD to do this in order to keep up with all those nifty vision statements. I mean.. MS is starting to make sure your email isn't stored locally... next thing you know they will have microsoft office running off the web (as star office is close to)... not like MS isn't doing the same thing here.
BortBox
Well, personally I think this was almost a no brainer for Mac. Now ATI is known amoung most design professionals to be THE chip to go with since the Mach64. WHY? Well the truth is: color calabration. The ATI line of products offers more options for color calibration and color management than any other line of chips out there. This includes both hardware support (your windows drivers doesn't even SCRATCH the surface of the color support embedded into those chips) and software support. EFI (de facto in meduim sized color print production) has long used ATI gear, and STILL uses its Mach64 in some of its top of the line material. Now MOST users using MacOS are NOT intrested in gaming OR 3d rendering. Lets face it, there isn't MUCH of a market for EITHER. MOST high level 3d work is UNIX work. Most games have windows. Being IN the industry myself, Macs are used for PhotoShop, Quark, and things of the like which require VERY little 3d rendering. And if you know anything about RGB to CMYK conversion for printing, then using an ATI chip is the only real way to go. Despite any person opinion, EFI, Splash, Xerox, Dell's 2d design stations, IBM's own RS6000 2d design stations are packed with SOME variant of an ATI chip. If you are using a Mac for 3d redering, chances are you have a different OS, and then you probably are going to pack it with a different card and so fourth. But since Mac design work goes for 2d work (including film) and COLOR is critical: ATI, hands down, holds the market for entry level-to mid level price range color calibration. BortBox
I use a soket 4 pentium 60 to comb my hair... does that count for anything?
bortbox
so --> do