Exactly. How about hosting these important files via a decentralized bittorrent tracker? Of course, that would eliminate the use of a UNIVERSAL RESOURCE LOCATION, since it would no longer be centralized. There needs to be a way to refer to decentralized internet resources in a unique fashion. We need the equivalent of the URL for a file that is hosted simultaneously in many places.
I can not wait to get to my first 6TB system! I may have said, many years ago, that I would never fill 1gig, but I know I can fill 6TB It should not take me more than a couple of months.
There's one big difference though:
When you bought your 10 MB drive, you were going to store your operating system and word processor documents on it, with a few games. When you bought your 100 MB drive, you stored the same, plus a few MP3s. When you bought your 1 GB drive, you stored a large part of your music collection on it. When you bought your 100 GB drive, you stored your entire music collection on it, as well as a few TV show seasons and several movies. When you bought your 10 TB drive, you stored... more movies...
You see? We've been increasing the capacity of what we can store, so we went from regular files, to MP3s, to whole movies, to whole TV seasons... but from there? What takes more space than a season of a TV show? What is the next magnitude of data file size? What will you store on your 10 TB drive that will take up all the space?
heheh... seriously though, I think something like Second Life will only really take off when an open-source, decentralized metaverse comes along. Though, even then... I dunno. VRML didn't really work out.
But the idea of being able to visit rooms hosted on people's computers, and finding other rooms by walking through doors ("hyperlinks") might actually be interesting.. you walk through a door and are then in a room hosted on another server. Common protocol, running on whatever operating system. The problem with attempts like Second Life, and even with games like WoW, is that it depends on the company running it. If such a system could break off from the host and live a life without needing a central heartbeat to run it, it might have a chance to become a real part of the internet. However, until we find ways to interact with 3D environments that provide an actually useful user experience we probably won't be seeing it..
When someone creates a mechanism to do deployments of just the pieces you need to run an app and installing them in an isolated sandbox
So.. I could be wrong here, but you're basically talking about Zero Install. I really wish someone would base a distro on this technology.. (by someone, I mean someone with more free time than myself at the moment.)
Books are the one thing I have not seen the phenomenon in however. The reason may be that there is already so much variety, and that the major book readers don't purchase such worthless media.
Hm.. I'm sorry, maybe it's because I just rolled out of bed and I'm a bit tired, but I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic or not... *books* don't have trilogies??? When was the last time you went to a book store my friend?
As far as how this will affect television.. I assume the effect of digital broadcast television will be that you'll get a perfectly clear picture, but only on good days. With analog, when the weather is bad you can tune into a slightly fuzzy station, or with an antenna you can pick up a slightly fuzzy station that is broadcast from far away. With digital, I guess it'll be all or nothing. Raining outside? Forget tuning in.
Can someone explain why its a problem for movie previews to be copied? I don't understand..
Or are they somehow "punishing" us for making pirated copies of full features by pulling the previews? How is this a punishment..?
Oh, wait... okay now that I've read the article: "Previews" here is referring to advance showings of the full-length film, NOT to "trailers"... Je comprends.
If you assume the number of software products someone uses is in correlation with the integrity of their music, I question the validity of your opinions.
Man would that ever be useful. I'd love to have the challenge of keeping that number down. Whats more, it would probably encourage other people I'd end up working with to be better coders too. Hey, so can you start working on it?
Not to repeat too much what other people have said, but I _highly_ recommend using subversion to keep track of your school work. I am currently writing my Master's thesis, and I'm using subversion to track my.lyx and.tex files. Not only does it allow me to go back to old versions, but it helps me to keep everything synchronized when I switch from working on my laptop to my desktop or to the computer in my lab. Version control is not only for code, it is for _source files_. That includes anything that is not auto-generated, including text documents.
It makes sense to think that even though you can think about space-time, it doesn't mean that they are really unified in a physical sense. I can see how it might just be a shorthand for doing equations since from the mathematical point of view they are similar, but in a physical sense they are different. Still, I was always under the impression that the big bang involved space-time. I'll have to look it up..;-)
Once can say that the expansion of the universe is due to the expansion of space, which means that the distances between spatial points change with time.
Which is actually something that's been bothering me since I thought of it: I feel like there's a tendency in cosmology to forget that time is also a dimension, and that the big bang is an expansion not of SPACE, but of SPACE-TIME. So if space and time is expanding, how can it be something that is taking time? How can time be expanding along a timeline? It's a recursive definition. Circular logic.
I have yet to hear a good explanation of this. I get the feeling, in all these many multi-dimensional theories of our universe, that it's a mistake to think about "time" as being somehow distinct and "special" as a dimension. But who knows, I've got nothing to base that on, it's just a hunch. All the theories I've seen have been things like, "3 large space, 6 small space, 1 time", or "5 space dimensions, 1 time". I've never seen a theory of physics that unites these two critical concepts of dimensionality. On the other hand, maybe there really is a difference between them, so it's not necessary. But in that case, does time play some special role in the big bang?
An additional question comes to mind: If black holes have an event horizon beyond which no matter can return, and there is a wormhole with a black hole on each side, then if you went into the black hole and try to get out the other side, you'd find that you're behind the other black hole's event horizon and are unable to escape. So... you'd be in a tunnel from which there is no escape. So... you'd stick in a wormhole... which doesn't seem all that different from a black hole... what was the point of this thought experiment again?
Perhaps wormholes just don't exist then.
I think the thing that differentiates worm holes from black holes is that they DON'T shrink to a singularity, but instead attach to a hole on the other side of the universe through a tunnel that has a finite radius. So they're not the same thing... the difference between having a singularity and NOT having a singularity is pretty staggering. Is the point of the article just trying to say that wormholes have an event horizon?
Well, I'm no physicist, but it seems reasonable to me to assume that if the formation of black holes can rip through to another universe, or perhaps another part of a curved universe, then an event would take place on the other side: the formation of a matching wormhole mouth.
We have to assume that if blackholes can form in our universe, then they can form in the "other" universe. So we would be seeing the spontaneous formation of black holes occurring here that are the result of collapsing stars on the other side.
So my question is, what does this event look like from the perspective of the other side, and have we observed it happening here?
Cygwin, though not perfect, is the first thing I install when setting up Windows. (It's actually quite good for scripting non-cygwin stuff, if you do it carefully, using lots of "cygpath") The second thing I install is the uxtheme hack so I can install the Clearlooks theme. (What kind of company releases an operating system with a complete skinning system, but then restricts it to just two themes???) Then comes programs, Firefox, Inkscape, Gimp, which I use all the time. I use Windows almost the same way I use Linux. It's just a bit more annoying.
Why does Microsoft win the development environment war so often, when we all know it's a lifetime lock-in to Windows? Perhaps it's because the open source community offers too much choice
If the damn MS monoculture makes everything so much easier, why is Developer Studio seemingly incapable of maintaining compatibility with its own damn project file format?
I know, I know, not the point of the article, but I've been bitten in the ass so many times by everyone having a different version of DevStudio that I'm bitter about it and I've moved on to the happy land of Emacs and Makefiles.
Why does MS feel the need to BREAK everything whenever they come out with a new product? Right, once one person on a project upgrades, it forces everyone else to do so, too. They have a _terrible_ rap sheet for breaking backwards compatibility. They do it purposely with DevStudio, Office, Windows itself,... aaargh. Now even DirectX. The problem is one of the main reasons I stopped using that platform. How can anyone trust developing for such a moving target?
That's true. I think the solution is that R&D managers have to be tougher. I know it's rare, but you really need an individual who is willing to stand up to marketing, and just say, you know: "No, actually we don't have that product." If the marketing person who sold the non-existent product can be made to lose face, there would be some motivation for them to not do it again, and to really _learn_ what the products are and what they do instead of just memorizing the buzzwords.
The problem, essentially, is a lack of liability on the part of the sales person. They do this all the time, selling "features" that are just speculative... if they were made to be more careful, it wouldn't happen and the whole R&D department would run more smoothly. Salespeople should be forced to sell products that DO exist. Information flow from R&D to marketing needs to be more open: *these* are the products we actually *have*, go sell them.
If salespeople were made to look dumb in front of their clients when they make a mistake, they wouldn't make mistakes. The problem currently is that when they DO make mistakes, it's R&D that has to pay, not them. You need an R&D manager who is willing to tell them they fucked up, instead of "okay, well I _guess_ we could do that, if we bump our schedule and stop working on this other project for a while.."
Anyways, don't tell me, this is idealistic and impossible. Does anyone have an R&D manager who stands up to marketing like this?
Maybe I'm just living under a rock, (I don't drive much, living in downtown Montreal), but I've never even heard of red-light cameras. Sounds awful. Do they have them in Canada? How prevalent are these things?
Anyone know of an open source utility that can convert scanned image-based PDF files into searchable PDFs ? (Extra points if it somehow re-generates the actual file so it looks nice instead of pixelated.)
Perhaps this library could be used to build such an application if none exists...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. How about hosting these important files via a decentralized bittorrent tracker?
Of course, that would eliminate the use of a UNIVERSAL RESOURCE LOCATION, since it would no longer be centralized.
There needs to be a way to refer to decentralized internet resources in a unique fashion. We need the equivalent of the URL for a file that is hosted simultaneously in many places.
There's one big difference though:
When you bought your 10 MB drive, you were going to store your operating system and word processor documents on it, with a few games.
When you bought your 100 MB drive, you stored the same, plus a few MP3s.
When you bought your 1 GB drive, you stored a large part of your music collection on it.
When you bought your 100 GB drive, you stored your entire music collection on it, as well as a few TV show seasons and several movies.
When you bought your 10 TB drive, you stored... more movies...
You see? We've been increasing the capacity of what we can store, so we went from regular files, to MP3s, to whole movies, to whole TV seasons... but from there? What takes more space than a season of a TV show? What is the next magnitude of data file size? What will you store on your 10 TB drive that will take up all the space?
heheh... seriously though, I think something like Second Life will only really take off when an open-source, decentralized metaverse comes along. Though, even then... I dunno. VRML didn't really work out.
But the idea of being able to visit rooms hosted on people's computers, and finding other rooms by walking through doors ("hyperlinks") might actually be interesting.. you walk through a door and are then in a room hosted on another server. Common protocol, running on whatever operating system. The problem with attempts like Second Life, and even with games like WoW, is that it depends on the company running it. If such a system could break off from the host and live a life without needing a central heartbeat to run it, it might have a chance to become a real part of the internet. However, until we find ways to interact with 3D environments that provide an actually useful user experience we probably won't be seeing it..
So.. I could be wrong here, but you're basically talking about Zero Install. I really wish someone would base a distro on this technology.. (by someone, I mean someone with more free time than myself at the moment.)
Hm.. I'm sorry, maybe it's because I just rolled out of bed and I'm a bit tired, but I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic or not... *books* don't have trilogies??? When was the last time you went to a book store my friend?
As far as how this will affect television.. I assume the effect of digital broadcast television will be that you'll get a perfectly clear picture, but only on good days. With analog, when the weather is bad you can tune into a slightly fuzzy station, or with an antenna you can pick up a slightly fuzzy station that is broadcast from far away. With digital, I guess it'll be all or nothing. Raining outside? Forget tuning in.
How the hell was my post a troll?
Idiot mods. I'm not the one who worded the summary to make it confusing.
Can someone explain why its a problem for movie previews to be copied?
I don't understand..
Or are they somehow "punishing" us for making pirated copies of full features by pulling the previews?
How is this a punishment..?
Oh, wait... okay now that I've read the article: "Previews" here is referring to advance showings of the full-length film, NOT to "trailers"... Je comprends.
If you assume the number of software products someone uses is in correlation with the integrity of their music, I question the validity of your opinions.
Man would that ever be useful. I'd love to have the challenge of keeping that number down. Whats more, it would probably encourage other people I'd end up working with to be better coders too. Hey, so can you start working on it?
Not to repeat too much what other people have said, but I _highly_ recommend using subversion to keep track of your school work. I am currently writing my Master's thesis, and I'm using subversion to track my .lyx and .tex files. Not only does it allow me to go back to old versions, but it helps me to keep everything synchronized when I switch from working on my laptop to my desktop or to the computer in my lab. Version control is not only for code, it is for _source files_. That includes anything that is not auto-generated, including text documents.
Ahem. Nevermind.
http://www.cafepress.com/mainlyajoke.129130434
All I want to know is, when and where can I get that number on a t-shirt?
Good answer!
;-)
Thanks!
It makes sense to think that even though you can think about space-time, it doesn't mean that they are really unified in a physical sense. I can see how it might just be a shorthand for doing equations since from the mathematical point of view they are similar, but in a physical sense they are different.
Still, I was always under the impression that the big bang involved space-time. I'll have to look it up..
Which is actually something that's been bothering me since I thought of it: I feel like there's a tendency in cosmology to forget that time is also a dimension, and that the big bang is an expansion not of SPACE, but of SPACE-TIME. So if space and time is expanding, how can it be something that is taking time? How can time be expanding along a timeline? It's a recursive definition. Circular logic.
I have yet to hear a good explanation of this. I get the feeling, in all these many multi-dimensional theories of our universe, that it's a mistake to think about "time" as being somehow distinct and "special" as a dimension. But who knows, I've got nothing to base that on, it's just a hunch. All the theories I've seen have been things like, "3 large space, 6 small space, 1 time", or "5 space dimensions, 1 time". I've never seen a theory of physics that unites these two critical concepts of dimensionality. On the other hand, maybe there really is a difference between them, so it's not necessary. But in that case, does time play some special role in the big bang?
An additional question comes to mind: If black holes have an event horizon beyond which no matter can return, and there is a wormhole with a black hole on each side, then if you went into the black hole and try to get out the other side, you'd find that you're behind the other black hole's event horizon and are unable to escape. So... you'd be in a tunnel from which there is no escape. So... you'd stick in a wormhole... which doesn't seem all that different from a black hole... what was the point of this thought experiment again?
Perhaps wormholes just don't exist then.
I think the thing that differentiates worm holes from black holes is that they DON'T shrink to a singularity, but instead attach to a hole on the other side of the universe through a tunnel that has a finite radius. So they're not the same thing... the difference between having a singularity and NOT having a singularity is pretty staggering. Is the point of the article just trying to say that wormholes have an event horizon?
Well, I'm no physicist, but it seems reasonable to me to assume that if the formation of black holes can rip through to another universe, or perhaps another part of a curved universe, then an event would take place on the other side: the formation of a matching wormhole mouth.
We have to assume that if blackholes can form in our universe, then they can form in the "other" universe. So we would be seeing the spontaneous formation of black holes occurring here that are the result of collapsing stars on the other side.
So my question is, what does this event look like from the perspective of the other side, and have we observed it happening here?
Cygwin, though not perfect, is the first thing I install when setting up Windows. (It's actually quite good for scripting non-cygwin stuff, if you do it carefully, using lots of "cygpath")
The second thing I install is the uxtheme hack so I can install the Clearlooks theme. (What kind of company releases an operating system with a complete skinning system, but then restricts it to just two themes???)
Then comes programs, Firefox, Inkscape, Gimp, which I use all the time.
I use Windows almost the same way I use Linux. It's just a bit more annoying.
If the damn MS monoculture makes everything so much easier, why is Developer Studio seemingly incapable of maintaining compatibility with its own damn project file format?
I know, I know, not the point of the article, but I've been bitten in the ass so many times by everyone having a different version of DevStudio that I'm bitter about it and I've moved on to the happy land of Emacs and Makefiles.
Why does MS feel the need to BREAK everything whenever they come out with a new product? Right, once one person on a project upgrades, it forces everyone else to do so, too. They have a _terrible_ rap sheet for breaking backwards compatibility. They do it purposely with DevStudio, Office, Windows itself,
That's true. I think the solution is that R&D managers have to be tougher. I know it's rare, but you really need an individual who is willing to stand up to marketing, and just say, you know: "No, actually we don't have that product." If the marketing person who sold the non-existent product can be made to lose face, there would be some motivation for them to not do it again, and to really _learn_ what the products are and what they do instead of just memorizing the buzzwords.
The problem, essentially, is a lack of liability on the part of the sales person. They do this all the time, selling "features" that are just speculative... if they were made to be more careful, it wouldn't happen and the whole R&D department would run more smoothly. Salespeople should be forced to sell products that DO exist. Information flow from R&D to marketing needs to be more open: *these* are the products we actually *have*, go sell them.
If salespeople were made to look dumb in front of their clients when they make a mistake, they wouldn't make mistakes. The problem currently is that when they DO make mistakes, it's R&D that has to pay, not them. You need an R&D manager who is willing to tell them they fucked up, instead of "okay, well I _guess_ we could do that, if we bump our schedule and stop working on this other project for a while.."
Anyways, don't tell me, this is idealistic and impossible.
Does anyone have an R&D manager who stands up to marketing like this?
Perhaps they mean more women are featured online on web sites. I would believe that in a second.
obviously they couldn't mention every game in the 'top 10', but some others that i distinctly remember:
- Shadow of the Beast: first time I ever saw parallax scrolling!
- The Killing Game Show: most awesome intro animation ever.
Maybe I'm just living under a rock, (I don't drive much, living in downtown Montreal), but I've never even heard of red-light cameras. Sounds awful. Do they have them in Canada? How prevalent are these things?
Anyone know of an open source utility that can convert scanned image-based PDF files into searchable PDFs ?
(Extra points if it somehow re-generates the actual file so it looks nice instead of pixelated.)
Perhaps this library could be used to build such an application if none exists...
It means we can look forward to a bleak future characterized by a distinct lack of non-convex shapes.