Last thing, about 1080p tv's not existing... while most tv's "support" and will display the 1080p content it's inputed with it's not showing the full resolution. I've yet to see any consumer tvs whether they are lcds, plasmas, or otherwise with greater then 1366x768 resolution which is a good deal less then 1920x1080.
Uh...well apparently you have not looked very hard.
And where are the exclusive PS3 titles? Metal Gear, Gran Turismo...
Your right - even Final Fantasy (XI) is coming to the Xbox 360. Tomb Raider is coming to the 360 (okay not as big as it once was - or is that as they once were...). Metal Gear has been on the XBox for a while. And there are some pretty decent XBox specific games - like Halo for example (the obvious). Other games are being developed for the PC and XBox360 (Morrowind Oblivion) but not the PS3 to my knowledge.
And as for the fellow below who suggests the 360 is only as good as the PS2 he really should extract his head from his rectum. Although the Fanboy's will not admit it, many (if not most) games that were ported to both the XBox (original) and the PS2 looked better on the XBox (it simply had better graphics hardware). The XBox 360 blows the original XBox away - and in fact for games that can be emulated, even the old XBox titles look better due to the better antialiasing on the new graphics chip.
Not really - NimbleGen's technology - while powerful - would not allow for sequencing of the Entire Genome. Affymetrix for example makes a set of 100 arrays that would sort of allow you to obtain sequence information (still not quite - not enough detail) from only 1/3 of the genome. With the NimbleGen technology it would take 1000s of arrays to reach this level - and still you do not have detailed sequence of the whole genome for even one person.
If I had to take a guess I would say a technology like 454 http://www.454.com/ will provide the next breakthrough.
There were quite a few of these unsung heros. I remember another story about a group of researchers at the University of Toronto who were contacted by Grumman to determine the conditions needed to allow for the explosives to be set in order to separate the lunar module and the command module. The funny part about this story is that the team at UofT simply thought they were one of several teams working on this problem and that NASA was looking for consensus on the parameters. It turns out they were the only ones working on the problem and their recommendations were what was going to be used.....
Interestingly enough, one of the biggest pushes towards these open journals in the in the Bio field. However, traditionally in the Bio field the best journals - Nature (and all its varients such as Nature Biotech, Nature Genetics etc...), Science etc... all charge for publication. These are by far some of the hardest journals to get into, have some of the strictest review processes and are consistantly rated as having the highest impact factors (a measure of how influential a report in one of these journals typically is on the field it is involved in). So it is not really true to say that having to pay to have your paper published means that the reviewing standards are not strict.
One of the big pushes of the open access journals is to stop the need for people to pay to READ the journal articles. If you do not have access to the journal through your academic institution because they do not carry a subscription, it often costs between $7 and $10 per article to download it from most journals. This is what one of the biggest concerns is - how can the information have impact on the research community if no one can afford to access it. Imagine paying for an article that sounded good because of the abstract but turned out to be completely useless to you.
The top tier journals generally do not have to worry about this because basically any library at any decent University will have access to Nature and Science. It is the smaller, perhaps more focused journals that are a problem.
Now as for the comment of if everything is published how do you know what is "crap"? Well - partly you have to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Even papers in the absolute top tier journals get retracted or disproven. A lot of biologist still use the internet to do research - and there are no publication standards there - you have to make those decisions for yourself.
Hmmm....I have an Apple G4 Powerbook (Al) 15". I get 2 hours on a REALLY good day. With a brand new battery at that. Oh an that is with the monitor turned so low it is barely visible, no bluetooth or wireless going either.
I like my PB but the battery life SUCKS. Just look at all the Apple forums out there and you'll see that battery life on the G4 Powerbooks (since the Al anyhow) is a huge problem.
Sorry, but Apple cannot touch Intel for battery life on laptops (oh and actually the Intel based laptops are faster - I don't care what benchmarks you show me - I have used both for similar apps - Word, Excel, Photoshop etc... and the Intel laptop is simply faster).
Now I still use my PowerBook as my laptop of preference - but battery life and performance are definately not the reason.
Yes I am glad the fix is in. And I would not call the problem rare either - happens to me about once a week. Mind you - I never
shut my PB off - always use sleep mode - a few times a day too, but still....
While I appreciate this is the first planet in the solar system to display this - is it not all relative? The scientists that found this vortex did not estimate the temperature at the pole. Saturn has to be by and large pretty bloody cold. The fact that the pole is warmer than the rest of the planet is not necessarily all that meaningful is it? I mean it could still be way way below the freezing mark. I mean if ithe average temperature of saturn is -130C (http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/bobalien99/table.htm) and the pole is even 30 degrees C warmer then the pole is only -100C! Still not much going to be happening there I would think.
Perhaps someone else can help me see the real significance of this. (Really I am interested).
Yes and have you done much of this - the resultant CD is only just OK - it does not sound as good as the original iTunes file. I've done this for a few CDs and they are pretty good for listening on my car stereo where I've already got road noise and other distractions, but even on a portable CD player the sound quality with a good pair of headphones is quite noticable and if I try playing it on my HiFi it really is noticable - better to hook my Mac directly up to my stereo (I don't have an iPod - Yet).
And if you try then reconverting the back into MP3 or someother format then it really sucks.....
I'm not necessarily supporting the guy's argument, but the proposed solution is not in my mind all that great because you contunually lose audio fidelity and quality everytime you go through another coding step.
Keynote is hardly a Powerpoint killer. It's a decent app but has a LONG way to go. I just hope v2 is a big improvement. There are many things that Powerpoint can do that Keynote cannot (and Vice Versa I admit). The overall ease of use is in my mind also inferior. And it is slow. On my G4 Powerbook Powerpoint is much faster and smoother when generating the presentation.
Now, I also don't think it is reasonable to expect a 1st version of an application to be the ulitimate software - but Powerpoint is still in my opinion far ahead. I suspect that much of the new office will be similar - however it will likely be somewhat cheaper (although the student/teacher version of Office2004 is really not bad at all - about $150 Canadian for 3 computers).
I'd also say that despite the desire of many people to bash Microsoft - Excel is an Awesome application. Maybe too many features but it is in my opinion Microsoft's best app. As a biologist - we use a lot of the functionality of the software that goes beyond the routine operation. I doubt Apple's first version spreadsheet software will be able to compete (although the MacRumor site does not seem to think an Excel like app is really on the way).
Well with a carefully crafted argument like that, it is hard to respond but I'll do my best....
First - base4 computing: yes I realise it could/can be done in silicon, and possibly this is something we may see come into reality before DNA computing but as of yet it is not something that has really come into practical use. The advantages of base4 computing would be very large compared to binary systems. Computing times would decrease, storage capacities would increase etc... There is nothing wrong with taking a few different approaches however.
Administering computers as a pharmaceutical: No need to roll your eyes. If one were to create a specific "virus" that can target certain cells, such as malignent cancers and respond based on what it "finds" this would be an example of a simple computer. Most diseases are a) multifactoral and b) expressed/caused differently in different people (and even in different cells of the same person). As such, it is very hard to find a "one size fits all" solution. If we were able to create a virus encoding several different siRNAs for example but only express the ones necessary for the particular cell being infected it would be of tremendous benefit and potentially reduce side-effects that are so common with traditional pharmaecuticals. Yes this is out there but not beyond the scope of what some people are hoping to do.
Artificial Cells: Sure artificial cells have been created in some basic ways, however, we can make it more efficient and able to respond specifically to certain stimulii and provide output signals by using "DNA computing". If you were to read the title of the topic, it talks about processing AND data storage. Granted data storage is not necessary for this application (although I am sure someone with a bit of imagination can see how it would come in handy - a cell for example that gathers information about its environment and stores that information), but the processor potential would be interesting.
Simply dismissing the potential of this work is short sighted. The people working on this have many peers inside and outside their fields that obviously think there is potential or they would never get any funding from the granting agencies. I assume however from your very witty retorts that you are more highly educated than these people.
Well, it may not work in a typical computer type situation - we'll probably not be playing Doom9 on a DNA computer but there are other applications where it could come in handy.
The researchers spending their time on this are looking at the challenges and possibilities. Think beyond the confines of typical computing. For one, DNA based computing and storage would allow for base4 computing. This could be interesting. How about creating DNA based "computers" that could actually be administered as pharmaceuticals.
Another, albeit very far reaching possibility is that you could create computers that actually increase or decrease their processor power as necessary through coordinated regulation of duplication of the DNA. Realistically, I think we can look at DNA computers as the first step to artificial cells which could be of considerable benefit.
While I agree, I do believe that is why several countries (that have the option) are looking at the possibilities of putting the wind farms well out into the ocean (or even large lakes like the great lakes) where a) the wind is much higher and b) there is much less chance of interfering with migratory birds. It has the added advantage of being out of sight.
Unless of course we want to go back to the Dutch Windmills - at least they have character....
A good deal of the stuff that is on the Blogs - and not trustworthy - winds up making it onto the "real" news sources a day or so later - once there is no longer any way to ignore it. Look at the missing explosives in Iraq - started on a Blog, NBC said oh - actually there's a mistake they didn't go missing we know all about it and then after the election - oh yeah, they were stolen - AND WE WATCHED.
Anyone who believes everything they read in a Blog is a fool. Anyone who believes everything they read in the "popular" media also a fool.
About a year ago I purchased an ObusForme backpack for my computer (the Axis Model). It is excellent. If you are not familiar with them, ObusForme is a company that got its start designing those back-pads for putting in your chair to get better support. The bags are designed using something they call the Comfort Support system. It really works. I had a Lowepro bag for about a year. It was excellent - really rugged, but I've got a bad back so switched to the ObusForme and I'll never go back. It was around $70 Canadian - so it was a good deal. Sure there are some excellent bags out there (Tumi, Brenthaven, Booq) but they are all 2-4 times the price.
Check out ObusForme at http://www.obusforme.com/.
Sure there is. In the scientific field for example there are a tonne of applications that only work on Windows. In addition there are lots of apps that run through IE but only run on Windows due to the Active X components they use.
I have a G4 laptop but also have to have a Windows PC on my
desk to run all these specialised apps.....
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to stick to one platform?
Slashdot Mirror
Last thing, about 1080p tv's not existing... while most tv's "support" and will display the 1080p content it's inputed with it's not showing the full resolution. I've yet to see any consumer tvs whether they are lcds, plasmas, or otherwise with greater then 1366x768 resolution which is a good deal less then 1920x1080.
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X XAA.asp
a sp?id=195.
Uh...well apparently you have not looked very hard.
Sony SXRD - 1920x1080 native in three different sizes. http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/ProductD
Samsung HL-R5678W - 1920x1080 (avaiable in 4 sizes). http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/DLPTV/HLR5678W
Mitsubishi WD-62927 - 1920x1080 again in 3 or more sizes. http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/televisions/details.
And where are the exclusive PS3 titles? Metal Gear, Gran Turismo...
Your right - even Final Fantasy (XI) is coming to the Xbox 360. Tomb Raider is coming to the 360 (okay not as big as it once was - or is that as they once were...). Metal Gear has been on the XBox for a while. And there are some pretty decent XBox specific games - like Halo for example (the obvious). Other games are being developed for the PC and XBox360 (Morrowind Oblivion) but not the PS3 to my knowledge.
And as for the fellow below who suggests the 360 is only as good as the PS2 he really should extract his head from his rectum. Although the Fanboy's will not admit it, many (if not most) games that were ported to both the XBox (original) and the PS2 looked better on the XBox (it simply had better graphics hardware). The XBox 360 blows the original XBox away - and in fact for games that can be emulated, even the old XBox titles look better due to the better antialiasing on the new graphics chip.
Not really - NimbleGen's technology - while powerful - would not allow for sequencing of the Entire Genome. Affymetrix for example makes a set of 100 arrays that would sort of allow you to obtain sequence information (still not quite - not enough detail) from only 1/3 of the genome. With the NimbleGen technology it would take 1000s of arrays to reach this level - and still you do not have detailed sequence of the whole genome for even one person.
If I had to take a guess I would say a technology like 454 http://www.454.com/ will provide the next breakthrough.
There were quite a few of these unsung heros. I remember another story about a group of researchers at the University of Toronto who were contacted by Grumman to determine the conditions needed to allow for the explosives to be set in order to separate the lunar module and the command module. The funny part about this story is that the team at UofT simply thought they were one of several teams working on this problem and that NASA was looking for consensus on the parameters. It turns out they were the only ones working on the problem and their recommendations were what was going to be used.....
e ws.htm
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin/gopher/Aug21-95/n
Interestingly enough, one of the biggest pushes towards these open journals in the in the Bio field. However, traditionally in the Bio field the best journals - Nature (and all its varients such as Nature Biotech, Nature Genetics etc...), Science etc... all charge for publication. These are by far some of the hardest journals to get into, have some of the strictest review processes and are consistantly rated as having the highest impact factors (a measure of how influential a report in one of these journals typically is on the field it is involved in). So it is not really true to say that having to pay to have your paper published means that the reviewing standards are not strict.
One of the big pushes of the open access journals is to stop the need for people to pay to READ the journal articles. If you do not have access to the journal through your academic institution because they do not carry a subscription, it often costs between $7 and $10 per article to download it from most journals. This is what one of the biggest concerns is - how can the information have impact on the research community if no one can afford to access it. Imagine paying for an article that sounded good because of the abstract but turned out to be completely useless to you.
The top tier journals generally do not have to worry about this because basically any library at any decent University will have access to Nature and Science. It is the smaller, perhaps more focused journals that are a problem.
Now as for the comment of if everything is published how do you know what is "crap"? Well - partly you have to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Even papers in the absolute top tier journals get retracted or disproven. A lot of biologist still use the internet to do research - and there are no publication standards there - you have to make those decisions for yourself.
Hmmm....I have an Apple G4 Powerbook (Al) 15". I get 2 hours on a REALLY good day. With a brand new battery at that. Oh an that is with the monitor turned so low it is barely visible, no bluetooth or wireless going either. I like my PB but the battery life SUCKS. Just look at all the Apple forums out there and you'll see that battery life on the G4 Powerbooks (since the Al anyhow) is a huge problem. Sorry, but Apple cannot touch Intel for battery life on laptops (oh and actually the Intel based laptops are faster - I don't care what benchmarks you show me - I have used both for similar apps - Word, Excel, Photoshop etc... and the Intel laptop is simply faster). Now I still use my PowerBook as my laptop of preference - but battery life and performance are definately not the reason.
Yes I am glad the fix is in. And I would not call the problem rare either - happens to me about once a week. Mind you - I never shut my PB off - always use sleep mode - a few times a day too, but still....
Hope it works.
While I appreciate this is the first planet in the solar system to display this - is it not all relative? The scientists that found this vortex did not estimate the temperature at the pole. Saturn has to be by and large pretty bloody cold. The fact that the pole is warmer than the rest of the planet is not necessarily all that meaningful is it? I mean it could still be way way below the freezing mark. I mean if ithe average temperature of saturn is -130C (http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/bobalien99/table.htm ) and the pole is even 30 degrees C warmer then the pole is only -100C! Still not much going to be happening there I would think.
Perhaps someone else can help me see the real significance of this. (Really I am interested).
Exactly how I read it too....glad I'm not the only one.
TRON-GUY
I hope they give him a part - he already has his own costume....
Yes and have you done much of this - the resultant CD is only just OK - it does not sound as good as the original iTunes file.
I've done this for a few CDs and they are pretty good for listening on my car stereo where I've already got road noise and other distractions, but even on a portable CD player the sound quality with a good pair of headphones is quite noticable and if I try playing it on my HiFi it really is noticable - better to hook my Mac directly up to my stereo (I don't have an iPod - Yet).
And if you try then reconverting the back into MP3 or someother format then it really sucks.....
I'm not necessarily supporting the guy's argument, but the proposed solution is not in my mind all that great because you contunually lose audio fidelity and quality everytime you go through another coding step.
Keynote is hardly a Powerpoint killer. It's a decent app but has a LONG way to go. I just hope v2 is a big improvement. There are many things that Powerpoint can do that Keynote cannot (and Vice Versa I admit). The overall ease of use is in my mind also inferior. And it is slow. On my G4 Powerbook Powerpoint is much faster and smoother when generating the presentation.
Now, I also don't think it is reasonable to expect a 1st version of an application to be the ulitimate software - but Powerpoint is still in my opinion far ahead. I suspect that much of the new office will be similar - however it will likely be somewhat cheaper (although the student/teacher version of Office2004 is really not bad at all - about $150 Canadian for 3 computers).
I'd also say that despite the desire of many people to bash Microsoft - Excel is an Awesome application. Maybe too many features but it is in my opinion Microsoft's best app. As a biologist - we use a lot of the functionality of the software that goes beyond the routine operation. I doubt Apple's first version spreadsheet software will be able to compete (although the MacRumor site does not seem to think an Excel like app is really on the way).
See. All you talk about is bullshit.
Well with a carefully crafted argument like that, it is hard to respond but I'll do my best....
First - base4 computing: yes I realise it could/can be done in silicon, and possibly this is something we may see come into reality before DNA computing but as of yet it is not something that has really come into practical use. The advantages of base4 computing would be very large compared to binary systems. Computing times would decrease, storage capacities would increase etc... There is nothing wrong with taking a few different approaches however.
Administering computers as a pharmaceutical: No need to roll your eyes. If one were to create a specific "virus" that can target certain cells, such as malignent cancers and respond based on what it "finds" this would be an example of a simple computer. Most diseases are a) multifactoral and b) expressed/caused differently in different people (and even in different cells of the same person). As such, it is very hard to find a "one size fits all" solution. If we were able to create a virus encoding several different siRNAs for example but only express the ones necessary for the particular cell being infected it would be of tremendous benefit and potentially reduce side-effects that are so common with traditional pharmaecuticals. Yes this is out there but not beyond the scope of what some people are hoping to do.
Artificial Cells: Sure artificial cells have been created in some basic ways, however, we can make it more efficient and able to respond specifically to certain stimulii and provide output signals by using "DNA computing". If you were to read the title of the topic, it talks about processing AND data storage. Granted data storage is not necessary for this application (although I am sure someone with a bit of imagination can see how it would come in handy - a cell for example that gathers information about its environment and stores that information), but the processor potential would be interesting.
Simply dismissing the potential of this work is short sighted. The people working on this have many peers inside and outside their fields that obviously think there is potential or they would never get any funding from the granting agencies. I assume however from your very witty retorts that you are more highly educated than these people.
Well, it may not work in a typical computer type situation - we'll probably not be playing Doom9 on a DNA computer but there are other applications where it could come in handy.
The researchers spending their time on this are looking at the challenges and possibilities. Think beyond the confines of typical computing. For one, DNA based computing and storage would allow for base4 computing. This could be interesting. How about creating DNA based "computers" that could actually be administered as pharmaceuticals.
Another, albeit very far reaching possibility is that you could create computers that actually increase or decrease their processor power as necessary through coordinated regulation of duplication of the DNA. Realistically, I think we can look at DNA computers as the first step to artificial cells which could be of considerable benefit.
no more electronic viruses. Now we can have the real thing.
Not only does your computer get infected....so do you!.
While I agree, I do believe that is why several countries (that have the option) are looking at the possibilities of putting the wind farms well out into the ocean (or even large lakes like the great lakes) where a) the wind is much higher and b) there is much less chance of interfering with migratory birds. It has the added advantage of being out of sight. Unless of course we want to go back to the Dutch Windmills - at least they have character....
A good deal of the stuff that is on the Blogs - and not trustworthy - winds up making it onto the "real" news sources a day or so later - once there is no longer any way to ignore it. Look at the missing explosives in Iraq - started on a Blog, NBC said oh - actually there's a mistake they didn't go missing we know all about it and then after the election - oh yeah, they were stolen - AND WE WATCHED. Anyone who believes everything they read in a Blog is a fool. Anyone who believes everything they read in the "popular" media also a fool.
About a year ago I purchased an ObusForme backpack for my computer (the Axis Model). It is excellent. If you are not familiar with them, ObusForme is a company that got its start designing those back-pads for putting in your chair to get better support. The bags are designed using something they call the Comfort Support system. It really works. I had a Lowepro bag for about a year. It was excellent - really rugged, but I've got a bad back so switched to the ObusForme and I'll never go back. It was around $70 Canadian - so it was a good deal. Sure there are some excellent bags out there (Tumi, Brenthaven, Booq) but they are all 2-4 times the price. Check out ObusForme at http://www.obusforme.com/.
Sure there is. In the scientific field for example there are a tonne of applications that only work on Windows. In addition there are lots of apps that run through IE but only run on Windows due to the Active X components they use.
I have a G4 laptop but also have to have a Windows PC on my desk to run all these specialised apps.....
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to stick to one platform?