One often hears cranks of one sort or another insisting that their view should be the "null" hypothesis. This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of what the "null hypothesis" actually is. Cranks imagine that the null hypothesis is somehow a privileged hypothesis that doesn't require evidence--it is just assumed be true until proven false--which is why they want their own particular notion to be considered "null."
In reality, the "null hypothesis" has a very specialized meaning, which is not general to science, but rather limited to statistics. Basically, when you are asking if two things are different, or if something has changed, one does this by exclusion--by showing that the evidence does not support the assumption that there is no difference. That's what the "null" means--"no difference." This does not mean that one starts by assuming that "no change" is correct, or even that the null hypothesis is more likely to be true.
Of course, a creation myth, like the theory of evolution, is an account of change, so it cannot possibly be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis of the history of life--that nothing has changed--is not going to be very appealing to those who look to nature to justify their religious beliefs, because a universe that has always existed, unchanging, does not have much need for Gods. Scientists are more open to the notion; at one time, a steady-state theory of cosmology was popular. It's just that the evidence, both cosmological and earthly, does not support the null hypothesis of an unchanging universe.
The conscious mind is separate from the physical brain.
Only in the sense that movement of a car is separate from the physical engine. Consciousness is a function of the brain. As is sight. And all of these functions are the result of physical reactions.
I note that you still have not provided any peer-reviewed publications to substantiate your claim that your particular point of view (that sight is non-physical) reflects the consensus of the field, which doesn't match the views of any neuroscientist I know. And as a member of the Society for Neuroscience, I know quite a few.
Then define "see." Those that claim knowledge of the field seem to have a consensus that "see" is a perception, and not a physical phenomenon.
Obviously, anything that happens in the brain is a physical phenomenon, so this sounds quite bizarre to me. I don't know of any neuroscientist who views any aspect of sight or perception as non-physical. Perhaps you would care to cite the peer-reviewed publications that establish this as the "consensus?"
Yes, it's hard for someone with a degree directly involving the study of human perception in the brain to communicate with people on the Internet that think they know everything and are unwilling to listen.
You should be more circumspect about putting on airs with people you encounter on the internet. As a neuroscientist who has studied vision and perception with some of the pioneers of the field, I have quite a bit of knowledge of the subject. I just don't agree with you.
No, you actually don't see him. "See" isn't processing of the light by the rods and cones. "See" is the brain recognizing the object. And I think you are a liar, though you may not know it. Because for your assertion to be true, you'd have to have never in your life have had someone walk back to their chair while you think to yourself "hey, I don't remember him leaving."
It sounds like you are talking about the phenomenon of change blindness, which is a different thing entirely. The fact that you may not consciously note something that changes when you are attending to something else is not the same as not seeing it. There are some things that you literally don't see (an object that falls within a blind spot or scotoma, for example) but this is not one of them.
Then stop wasting all your time replying to me and go get on those who state current 3D isn't 3D because it's "just stereoscopy."
Already have. The only "real 3D" is the physical world itself, and we perceive it indirectly through the intermediary of our senses. What we perceive as 3D is a model constructed by the brain based upon visual cues. Even a "monoscopic" movie is still three-dimensional, in that it creates in our brain a model of 3D space based upon visual cues such as size, occlusion, and perspective. Stereoscopy merely adds one more visual cue (albeit an important one) to enhance our brain's ability to construct a three-dimensional model of the scene that we are viewing.
You pay attention to what's closest to you in your field of vision. However, the human field of vision is smaller than the physical field of vision.
This makes no sense at all. Humans see everything that is in their physical field of vision--i.e. everything that is in a position to reflect light into their eyes, subject only to the limitations of vision (wavelength, resolution, etc.)
The brain processes things such that you don't actually see the guy in front of you.
Of course I see the guy in front of me. I simply choose not to focus on him because he is not what I came to see. But I might do so if he were of particular interest to me--if he were a friend of mine, for example, or if I suspected that he was dangerous and might suddenly attack me. We learn what is of interest in a particular context and what is not.
The issue isn't just that it's closer, but that it's purposefully being thrust at you.
This may be the only thing that we sort of agree upon. I think that having things "purposely thrust at you" is a kind of novelty, like the "ping-pong" audio effects that were so common in the early days of stereo audio. I think this kind of thing is already on the way of vanishing; it is pretty much absent in 3D films like "Up!", "Avatar", and "Toy Story 3".
But in 3D movies, the foreground is constantly moving, partially obstructing the action, and generally getting in the way.
This happens in real life all of the time. You may be driving past a line of trees looking at the scenery beyond. You simply choose not to focus on the moving trees that are partially obstructing the view. A hunter may be running through the woods chasing a deer, yet the trees and bushes that are closer to him and partially block his view do not distract.
No, they are not. They are 2D sheets of paper given in a 2D perspective of how the creators would project it onto a 2D screen.
"2D perspective" is an oxymoron. Perspective is a representation of 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional surface. So the only reason why anybody would use perspective in a drawing would be if they are conceiving the scene in 3 dimensions.
Tell us why you are prepared to trust Apple AND its partners and licensees (whom you may never know) not to abuse the information it has been collecting on you? This is a serious question, not a taunt. I'd really like to know your rationale in this matter.
The information is not particularly secret. I'm in the phone book. I can be found on google. So your question basically boils down to, "Why am I not more concerned with locking the barn door when the horse has been out of the barn for the last 20 years?"
Let's see, who am I already trusting with similar info? 1) My cell phone provider 2) The issuers of my credit cards 3) The issuer of my ATM card 4) The issuer of my transit pass 5) A long list of friends and acquaintances whom I've talked to or corresponded with about various aspects of my life
I can only imagine that the people who are hot and bothered about this are "arm chair outlaws" who have never before bothered to think about how much information they are leaking about themselves and their activities in their daily lives and particularly their use of modern conveniences. Anybody who was actually halfway serious about not wanting to be tracked would not be carrying any kind of contract-based cell phone in the first place, much less a smartphone--they'd be buying an over-the-counter no-contract generic cell phone, topping it up with convenience store codes, and replacing it every couple of months or so.
And in a movie, you don't get to decide what to pay attention to. The director decided for you. You may disagree with that, but it's no different than a frame around a work of art.
It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. It's simply that film works differently from natural vision. Fortunately, the visual system is very adaptable, and most people get used to this convention. But there are certainly people who find that movies or TV gives them a headache or eyestrain, and it may well be that this discordance is responsible for that.
However, in 3D, the director will choose to make a shrub the object of your attention (by placing it closest to the viewer) and, at the same time, pick another point for another simultaneous focus by being in focus.
I don't know about you, but I don't automatically pay attention to whatever is closest to me. If I go to a sporting event, I don't spend my time watching the back of the head of the guy in front of me. I pay attention to what I am most interested in, or what is moving. And of course, most people already are familiar with the film convention you describe, that objects out of focus are not intended to be the center of attention. But just as you have to learn how to watch movies in 2D, and to ignore the lack of control of focus, or the fact that focus and depth of field may change arbitrarily, or the fact that the point of view may shift suddenly and arbitrarily, one has to learn how to watch images projected stereoscopically. Most people seem to have no problem with this, but just as with 2D projection, it is likely that there are some people who will find this more difficult.
You are mistaken. The production crew are the ones who need to learn. You mentioned jump cuts. I don't believe you about that. Why? Because I think that jump cuts could have been accepted back then more readily if the directors and editors did them better.
Jump cuts are something that took quite a while to be accepted. Early in the history of film, it was considered to be a gross error. It was seen as disruptive, something that distracted the viewer from the contend. But it turned out the viewers became accustomed to the convention, and modern films are filled with rapid cuts and shifts of point of view that once would have been seen as evidence of extreme directorial incompetence.
You are 100% wrong. Nearly all movies are still "storyboarded" in that they have a 2D-only sketch of the idea of what the scene will show.
The storyboards for a movie also are conceived in 3 dimensions. The method of representing a 3D world in 2D was worked out over many years by 2D artists long before the existence of film. It is known as perspective.
In 2D, they specifically blur that which you shouldn't be looking at and generally leave what you should be looking at in perfect focus.
But in real life, you decide what you want to look at, and it comes into focus. But we've been creating movies for years, and over the generations we've become accustomed to this kind of odd backwards convention, as well as such things as jump cuts, which were not used in early movies because people found them disorienting or even nausea-inducing. But there are still people who find that 2D movies or TV give them headaches or eyestrain.
With 3D, the 3D focus will make some out-of-focus shrub jump at you. Then, when you look at it because the director ordered the shrub to the front of your vision, you notice that it's out of focus.
With 3D, the things that you are supposed to be looking at are generally in the plane of the screen, so it is natural for objects closer to be out of focus--the same convention used in 2D films. But as with 2D, there will probably be a period of adjustment as people learn how to watch shows in 3D.
This is the conflict caused by 2D directors filming 2D films in 2D or 3D and then showing them in 3D. They haven't learned what 3D means, and even if they did, the vast majority of home sales are 2D. So a true 3D film would have to have substandard 2D performance, harming 2D movie views and 2D sales. So we get 2D movies with depth. Something completely different than a movie conceived in 3D.
With the exception of a few cartoons, virtually all movies are conceived in 3D--they depict action in a 3-dimensional world. It's just that until recently, the technology to display them as conceived was too awkward for it to be used as anything other than a novelty. Unfortunately, novelty 3D films developed some bad practices, such as extreme parallax to create an "in your face" effect. As 3D has become more common, such tricks are rapidly falling into disuse--they are the visual equivalent of the "ping-pong" audio effects that were so common in the early days of stereo sound.
Except that then Samsung may find that they are not competitive with other chip manufacturers. Most likely, there will ultimately be some judgments or settlements in favor of Apple and some in favor of Samsung. Apple is gambling that when the legal dust settles they will end up getting more money from Samsung in the form of license fees. The fact that Samsung didn't sue first most likely means that Samsung suspects that Apple is right. Samsung is countersuing to mitigate the damage, and to demonstrate that they have something to trade when it comes to settlement time.
Correct. Android has a long way to go before it catches iOS, if you count all iOS devices (or even if you exclude Apple TV and only count the ones that will run apps bought through the Apple Store.
Actually, that wasn't why they lost the case. You can certainly protect your look and feel, companies do it every day. Apple lost that particular case, against that particular company, because Microsoft had a license allowing them to use some elements of the GUI. Granted, Apple had foolishly given away much more in that contract than they intended to; if they hadn't, computing would be very different today. And BTW, don't bring up Xerox - they were paid handsomely for their contribution, all nice and legal.
Correct. Microsoft basically outmaneuvered Apple. They requested a license, based on the pretext that they could potentially be sued for using Apple's user interface elements in their own Mac software (Excel and Word). Apple did not see them as a user-interface competitor, because Microsoft's version of a windowed interface was quite different, using "tiled" rather than overlapping windows. But the elements that Microsoft requested a license for were precisely those that were most unique to Apple. As soon as Microsoft had the license, they released a version of Windows that copied the overall style of the Mac OS, as well as Apple's special flourishes. Apple did not have a legal leg to stand on. But Apple's loss was not based upon a court rejection of "look and feel" lawsuits. In fact, many such lawsuits over the years have been successful.
Nevertheless, the brightness of the image will affect your subjective impression of saturation. This is because the rods and the cones of the eye have different light sensitivity. It is the same reason that it is hard to see color at night.
Of course, the color of the images is completely unaffected by 3D projection. Most likely, you were responding to the brightness of the image. Because only half of the light is going to each eye, a 3D projector or screen needs to be twice as bright in order for the colors to seem equally vivid.
It's an older problem than that. Even in 2D movies, there are perspective and parallax cues telling you that parts of the image are closer or further from you, yet the focus of your eye tells you that everything is the same distance. Even worse, objects may appear to be out of focus, yet no matter how you strain your eyes, you can't bring them back into focus as you could with a real image. Perhaps this is why so many people claim that watching 2D movies or TV gives them headaches or eyestrain.
The real problem is that movie studios and equipment manufacturers overestimated the value of Blu-ray quality to the average consumer. Yes it's better, but (aside from enormous TVs that are still a small fraction of the market) it's not dramatically better. It doesn't matter if the price of Blu-ray players has dropped when you can still buy a DVD player for half that price. Similarly, the disks tend to be overpriced relative to their perceived benefit to consumers. The only company that seems to understand about what Blu-ray is worth to consumers is Netflix, who charges just $2 extra per month to mail Blu-rays instead of DVDs.
Actually, the hypothesis is that fructose is harmful, not glucose. The most widely used sweetening agents are sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, both of which are about 50% fructose.
Meanwhile, most consumers really couldn't care less about paying extra money to buy a Tivo and are more than willing to use the device provided by the cable company or even sit through commercials and "channel surf". Plus you've got stuff like iTunes and Netflix that completely bypasses all of the effort required to "capture broadcasts" for future use in something approximating Video on Demand.
I've tried some of the cable-company TiVo knock-offs, and they are substantially inferior. It is amazing to me that after all of these years, no other company has managed to match TiVo's reliability and user-interface design. If TiVo's patents help to keep them in business, that strikes me as an argument in favor of the patent system.
No book reader will read all protected formats. But as the best established of e-book dealers, Amazon is probably the least likely to go out of the business and take your DRM-protected comment with them. I've found Calibre fast and convenient for converting nonprotected formats, and these days, many vendors of non-DRM books, such as Webscriptions, offer Kindle format, anyway.
I find it a major convenience not to have to worry about whether I remembered to recharge my Kindle. Or about running down my phone reading books on a long flight and being unable to make a call at the other end.
I find the Kindle screen more comfortable to read than my iPhone or iPad under any normal illumination. I use my iPhone exclusively to read outside at night. I avoid reading on my iPad (too heavy).
I could do all of my reading on my phone, but I do find that the comfort of a larger screen, the more pleasant to read epaper display, and physical page forward/back buttons on both sides justifies carrying a book reader in addition to a phone. I do agree that there's no point in carrying a second LCD-based device around for reading.
I can browse the web pretty well on my iPhone when I'm on the go, so I don't feel the need for a tablet. At home, I like to use a tablet. But at home, there is no reason not to use the best device for the purpose. When I want to read a book, I pick up my Kindle. To browse or watch video, I use my iPad. To type, I use a laptop. To make phone calls or to set a wake-up alarm, I use my iPhone.
Nelson's vision for hyperlinks was far superior to the way it was actually done. He foresaw problems that we are still struggling with today and came up with solutions. But it is an illustration of the principle that sometimes perfection is the enemy of progress. Nelson never managed to get his vision off the ground because it required solving all of the big problems at once, requiring completely new systems. As a result, it was bypassed by a hacked-together approach that was half-assed, but that could be readily implemented on existing systems.
One of Apple's great insights is that it is better not to have a feature at all than to have a feature that works badly. If you go to a web site and can't access it because it uses Flash, you might be momentarily annoyed, but then you either go on to a competing Flash-free web site, or else you wait until you can access it from a computer. On the other hand, if it seems at first to work, but doesn't work right, you keep struggling with it, wasting a lot of time, and getting madder and madder.
And as Apple realized early on, getting Flash to work well on portable touch-screen devices with limited processing and battery power wasn't simply a matter of getting Adobe to rewrite Flash to be more efficient and reliable. Most Flash web sites would still require a major redesign. So if they were going to have to be redesigned anyway, why not give them an incentive to avoid Flash, with all of its reliability, resource-hogging, and security issues?
1) Virtually any unprotected ebook format can be converted to Kindle format. A good free converter is Calibre. Of course, DRM-protected ebooks typically can only be read by the manufacturer's reader.
2) Nook color is more like an underpowered iPad competitor than a Kindle competitor--it can't match Kindle's key features: e-paper and battery life of many days.
3) But it sure is a convenience not to have to worry about a recharge, particularly on a long trip.
4) No, a Kindle is not the device of choice for reading comic books. But it's great for text-based literature.
5) I've got both. Neither gives me eye strain, but the Kindle display is more pleasant to read.
6) In dim light, I'll pull out my iPhone. I don't do so much reading in dim light that the small size of the screen is much of a handicap. But when the light is adequate, I'll put it away and pull out my Kindle. And in full daylight, I'd much rather have the Kindle.
7) I don't carry around a notebook--too heavy. If I'm carrying my iPad for other uses, I might decide to leave my Kindle at home, but I'll miss it--the iPad is simply not as comfortable for straight reading--heavier, thicker, and (as noted below) for straight reading, the touch-screen tends to get in the way. Yes, I'd love a device that was as fast as an iPad, with the vibrant color of an LCD screen plus the clear text and bright light visibility of epaper, with touch screen capability plus physical page-flip buttons, and as thin and as light as a Kindle. Let me know when I will buy one. In the meantime, I will tend to use the best device for the task at hand whenever possible.
8) I don't need a touch screen to read a book. Mostly, I just use the page forward and back buttons. With a Kindle, I can hold it in either hand and access both the page forward and back buttons with my thumb. I can't do this with my iPad (even if it were not uncomfortably heavy), and I find the touch screen often gets in the way, because an accidental brush of my thumb against the edge of the screen can cause an unwanted page flip.
It's not a matter of how much it costs the user, it's how much revenue it generates for Amazon.
Why should I care about Amazon's revenue? When I buy a product, I make a decision based upon its value to me. As described, the ads would detract very little from my enjoyment of the product. Indeed, if they advertise products that I'm actually interested in, they may even add value from my standpoint. Besides, I'm already bored with the standard "sleep" displays. Some variety would be welcome, even if it's ads.
You could say just that, but that would only make it less obvious, if less offensive. However, overall, I've found that people who believe that people with different tastes are simply choosing "whomever the movie studios tell them to elect through their co-owned TV news channels" almost never have anything remotely perceptive or interesting to say. I suspect this is because people who make comments of this sort (particularly when they employ a contemptuous term that equates other human beings with farm animals) are so consumed by their need to feel themselves superior to the "common herd" that they are completely unable to conceive of the possibility that another person could genuinely have different tastes, much less offer any useful insights as to the nature of those tastes or the possible appeal of the product in question.
I've played it for two or three hours at a stretch (ignoring Nintendo's "our lawyers made us say this" warning to take a break every half hour). I can sort of tell that my eyes are doing something different, probably because of the convergence/focus disparity; it feels a bit like looking at one of those "Magic Eye" pictures, but it certainly doesn't hurt or give me a headache. In any case, there is a control, and you can adjust the 3D effect to whatever level is comfortable, or even none at all (I generally have it at max).
"Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Then don't do that!"
People who say "sheep" / "sheeple" instantly lose whatever point they were trying to make. Think of it like a wooly Godwin's law.
I don't know if they lose the point, but it is certainly true that no message that I have ever seen that referred to people as "sheep/sheeple" has ever had anything remotely intelligent (or even vaguely interesting) to say. It's so reliable that these days I don't bother to read anything more beyond that.
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One often hears cranks of one sort or another insisting that their view should be the "null" hypothesis.
This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of what the "null hypothesis" actually is.
Cranks imagine that the null hypothesis is somehow a privileged hypothesis that doesn't require evidence--it is just assumed be true until proven false--which is why they want their own particular notion to be considered "null."
In reality, the "null hypothesis" has a very specialized meaning, which is not general to science, but rather limited to statistics.
Basically, when you are asking if two things are different, or if something has changed, one does this by exclusion--by showing that the evidence does not support the assumption that there is no difference. That's what the "null" means--"no difference." This does not mean that one starts by assuming that "no change" is correct, or even that the null hypothesis is more likely to be true.
Of course, a creation myth, like the theory of evolution, is an account of change, so it cannot possibly be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis of the history of life--that nothing has changed--is not going to be very appealing to those who look to nature to justify their religious beliefs, because a universe that has always existed, unchanging, does not have much need for Gods. Scientists are more open to the notion; at one time, a steady-state theory of cosmology was popular. It's just that the evidence, both cosmological and earthly, does not support the null hypothesis of an unchanging universe.
Only in the sense that movement of a car is separate from the physical engine. Consciousness is a function of the brain. As is sight. And all of these functions are the result of physical reactions.
I note that you still have not provided any peer-reviewed publications to substantiate your claim that your particular point of view (that sight is non-physical) reflects the consensus of the field, which doesn't match the views of any neuroscientist I know. And as a member of the Society for Neuroscience, I know quite a few.
Obviously, anything that happens in the brain is a physical phenomenon, so this sounds quite bizarre to me. I don't know of any neuroscientist who views any aspect of sight or perception as non-physical. Perhaps you would care to cite the peer-reviewed publications that establish this as the "consensus?"
You should be more circumspect about putting on airs with people you encounter on the internet. As a neuroscientist who has studied vision and perception with some of the pioneers of the field, I have quite a bit of knowledge of the subject. I just don't agree with you.
It sounds like you are talking about the phenomenon of change blindness, which is a different thing entirely. The fact that you may not consciously note something that changes when you are attending to something else is not the same as not seeing it. There are some things that you literally don't see (an object that falls within a blind spot or scotoma, for example) but this is not one of them.
Already have. The only "real 3D" is the physical world itself, and we perceive it indirectly through the intermediary of our senses. What we perceive as 3D is a model constructed by the brain based upon visual cues. Even a "monoscopic" movie is still three-dimensional, in that it creates in our brain a model of 3D space based upon visual cues such as size, occlusion, and perspective. Stereoscopy merely adds one more visual cue (albeit an important one) to enhance our brain's ability to construct a three-dimensional model of the scene that we are viewing.
This makes no sense at all. Humans see everything that is in their physical field of vision--i.e. everything that is in a position to reflect light into their eyes, subject only to the limitations of vision (wavelength, resolution, etc.)
Of course I see the guy in front of me. I simply choose not to focus on him because he is not what I came to see. But I might do so if he were of particular interest to me--if he were a friend of mine, for example, or if I suspected that he was dangerous and might suddenly attack me. We learn what is of interest in a particular context and what is not.
This may be the only thing that we sort of agree upon. I think that having things "purposely thrust at you" is a kind of novelty, like the "ping-pong" audio effects that were so common in the early days of stereo audio. I think this kind of thing is already on the way of vanishing; it is pretty much absent in 3D films like "Up!", "Avatar", and "Toy Story 3".
This happens in real life all of the time. You may be driving past a line of trees looking at the scenery beyond. You simply choose not to focus on the moving trees that are partially obstructing the view. A hunter may be running through the woods chasing a deer, yet the trees and bushes that are closer to him and partially block his view do not distract.
"2D perspective" is an oxymoron. Perspective is a representation of 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional surface. So the only reason why anybody would use perspective in a drawing would be if they are conceiving the scene in 3 dimensions.
The information is not particularly secret. I'm in the phone book. I can be found on google. So your question basically boils down to, "Why am I not more concerned with locking the barn door when the horse has been out of the barn for the last 20 years?"
Let's see, who am I already trusting with similar info?
1) My cell phone provider
2) The issuers of my credit cards
3) The issuer of my ATM card
4) The issuer of my transit pass
5) A long list of friends and acquaintances whom I've talked to or corresponded with about various aspects of my life
I can only imagine that the people who are hot and bothered about this are "arm chair outlaws" who have never before bothered to think about how much information they are leaking about themselves and their activities in their daily lives and particularly their use of modern conveniences. Anybody who was actually halfway serious about not wanting to be tracked would not be carrying any kind of contract-based cell phone in the first place, much less a smartphone--they'd be buying an over-the-counter no-contract generic cell phone, topping it up with convenience store codes, and replacing it every couple of months or so.
It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. It's simply that film works differently from natural vision. Fortunately, the visual system is very adaptable, and most people get used to this convention. But there are certainly people who find that movies or TV gives them a headache or eyestrain, and it may well be that this discordance is responsible for that.
I don't know about you, but I don't automatically pay attention to whatever is closest to me. If I go to a sporting event, I don't spend my time watching the back of the head of the guy in front of me. I pay attention to what I am most interested in, or what is moving. And of course, most people already are familiar with the film convention you describe, that objects out of focus are not intended to be the center of attention. But just as you have to learn how to watch movies in 2D, and to ignore the lack of control of focus, or the fact that focus and depth of field may change arbitrarily, or the fact that the point of view may shift suddenly and arbitrarily, one has to learn how to watch images projected stereoscopically. Most people seem to have no problem with this, but just as with 2D projection, it is likely that there are some people who will find this more difficult.
Jump cuts are something that took quite a while to be accepted. Early in the history of film, it was considered to be a gross error. It was seen as disruptive, something that distracted the viewer from the contend. But it turned out the viewers became accustomed to the convention, and modern films are filled with rapid cuts and shifts of point of view that once would have been seen as evidence of extreme directorial incompetence.
The storyboards for a movie also are conceived in 3 dimensions. The method of representing a 3D world in 2D was worked out over many years by 2D artists long before the existence of film. It is known as perspective.
But in real life, you decide what you want to look at, and it comes into focus. But we've been creating movies for years, and over the generations we've become accustomed to this kind of odd backwards convention, as well as such things as jump cuts, which were not used in early movies because people found them disorienting or even nausea-inducing. But there are still people who find that 2D movies or TV give them headaches or eyestrain.
With 3D, the things that you are supposed to be looking at are generally in the plane of the screen, so it is natural for objects closer to be out of focus--the same convention used in 2D films. But as with 2D, there will probably be a period of adjustment as people learn how to watch shows in 3D.
With the exception of a few cartoons, virtually all movies are conceived in 3D--they depict action in a 3-dimensional world. It's just that until recently, the technology to display them as conceived was too awkward for it to be used as anything other than a novelty. Unfortunately, novelty 3D films developed some bad practices, such as extreme parallax to create an "in your face" effect. As 3D has become more common, such tricks are rapidly falling into disuse--they are the visual equivalent of the "ping-pong" audio effects that were so common in the early days of stereo sound.
Except that then Samsung may find that they are not competitive with other chip manufacturers. Most likely, there will ultimately be some judgments or settlements in favor of Apple and some in favor of Samsung. Apple is gambling that when the legal dust settles they will end up getting more money from Samsung in the form of license fees. The fact that Samsung didn't sue first most likely means that Samsung suspects that Apple is right. Samsung is countersuing to mitigate the damage, and to demonstrate that they have something to trade when it comes to settlement time.
Correct. Android has a long way to go before it catches iOS, if you count all iOS devices (or even if you exclude Apple TV and only count the ones that will run apps bought through the Apple Store.
Correct. Microsoft basically outmaneuvered Apple. They requested a license, based on the pretext that they could potentially be sued for using Apple's user interface elements in their own Mac software (Excel and Word). Apple did not see them as a user-interface competitor, because Microsoft's version of a windowed interface was quite different, using "tiled" rather than overlapping windows. But the elements that Microsoft requested a license for were precisely those that were most unique to Apple. As soon as Microsoft had the license, they released a version of Windows that copied the overall style of the Mac OS, as well as Apple's special flourishes. Apple did not have a legal leg to stand on. But Apple's loss was not based upon a court rejection of "look and feel" lawsuits. In fact, many such lawsuits over the years have been successful.
Nevertheless, the brightness of the image will affect your subjective impression of saturation. This is because the rods and the cones of the eye have different light sensitivity. It is the same reason that it is hard to see color at night.
Of course, the color of the images is completely unaffected by 3D projection. Most likely, you were responding to the brightness of the image. Because only half of the light is going to each eye, a 3D projector or screen needs to be twice as bright in order for the colors to seem equally vivid.
It's an older problem than that. Even in 2D movies, there are perspective and parallax cues telling you that parts of the image are closer or further from you, yet the focus of your eye tells you that everything is the same distance. Even worse, objects may appear to be out of focus, yet no matter how you strain your eyes, you can't bring them back into focus as you could with a real image. Perhaps this is why so many people claim that watching 2D movies or TV gives them headaches or eyestrain.
The real problem is that movie studios and equipment manufacturers overestimated the value of Blu-ray quality to the average consumer. Yes it's better, but (aside from enormous TVs that are still a small fraction of the market) it's not dramatically better. It doesn't matter if the price of Blu-ray players has dropped when you can still buy a DVD player for half that price. Similarly, the disks tend to be overpriced relative to their perceived benefit to consumers. The only company that seems to understand about what Blu-ray is worth to consumers is Netflix, who charges just $2 extra per month to mail Blu-rays instead of DVDs.
Actually, the hypothesis is that fructose is harmful, not glucose. The most widely used sweetening agents are sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, both of which are about 50% fructose.
I've tried some of the cable-company TiVo knock-offs, and they are substantially inferior. It is amazing to me that after all of these years, no other company has managed to match TiVo's reliability and user-interface design. If TiVo's patents help to keep them in business, that strikes me as an argument in favor of the patent system.
No book reader will read all protected formats. But as the best established of e-book dealers, Amazon is probably the least likely to go out of the business and take your DRM-protected comment with them. I've found Calibre fast and convenient for converting nonprotected formats, and these days, many vendors of non-DRM books, such as Webscriptions, offer Kindle format, anyway.
I find it a major convenience not to have to worry about whether I remembered to recharge my Kindle. Or about running down my phone reading books on a long flight and being unable to make a call at the other end.
I find the Kindle screen more comfortable to read than my iPhone or iPad under any normal illumination. I use my iPhone exclusively to read outside at night. I avoid reading on my iPad (too heavy).
I could do all of my reading on my phone, but I do find that the comfort of a larger screen, the more pleasant to read epaper display, and physical page forward/back buttons on both sides justifies carrying a book reader in addition to a phone. I do agree that there's no point in carrying a second LCD-based device around for reading.
I can browse the web pretty well on my iPhone when I'm on the go, so I don't feel the need for a tablet. At home, I like to use a tablet. But at home, there is no reason not to use the best device for the purpose. When I want to read a book, I pick up my Kindle. To browse or watch video, I use my iPad. To type, I use a laptop. To make phone calls or to set a wake-up alarm, I use my iPhone.
Nelson's vision for hyperlinks was far superior to the way it was actually done. He foresaw problems that we are still struggling with today and came up with solutions. But it is an illustration of the principle that sometimes perfection is the enemy of progress. Nelson never managed to get his vision off the ground because it required solving all of the big problems at once, requiring completely new systems. As a result, it was bypassed by a hacked-together approach that was half-assed, but that could be readily implemented on existing systems.
One of Apple's great insights is that it is better not to have a feature at all than to have a feature that works badly. If you go to a web site and can't access it because it uses Flash, you might be momentarily annoyed, but then you either go on to a competing Flash-free web site, or else you wait until you can access it from a computer. On the other hand, if it seems at first to work, but doesn't work right, you keep struggling with it, wasting a lot of time, and getting madder and madder.
And as Apple realized early on, getting Flash to work well on portable touch-screen devices with limited processing and battery power wasn't simply a matter of getting Adobe to rewrite Flash to be more efficient and reliable. Most Flash web sites would still require a major redesign. So if they were going to have to be redesigned anyway, why not give them an incentive to avoid Flash, with all of its reliability, resource-hogging, and security issues?
1) Virtually any unprotected ebook format can be converted to Kindle format. A good free converter is Calibre. Of course, DRM-protected ebooks typically can only be read by the manufacturer's reader.
2) Nook color is more like an underpowered iPad competitor than a Kindle competitor--it can't match Kindle's key features: e-paper and battery life of many days.
3) But it sure is a convenience not to have to worry about a recharge, particularly on a long trip.
4) No, a Kindle is not the device of choice for reading comic books. But it's great for text-based literature.
5) I've got both. Neither gives me eye strain, but the Kindle display is more pleasant to read.
6) In dim light, I'll pull out my iPhone. I don't do so much reading in dim light that the small size of the screen is much of a handicap. But when the light is adequate, I'll put it away and pull out my Kindle. And in full daylight, I'd much rather have the Kindle.
7) I don't carry around a notebook--too heavy. If I'm carrying my iPad for other uses, I might decide to leave my Kindle at home, but I'll miss it--the iPad is simply not as comfortable for straight reading--heavier, thicker, and (as noted below) for straight reading, the touch-screen tends to get in the way. Yes, I'd love a device that was as fast as an iPad, with the vibrant color of an LCD screen plus the clear text and bright light visibility of epaper, with touch screen capability plus physical page-flip buttons, and as thin and as light as a Kindle. Let me know when I will buy one. In the meantime, I will tend to use the best device for the task at hand whenever possible.
8) I don't need a touch screen to read a book. Mostly, I just use the page forward and back buttons. With a Kindle, I can hold it in either hand and access both the page forward and back buttons with my thumb. I can't do this with my iPad (even if it were not uncomfortably heavy), and I find the touch screen often gets in the way, because an accidental brush of my thumb against the edge of the screen can cause an unwanted page flip.
Why should I care about Amazon's revenue? When I buy a product, I make a decision based upon its value to me. As described, the ads would detract very little from my enjoyment of the product. Indeed, if they advertise products that I'm actually interested in, they may even add value from my standpoint. Besides, I'm already bored with the standard "sleep" displays. Some variety would be welcome, even if it's ads.
You could say just that, but that would only make it less obvious, if less offensive. However, overall, I've found that people who believe that people with different tastes are simply choosing "whomever the movie studios tell them to elect through their co-owned TV news channels" almost never have anything remotely perceptive or interesting to say. I suspect this is because people who make comments of this sort (particularly when they employ a contemptuous term that equates other human beings with farm animals) are so consumed by their need to feel themselves superior to the "common herd" that they are completely unable to conceive of the possibility that another person could genuinely have different tastes, much less offer any useful insights as to the nature of those tastes or the possible appeal of the product in question.
I've played it for two or three hours at a stretch (ignoring Nintendo's "our lawyers made us say this" warning to take a break every half hour). I can sort of tell that my eyes are doing something different, probably because of the convergence/focus disparity; it feels a bit like looking at one of those "Magic Eye" pictures, but it certainly doesn't hurt or give me a headache. In any case, there is a control, and you can adjust the 3D effect to whatever level is comfortable, or even none at all (I generally have it at max).
"Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
"Then don't do that!"
I don't know if they lose the point, but it is certainly true that no message that I have ever seen that referred to people as "sheep/sheeple" has ever had anything remotely intelligent (or even vaguely interesting) to say. It's so reliable that these days I don't bother to read anything more beyond that.