wow, i'd never heard about ASUS doing that. that seems pretty shady. personally, i've always seen ASUS as a trusted brand with above-average reliability. their innovation with the Eee PC (experimenting with the netbook concept, marketing a Linux system in the commodity PC market, and pioneering the use of affordable solid state drives, etc.) was very commendable as well and further earned them my respect.
however, i was very disappointed with the P5KPL-CM motherboard i bought recently. granted, this was a budget motherboard ($40) that was chosen primarily as a thrift-buy, but i still expected higher standards from ASUS, if only in terms of full disclosure on the product's severe limitations. basically, the chipset the P5KPL-CM is based on does not accept "memory modules made up of 128 Mb chips or double sided x16 memory modules." add to this the fact that the motherboard won't allocate more 3GB of memory without PAE, and most popular memory modules are basically ruled out--anything below 2GB is going to use 128MB chips, and pretty much all memory modules sold these days are of double-sided x16 configuration.
now, that in itself isn't really such a big deal to me; it is a budget board after all. but they should have at the very least indicated these limitations on the outside packaging. instead, i went to Fry's Electronics and picked up this board with my boss on the recommendation of the salesperson helping us (i'm pretty out of touch with hardware these days, having not had to build a computer in close to a decade), along with the memory module that the Fry's salesman specifically selected to go with the motherboard.
the next day at work, i tried to install the motherboard and memory and was unpleasantly surprised with a series of esoteric error beeps during POST and no video signal. it took me a while to diagnose the problem seeing as the manual provided no information on how to interpret boot-up error codes, nor did it state what kind of BIOS the motherboard was running. to make things worse, when i finally did identify the issue and ordered a new memory module online, the new module that we received once again used double-sided 128MBx16 chips rather than the 256MBx8 configuration indicated on the retailer's website. admittedly, that was the store's fault (and my own for trusting the store rather than looking up the specs on the manufacturer's website), but it just goes to show how many memory modules are incompatible with this motherboard. in fact, i've noticed that even RAM manufacturers like Kingston and Crucial's own websites list memory modules with 128MBx16 configurations as compatible with the ASUS P5KPL-CM motherboard.
ASUS really dropped the ball and let down their customers on this one. not only did they fail to disclose the full limitations of this motherboard to their customers, but they also failed to provide memory manufacturers with the right specifications for their compatibility lists.
fairer than the radio stations and MTV who charge artists/labels for the promotion they provide.
and (if you bother to RTFA), Google was offering to compensate the artist (even though if they had to do this with every single video YouTube would go out of business) but Warner Music wanted a bigger cut.
if Warner Music were smart, they'd leave their videos up and enjoy the free promotion they're getting out of it rather than having to spend millions of dollars on marketing, advertising, payola, etc. that's what music videos are created for after all...
lol, thanks for bringing that site to my attention. the Skeptic's Annotated Bible is a pretty good biblical reference, but the Brick Testament brings so much more to the scriptures than just skeptical analysis.
your flash doesn't have to be as powerful of the sun. it just has to be as powerful as the amount of light reflecting off of your license plate (actually it can be less than that if you're able to direct the flash at the camera), which is an infinitesimally small fraction of the total energy of the sun.
correction: free press is so important to democracy that the first amendment to the Constitution specifically includes a clause for its explicit preservation. there's a reason it's called 'freedom of press,' not 'freedom of newspaper.'
i think it would be sad for professional journalism to go the way of the dodo, however i don't see this as likely to happen. we're simply seeing a shift from traditional media--like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.--to the new media of the web. and frankly, this is a very good thing. over the past few decades the mainstream media has become increasingly consolidated, with most media outlets being controlled by a handful of media conglomerates. this has not only homogenized the media, but it has also put the power of controlling how the public perceives the world into the hands of a select few.
however, with the advent of the web, we're starting to see a resurgence in independent news sources. this along with web search technology has made it easier than ever for individuals to access a wide/diverse range of media sources large and small, allowing people to account for inherent biases in the media and easily perform their own research and fact-checking. whereas newspapers and TV networks rarely publish/broadcast corrections (where people can see them) and admit to their journalistic blunders (such as the whole Saddam Hussein/al-Qaida connection, the non-existent WMDs, the incorrect reporting of election results, etc.), the online media establishment is very keen to challenge the facts reported by other news sources and identify misinformation.
frankly, this notion that print journalism is dead or dying is nothing new. TV/radio was supposed to have killed print journalism a long time ago. when JFK was shot, the newspapers found themselves unable to keep up with the live coverage and constant updates by TV networks. by the time they got a story out, it was already outdated or incorrect because the story had changed. they had to release several editions on the same day, and ended up printing different versions of the same edition with conflicting headlines. but somehow they managed to survive to this day one way or another.
personally, i'd prefer if newspapers became non-profits. by selling ads (usually about 50% of each edition) newspaper publishers become beholden to advertisers. additionally, most traditional media outlets are commercially tied to other corporate industries which have a vested interest in pushing public opinion in a certain direction, creating a very dangerous conflict of interest. for instance, General Electric, a major arms manufacturer, owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC. this has serious implications on how these media outlets cover (or don't cover) the news.
yea, i was wondering about that. the CG image on the tutorial looks amazing (far more impressive than any of the photos, frankly). but almost all of the images in his gallery looked inverted and lacked depth. i did copy one of the images into MS Paint and flip it horizontally, but it still lacked depth.
i prefer analog downloads using real steam. unfortunately, it took me several ruined hard drives to realize that analog steam downloads are incompatible with digital storage media. but i finally got a water tank installed in my computer, and it's been working great ever since.
see, whenever you download something the steam travels through a network of pressurized pipes--a series of tubes, if you will--until it finally reaches the computer, at which point it has to go through the Steam Condenser System Interface (SCSI) before it's finally written to the liquid state drive.
it is quite dangerous since the pipes are filled with highly pressurized scalding hot steam. if the network link ever becomes oversaturated it can easily result in packet loss and 3rd degree burns. but i think it's worth the risk. analog steam is perfect for cloud applications and downloading vaporware.
don't know why this is marked "troll." all the other comments in this discussion seem to suggest that streamed software/games are nothing new.
i'm glad the parent pointed out the free download of Rome: Total War. it seems to have gotten pretty good reviews.
though i am a little skeptical about the game's quality, as i've played Great Battles of Rome on the PSP, which i think is based off of this title. perhaps Great Battles of Rome was just a really bad port, but i got the feeling that History Channel was just using their name to peddle shovelware under the guise of "educational gaming." and given the quality of some of their shows (Monster Quest, UFO Hunters, etc.), their sponsorship of a video game doesn't inspire much faith in me. but given that it's free, and the game received glowing reviews from pretty much every major gaming media outlet, i think it's worth trying out.
there's nothing wrong with having the wormwhole aliens or other noncorporeal entities in Star Trek. the problem is a superstitious theocracy having advanced warp technology and developing interstellar travel.
most of the natural phenomena and technology we take for granted today would be considered magic or supernatural if you go back far enough in time, but that doesn't make them actually supernatural or magical. if you're going to treat everything you don't understand as supernatural, then it's impossible to expand your scientific understanding, thus precluding the development of any kind of advanced technology.
yes, some may be due to movement. though i don't think most people have a harder time using a touchscreen while walking or driving--perhaps while running/jogging or off-roading, but those are very pretty extreme circumstances. most people wouldn't want a bulkier device just so that they can accurately manipulate the interface in such rare situations.
the purpose of this technology is as they explained--to facilitate easier user-interaction and enable the use of smaller touchscreens. while 1 cm across might be a little extreme (the NanoTouch is actually 6 cm across), a 1 inch touchscreen interface would be pretty useful for a lot of applications where portability is critical, and screen real estate is at a premium. you could have wearable watch-sized device that incorporates this technology--something that could be very useful for rescue workers, soldiers, or even divers. and for everyone else, this technology could be implemented in larger touchscreen devices to improve pointer accuracy.
you could have an iPod-Nano-sized phone/mp3 player/e-book reader. i think that would be pretty useful. as the article points out, a small screen that displays a single word or sentence at a time actually improves reading speed--probably because you don't lose track of your place on the page and can focus on the text you're currently reading more easily.
yea, PhotoSynth is by far one of the most impressive (and innovative) pieces of software i've ever seen. imagine if all the photos on flickr were to be incorporated into a Google-Earth-type application using PhotoSynth. with the collective photos of millions of people around the world, you could create an amazing 3D virtual photo representation/documentation of the world. it could be used to provide virtual tours and would also be an invaluable tool to future anthropologists, giving them a snapshot of the life and times of the 21st century.
it'd be even cooler if they used the Exif data on the photos to create a 4-dimensional virtual model allowing users to see the changes through time--for instance, the passing of seasons or even changes to a city's skyline.
what are the security ramifications? that a 3rd party might be able to intercept the wireless transmission just like they already can? whether you use this technique or not, you're still going to be broadcasting the signal wirelessly. that's why GSM signals are supposed to be encrypted.
the GSM encryption was broken earlier this year. the security ramifications of that are far more serious. why would you be worried about someone intercepting this weak wireless signal when attackers can already eavesdrop on your conversation from miles away?
heck, if they're close enough to intercept this signal, then they're already within earshot of you. they wouldn't need to intercept the wireless signal to the antenna. anyone silly enough to do so would look rather conspicuous standing there with a laptop and a directional antenna pointed at your phone.
yea, i think Xbox Live was very well executed, and their gaming division in general has put out a lot of great games and hardware. i also really like the idea behind the Zune's wifi features. i think whoever came up with the concept of letting portable media players swap files wirelessly and broadcast wireless profiles deserves a lot of credit.
however, that just makes it all the more tragic that the implementation was so defective by design. i don't know what drove Microsoft to force DRM onto their users by making shared mp3s expire after a set number of days, regardless of who owns the rights to the files. it's not only treating their customers as criminals, but it's also basically saying to the public that they value the RIAA/MPAA over their own users who've just spent however much money a Zune costs these days. it's rather insulting that they expect users to actually pay for a product designed with content producers in mind rather than the actual user.
hrmm, i'd never heard of C2C, but it sounds interesting.
however, i think i should point out that plasma arc waste disposal is actually the preferred way of disposing hazardous materials. since the reaction fuel is being atomized and broken down into basic elements, anything coming out of the plasma reactor would likely be safer than the original waste material. it's not just incinerating waste material by combustion. plasma reactors run at temperatures twice as hot as the surface of the sun (13,900 C as opposed to 5700 C). new WtE plants are so clean and efficient that they are carbon negative and have a lower environmental impact than most other buildings. they're also completely self-contained and operate under a light vacuum so that not even smells can escape the plant.
C2C would probably cut down on the amount of industrial waste to be disposed of while WtE would be able to safely dispose of and recycle the rest.
it has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is a "visual effect" or not. the GPU does not care whether its calculations are for generating 3D graphics or a table of numbers. and physics problems definitely aren't limited to gaming.
the fact of the matter is, physics calculations generally involve applying the same operation to a large set of numbers, thus greatly benefit from data parallelism. that is why SIMD processors are perfect for physics calculations.
and the reason why Ageia PhysX chips are the only dedicated PPUs on the market is precisely because there's very little practical difference between a PPU and a GPU, which is why most PPUs are GPUs (and vice-versa). there just isn't a market for a dedicated PPU when your GPU's stream processors will do the exact same thing. the Cell processor's SPU stream processors are used for both graphics and physics calculations. likewise, the NVidia GPUs in next-gen graphics cards will likely all have PhysX support (even current gen graphics cards without the PhysX chip will soon have PhysX support through firmware upgrades).
and i really don't see what gameplay has to do with anything. whether a game is well designed has nothing to do with whether or not consumers have dedicated PPUs or not.
gasoline engines are dirty, inefficient, and increase our dependency on foreign oil. CNG vehicles are similarly inefficient as they use ICEs and also produce green-house gases (both in combustion and during extraction).
with an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, if we want to continue to exploit our domestic oil and natural gas supply, we can do so far more efficiently (and cleanly) at centralized power plants. but more importantly, we would also be able to take advantage of other cleaner & more sustainable energy sources, like tidal power, solar thermal, geothermal, wind, wave power, hydro power, nuclear power, etc.
and as far as i can tell, this is more of an inter-industry alliance than any kind of bailout. batteries are used in everything from cars to iPods, and demand for advanced batteries will only increase. a bailout would be giving more money to domestic car manufacturers who are failing because of their failure to adapt to changing markets (and develop cleaner, more efficient vehicles).
well, 'wormhole aliens' exist. the point is, if you start attributing everything you don't understand to the supernatural, then you won't try to figure out how things really work, and thus you'll never expand your understanding of the natural universe. so it's absurd that a society which is, for all intents and purposes, a theocracy could ever develop interstellar travel and warp technology. i mean, i don't even think there are scientists on Bajor.
i guess you could explain this illogical situation by saying that the wormwhole aliens passed this technology on to them through the prophecies, but it's still unlikely that any civilization would be able to function as a modern, technologically-advanced post-industrial society without ever having acquired a thorough scientific understanding of the universe. i mean, imagine if you just handed a random person on the street the schematics for a nuclear power plant. would that individual be able to build and operate that power plant just by being given step-by-step instructions without ever having learned the fundamentals of nuclear energy and the chemistry & physics behind it?
besides, you'd think that an alien race as advanced as the wormhole aliens would have something analogous to the prime directive. giving such advanced technology to a comparatively primitive culture is like giving a child a loaded gun.
what's C2C? i think if there were more waste-to-energy plants (like plasma arc waste disposal) then that would be a great way to recycle/dispose of industrial waste. but i don't think companies would make the effort to do that without environmental regulations in place. i mean, if companies were paid to ship their solid waste to WtE plants, then some companies might make the effort voluntarily, but they'd all still be pumping pollutants into the air and water so long as it cuts costs.
well, that's the point of making it public domain--so that more people have access to the technology, making it cheaper, more widely available, and thus more useful. just because the Chinese have the same technology doesn't mean we would get any less use out of it.
as i mentioned in an earlier post, when technology transfers from one culture to another, it usually gets improved upon. cultural exchange rapidly accelerates technological progress, so we should be encouraging international collaboration rather than competition. or if you want, you could release the technology under something analogous to a copyleft license so that any improvements on the technology would have to be made public.
if you're worried about economic competition from foreign companies, meaning you want to give domestic industries an advantage, then you're basically advocating protectionism, and that's perfectly fine; so just put a tariff on imported batteries.
it can't be denied that Star Trek species are often based off of human cultures (and to a degree cultural stereotypes, but to be fair Klingons were originally modeled after mongols/asians), but i don't think that's the reason it's popular.
personally, i like Star Trek (over, say, Star Wars) because of its social commentary and Gene Roddenberry's keen insight into the (potential) sociological evolution of the human race. whereas the speculative imaginings in other sci-fi works generally focus exclusively on future technological advancements while the world's sociopolitical climate remains relatively unchanged (or is simply a throwback to past eras), Roddenberry also speculates on humanity's social and cultural progress, creating a unique eschatology in Star Trek.
i mean, the Federation is basically a pan-galactic egalitarian communist utopia. but this isn't just a random utopian fantasy; everything is thoughtfully reasoned and explained in a way that actually makes sense--for instance, once replicator technology is invented, a capitalistic economy and consumer culture no longer make any sense, and want & poverty are also eradicated. and with nation-states similarly abolished (and without people fighting for resources), a military serves no purpose, which is why Starfleet is a scientific/exploratory organization. likewise, religion would be a cultural anachronism in an advanced spacefaring civilization with extensive scientific knowledge, thus Federation citizens are generally atheists.
of course, Rick Berman screwed everything up in DS9. in it Star Trek was basically brought to the level of soft sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars. the show revolved around war & violence rather than space exploration. then you have the Bajorans--a space faring theocracy that supposedly developed warp technology on their own (and long before humans did) while their entire society is still steeped in superstition and mythology, believing in prophets and wraiths--oh, and they still adhered to a caste system when they first achieved interstellar travel.
well, i think that's indeed a poignant concern as tukang, gormanw and you have each raised the same point. however, let me share my perspective with you. (this post might seem a little circuitous at first, but please just bear with me.)
the way i see it, the strength of the human species is our social intelligence. our ability to empathize with other individuals, to co-exist with them, and to even cooperate with others to achieve common goals is our greatest virtue. it's how we developed language and subsequently culture. without human culture every generation, and indeed every individual, would have to rediscover and reinvent everything for themselves. this greatly limits one's breadth of knowledge.
whether we like it or not, globalization is here to stay. long before neoliberalism came to be associated with the term "globalization," the world was already a global community. gunpowder was discovered in China and used to create fireworks and rockets, which were appropriated by Mongols who spread the technology to India and the Middle East by invasion. and then finally, through their Arab neighbors and the Silk Road, the Europeans too acquired gunpowder technology. each time gunpowder was introduced to a new society, the technology was further refined and improved upon. though the Europeans were the last to acquire gunpowder, their advanced metalworking technology allowed them to greatly improve the primitive firearms/cannons invented in China and the Middle East, and by the 18~19th century China was importing firearms from Europe.
gunpowder is just one example of the global exchange of knowledge, ideas & technology. practically any field of science/technology that exists today has resulted from the collective efforts of countless thousands of individuals, each building on the work of their predecessors, often from different societies or even civilizations. and in the end this interchange of knowledge & information between cultures benefits everyone.
i mean, this nationalistic "us versus them" mentality is pretty arbitrary if you think about it. people don't choose which country they were born in any more than they choose what race they're born as. placing artificial restrictions on the exportation of knowledge is counterproductive. as a global leader, we should be promoting international cooperation and scientific & technological collaboration--especially technology that can facilitate ecological sustainability. China has over 1.3 billion people, many of whom want to live like Americans and drive around in cars of their own. China is already starting to rival the U.S. in oil consumption and competing with us for overseas oil supplies. it would behoof us all if cheap, efficient high-capacity batteries became available in China and around the world, not just in the U.S. besides, we control the lion's share of the world's resources--far disproportional to our population size. it wouldn't kill us to give a little back.
and everyone here is using computers with processors made in Japan/Malaysia/Singapore/etc. and motherboards made in Taiwan. and i'm sure many people here also own foreign (designed/engineered) cars. if foreign companies manage to improve on battery technology developed in the U.S. (and they will if they're given access to it), you can be sure that we'll see these improvements and benefit from them as well. lastly, if you're a libertarian who believes in the virtues of Free Market capitalism, then foreign appropriation of advanced battery technology can only be a good thing; it means more competition to drive prices down on advanced battery technology.
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wow, i'd never heard about ASUS doing that. that seems pretty shady. personally, i've always seen ASUS as a trusted brand with above-average reliability. their innovation with the Eee PC (experimenting with the netbook concept, marketing a Linux system in the commodity PC market, and pioneering the use of affordable solid state drives, etc.) was very commendable as well and further earned them my respect.
however, i was very disappointed with the P5KPL-CM motherboard i bought recently. granted, this was a budget motherboard ($40) that was chosen primarily as a thrift-buy, but i still expected higher standards from ASUS, if only in terms of full disclosure on the product's severe limitations. basically, the chipset the P5KPL-CM is based on does not accept "memory modules made up of 128 Mb chips or double sided x16 memory modules." add to this the fact that the motherboard won't allocate more 3GB of memory without PAE, and most popular memory modules are basically ruled out--anything below 2GB is going to use 128MB chips, and pretty much all memory modules sold these days are of double-sided x16 configuration.
now, that in itself isn't really such a big deal to me; it is a budget board after all. but they should have at the very least indicated these limitations on the outside packaging. instead, i went to Fry's Electronics and picked up this board with my boss on the recommendation of the salesperson helping us (i'm pretty out of touch with hardware these days, having not had to build a computer in close to a decade), along with the memory module that the Fry's salesman specifically selected to go with the motherboard.
the next day at work, i tried to install the motherboard and memory and was unpleasantly surprised with a series of esoteric error beeps during POST and no video signal. it took me a while to diagnose the problem seeing as the manual provided no information on how to interpret boot-up error codes, nor did it state what kind of BIOS the motherboard was running. to make things worse, when i finally did identify the issue and ordered a new memory module online, the new module that we received once again used double-sided 128MBx16 chips rather than the 256MBx8 configuration indicated on the retailer's website. admittedly, that was the store's fault (and my own for trusting the store rather than looking up the specs on the manufacturer's website), but it just goes to show how many memory modules are incompatible with this motherboard. in fact, i've noticed that even RAM manufacturers like Kingston and Crucial's own websites list memory modules with 128MBx16 configurations as compatible with the ASUS P5KPL-CM motherboard.
ASUS really dropped the ball and let down their customers on this one. not only did they fail to disclose the full limitations of this motherboard to their customers, but they also failed to provide memory manufacturers with the right specifications for their compatibility lists.
it's called interference. you could put a $2000 lens on your traffic cameras and it still won't change the laws of physics.
fairer than the radio stations and MTV who charge artists/labels for the promotion they provide.
and (if you bother to RTFA), Google was offering to compensate the artist (even though if they had to do this with every single video YouTube would go out of business) but Warner Music wanted a bigger cut.
if Warner Music were smart, they'd leave their videos up and enjoy the free promotion they're getting out of it rather than having to spend millions of dollars on marketing, advertising, payola, etc. that's what music videos are created for after all...
hey, i'm hoping this will get RIAA music off of YouTube completely and leave more room for indie artists/labels.
if they don't want the free promo, then we'll sure as hell take it.
lol, thanks for bringing that site to my attention. the Skeptic's Annotated Bible is a pretty good biblical reference, but the Brick Testament brings so much more to the scriptures than just skeptical analysis.
it truly breathes life into the stories of the bible (go to the next page).
that's not how optics work...
your flash doesn't have to be as powerful of the sun. it just has to be as powerful as the amount of light reflecting off of your license plate (actually it can be less than that if you're able to direct the flash at the camera), which is an infinitesimally small fraction of the total energy of the sun.
correction: free press is so important to democracy that the first amendment to the Constitution specifically includes a clause for its explicit preservation. there's a reason it's called 'freedom of press,' not 'freedom of newspaper.'
i think it would be sad for professional journalism to go the way of the dodo, however i don't see this as likely to happen. we're simply seeing a shift from traditional media--like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.--to the new media of the web. and frankly, this is a very good thing. over the past few decades the mainstream media has become increasingly consolidated, with most media outlets being controlled by a handful of media conglomerates. this has not only homogenized the media, but it has also put the power of controlling how the public perceives the world into the hands of a select few.
however, with the advent of the web, we're starting to see a resurgence in independent news sources. this along with web search technology has made it easier than ever for individuals to access a wide/diverse range of media sources large and small, allowing people to account for inherent biases in the media and easily perform their own research and fact-checking. whereas newspapers and TV networks rarely publish/broadcast corrections (where people can see them) and admit to their journalistic blunders (such as the whole Saddam Hussein/al-Qaida connection, the non-existent WMDs, the incorrect reporting of election results, etc.), the online media establishment is very keen to challenge the facts reported by other news sources and identify misinformation.
frankly, this notion that print journalism is dead or dying is nothing new. TV/radio was supposed to have killed print journalism a long time ago. when JFK was shot, the newspapers found themselves unable to keep up with the live coverage and constant updates by TV networks. by the time they got a story out, it was already outdated or incorrect because the story had changed. they had to release several editions on the same day, and ended up printing different versions of the same edition with conflicting headlines. but somehow they managed to survive to this day one way or another.
personally, i'd prefer if newspapers became non-profits. by selling ads (usually about 50% of each edition) newspaper publishers become beholden to advertisers. additionally, most traditional media outlets are commercially tied to other corporate industries which have a vested interest in pushing public opinion in a certain direction, creating a very dangerous conflict of interest. for instance, General Electric, a major arms manufacturer, owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC. this has serious implications on how these media outlets cover (or don't cover) the news.
doh!
yea, i just tried what you said on one of the WWI images and now it looks much better.
ughh... that photographer really knows how to pick his models.
this is the only half-way decent looking girl in that gallery.
yea, i was wondering about that. the CG image on the tutorial looks amazing (far more impressive than any of the photos, frankly). but almost all of the images in his gallery looked inverted and lacked depth. i did copy one of the images into MS Paint and flip it horizontally, but it still lacked depth.
i prefer analog downloads using real steam. unfortunately, it took me several ruined hard drives to realize that analog steam downloads are incompatible with digital storage media. but i finally got a water tank installed in my computer, and it's been working great ever since.
see, whenever you download something the steam travels through a network of pressurized pipes--a series of tubes, if you will--until it finally reaches the computer, at which point it has to go through the Steam Condenser System Interface (SCSI) before it's finally written to the liquid state drive.
it is quite dangerous since the pipes are filled with highly pressurized scalding hot steam. if the network link ever becomes oversaturated it can easily result in packet loss and 3rd degree burns. but i think it's worth the risk. analog steam is perfect for cloud applications and downloading vaporware.
don't know why this is marked "troll." all the other comments in this discussion seem to suggest that streamed software/games are nothing new.
i'm glad the parent pointed out the free download of Rome: Total War. it seems to have gotten pretty good reviews.
though i am a little skeptical about the game's quality, as i've played Great Battles of Rome on the PSP, which i think is based off of this title. perhaps Great Battles of Rome was just a really bad port, but i got the feeling that History Channel was just using their name to peddle shovelware under the guise of "educational gaming." and given the quality of some of their shows (Monster Quest, UFO Hunters, etc.), their sponsorship of a video game doesn't inspire much faith in me. but given that it's free, and the game received glowing reviews from pretty much every major gaming media outlet, i think it's worth trying out.
you're completely missing the point...
there's nothing wrong with having the wormwhole aliens or other noncorporeal entities in Star Trek. the problem is a superstitious theocracy having advanced warp technology and developing interstellar travel.
most of the natural phenomena and technology we take for granted today would be considered magic or supernatural if you go back far enough in time, but that doesn't make them actually supernatural or magical. if you're going to treat everything you don't understand as supernatural, then it's impossible to expand your scientific understanding, thus precluding the development of any kind of advanced technology.
yes, some may be due to movement. though i don't think most people have a harder time using a touchscreen while walking or driving--perhaps while running/jogging or off-roading, but those are very pretty extreme circumstances. most people wouldn't want a bulkier device just so that they can accurately manipulate the interface in such rare situations.
the purpose of this technology is as they explained--to facilitate easier user-interaction and enable the use of smaller touchscreens. while 1 cm across might be a little extreme (the NanoTouch is actually 6 cm across), a 1 inch touchscreen interface would be pretty useful for a lot of applications where portability is critical, and screen real estate is at a premium. you could have wearable watch-sized device that incorporates this technology--something that could be very useful for rescue workers, soldiers, or even divers. and for everyone else, this technology could be implemented in larger touchscreen devices to improve pointer accuracy.
you could have an iPod-Nano-sized phone/mp3 player/e-book reader. i think that would be pretty useful. as the article points out, a small screen that displays a single word or sentence at a time actually improves reading speed--probably because you don't lose track of your place on the page and can focus on the text you're currently reading more easily.
yea, PhotoSynth is by far one of the most impressive (and innovative) pieces of software i've ever seen. imagine if all the photos on flickr were to be incorporated into a Google-Earth-type application using PhotoSynth. with the collective photos of millions of people around the world, you could create an amazing 3D virtual photo representation/documentation of the world. it could be used to provide virtual tours and would also be an invaluable tool to future anthropologists, giving them a snapshot of the life and times of the 21st century.
it'd be even cooler if they used the Exif data on the photos to create a 4-dimensional virtual model allowing users to see the changes through time--for instance, the passing of seasons or even changes to a city's skyline.
what are the security ramifications? that a 3rd party might be able to intercept the wireless transmission just like they already can? whether you use this technique or not, you're still going to be broadcasting the signal wirelessly. that's why GSM signals are supposed to be encrypted.
the GSM encryption was broken earlier this year. the security ramifications of that are far more serious. why would you be worried about someone intercepting this weak wireless signal when attackers can already eavesdrop on your conversation from miles away?
heck, if they're close enough to intercept this signal, then they're already within earshot of you. they wouldn't need to intercept the wireless signal to the antenna. anyone silly enough to do so would look rather conspicuous standing there with a laptop and a directional antenna pointed at your phone.
yea, i think Xbox Live was very well executed, and their gaming division in general has put out a lot of great games and hardware. i also really like the idea behind the Zune's wifi features. i think whoever came up with the concept of letting portable media players swap files wirelessly and broadcast wireless profiles deserves a lot of credit.
however, that just makes it all the more tragic that the implementation was so defective by design. i don't know what drove Microsoft to force DRM onto their users by making shared mp3s expire after a set number of days, regardless of who owns the rights to the files. it's not only treating their customers as criminals, but it's also basically saying to the public that they value the RIAA/MPAA over their own users who've just spent however much money a Zune costs these days. it's rather insulting that they expect users to actually pay for a product designed with content producers in mind rather than the actual user.
hrmm, i'd never heard of C2C, but it sounds interesting.
however, i think i should point out that plasma arc waste disposal is actually the preferred way of disposing hazardous materials. since the reaction fuel is being atomized and broken down into basic elements, anything coming out of the plasma reactor would likely be safer than the original waste material. it's not just incinerating waste material by combustion. plasma reactors run at temperatures twice as hot as the surface of the sun (13,900 C as opposed to 5700 C). new WtE plants are so clean and efficient that they are carbon negative and have a lower environmental impact than most other buildings. they're also completely self-contained and operate under a light vacuum so that not even smells can escape the plant.
C2C would probably cut down on the amount of industrial waste to be disposed of while WtE would be able to safely dispose of and recycle the rest.
it has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is a "visual effect" or not. the GPU does not care whether its calculations are for generating 3D graphics or a table of numbers. and physics problems definitely aren't limited to gaming.
the fact of the matter is, physics calculations generally involve applying the same operation to a large set of numbers, thus greatly benefit from data parallelism. that is why SIMD processors are perfect for physics calculations.
and the reason why Ageia PhysX chips are the only dedicated PPUs on the market is precisely because there's very little practical difference between a PPU and a GPU, which is why most PPUs are GPUs (and vice-versa). there just isn't a market for a dedicated PPU when your GPU's stream processors will do the exact same thing. the Cell processor's SPU stream processors are used for both graphics and physics calculations. likewise, the NVidia GPUs in next-gen graphics cards will likely all have PhysX support (even current gen graphics cards without the PhysX chip will soon have PhysX support through firmware upgrades).
and i really don't see what gameplay has to do with anything. whether a game is well designed has nothing to do with whether or not consumers have dedicated PPUs or not.
gasoline engines are dirty, inefficient, and increase our dependency on foreign oil. CNG vehicles are similarly inefficient as they use ICEs and also produce green-house gases (both in combustion and during extraction).
with an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, if we want to continue to exploit our domestic oil and natural gas supply, we can do so far more efficiently (and cleanly) at centralized power plants. but more importantly, we would also be able to take advantage of other cleaner & more sustainable energy sources, like tidal power, solar thermal, geothermal, wind, wave power, hydro power, nuclear power, etc.
and as far as i can tell, this is more of an inter-industry alliance than any kind of bailout. batteries are used in everything from cars to iPods, and demand for advanced batteries will only increase. a bailout would be giving more money to domestic car manufacturers who are failing because of their failure to adapt to changing markets (and develop cleaner, more efficient vehicles).
well, 'wormhole aliens' exist. the point is, if you start attributing everything you don't understand to the supernatural, then you won't try to figure out how things really work, and thus you'll never expand your understanding of the natural universe. so it's absurd that a society which is, for all intents and purposes, a theocracy could ever develop interstellar travel and warp technology. i mean, i don't even think there are scientists on Bajor.
i guess you could explain this illogical situation by saying that the wormwhole aliens passed this technology on to them through the prophecies, but it's still unlikely that any civilization would be able to function as a modern, technologically-advanced post-industrial society without ever having acquired a thorough scientific understanding of the universe. i mean, imagine if you just handed a random person on the street the schematics for a nuclear power plant. would that individual be able to build and operate that power plant just by being given step-by-step instructions without ever having learned the fundamentals of nuclear energy and the chemistry & physics behind it?
besides, you'd think that an alien race as advanced as the wormhole aliens would have something analogous to the prime directive. giving such advanced technology to a comparatively primitive culture is like giving a child a loaded gun.
what's C2C? i think if there were more waste-to-energy plants (like plasma arc waste disposal) then that would be a great way to recycle/dispose of industrial waste. but i don't think companies would make the effort to do that without environmental regulations in place. i mean, if companies were paid to ship their solid waste to WtE plants, then some companies might make the effort voluntarily, but they'd all still be pumping pollutants into the air and water so long as it cuts costs.
well, that's the point of making it public domain--so that more people have access to the technology, making it cheaper, more widely available, and thus more useful. just because the Chinese have the same technology doesn't mean we would get any less use out of it.
as i mentioned in an earlier post, when technology transfers from one culture to another, it usually gets improved upon. cultural exchange rapidly accelerates technological progress, so we should be encouraging international collaboration rather than competition. or if you want, you could release the technology under something analogous to a copyleft license so that any improvements on the technology would have to be made public.
if you're worried about economic competition from foreign companies, meaning you want to give domestic industries an advantage, then you're basically advocating protectionism, and that's perfectly fine; so just put a tariff on imported batteries.
it can't be denied that Star Trek species are often based off of human cultures (and to a degree cultural stereotypes, but to be fair Klingons were originally modeled after mongols/asians), but i don't think that's the reason it's popular.
personally, i like Star Trek (over, say, Star Wars) because of its social commentary and Gene Roddenberry's keen insight into the (potential) sociological evolution of the human race. whereas the speculative imaginings in other sci-fi works generally focus exclusively on future technological advancements while the world's sociopolitical climate remains relatively unchanged (or is simply a throwback to past eras), Roddenberry also speculates on humanity's social and cultural progress, creating a unique eschatology in Star Trek.
i mean, the Federation is basically a pan-galactic egalitarian communist utopia. but this isn't just a random utopian fantasy; everything is thoughtfully reasoned and explained in a way that actually makes sense--for instance, once replicator technology is invented, a capitalistic economy and consumer culture no longer make any sense, and want & poverty are also eradicated. and with nation-states similarly abolished (and without people fighting for resources), a military serves no purpose, which is why Starfleet is a scientific/exploratory organization. likewise, religion would be a cultural anachronism in an advanced spacefaring civilization with extensive scientific knowledge, thus Federation citizens are generally atheists.
of course, Rick Berman screwed everything up in DS9. in it Star Trek was basically brought to the level of soft sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars. the show revolved around war & violence rather than space exploration. then you have the Bajorans--a space faring theocracy that supposedly developed warp technology on their own (and long before humans did) while their entire society is still steeped in superstition and mythology, believing in prophets and wraiths--oh, and they still adhered to a caste system when they first achieved interstellar travel.
well, i think that's indeed a poignant concern as tukang, gormanw and you have each raised the same point. however, let me share my perspective with you. (this post might seem a little circuitous at first, but please just bear with me.)
the way i see it, the strength of the human species is our social intelligence. our ability to empathize with other individuals, to co-exist with them, and to even cooperate with others to achieve common goals is our greatest virtue. it's how we developed language and subsequently culture. without human culture every generation, and indeed every individual, would have to rediscover and reinvent everything for themselves. this greatly limits one's breadth of knowledge.
whether we like it or not, globalization is here to stay. long before neoliberalism came to be associated with the term "globalization," the world was already a global community. gunpowder was discovered in China and used to create fireworks and rockets, which were appropriated by Mongols who spread the technology to India and the Middle East by invasion. and then finally, through their Arab neighbors and the Silk Road, the Europeans too acquired gunpowder technology. each time gunpowder was introduced to a new society, the technology was further refined and improved upon. though the Europeans were the last to acquire gunpowder, their advanced metalworking technology allowed them to greatly improve the primitive firearms/cannons invented in China and the Middle East, and by the 18~19th century China was importing firearms from Europe.
gunpowder is just one example of the global exchange of knowledge, ideas & technology. practically any field of science/technology that exists today has resulted from the collective efforts of countless thousands of individuals, each building on the work of their predecessors, often from different societies or even civilizations. and in the end this interchange of knowledge & information between cultures benefits everyone.
i mean, this nationalistic "us versus them" mentality is pretty arbitrary if you think about it. people don't choose which country they were born in any more than they choose what race they're born as. placing artificial restrictions on the exportation of knowledge is counterproductive. as a global leader, we should be promoting international cooperation and scientific & technological collaboration--especially technology that can facilitate ecological sustainability. China has over 1.3 billion people, many of whom want to live like Americans and drive around in cars of their own. China is already starting to rival the U.S. in oil consumption and competing with us for overseas oil supplies. it would behoof us all if cheap, efficient high-capacity batteries became available in China and around the world, not just in the U.S. besides, we control the lion's share of the world's resources--far disproportional to our population size. it wouldn't kill us to give a little back.
and everyone here is using computers with processors made in Japan/Malaysia/Singapore/etc. and motherboards made in Taiwan. and i'm sure many people here also own foreign (designed/engineered) cars. if foreign companies manage to improve on battery technology developed in the U.S. (and they will if they're given access to it), you can be sure that we'll see these improvements and benefit from them as well. lastly, if you're a libertarian who believes in the virtues of Free Market capitalism, then foreign appropriation of advanced battery technology can only be a good thing; it means more competition to drive prices down on advanced battery technology.