An array of 32 by 48 individual photo detectors in its "palm", tracks a ball's trajectory at high speed. And a series of specialised image processing circuits recognise this movement almost instantly.
If a ball was flying right at YOUR eyes at any speed, you'd catch that mother too!
do you mean that brief left-to-right flashing dot? runs from about the top of the OFA to the right of the screen? seems to me to pretty closely parallel the horizon which would likely make it a satelite? or non-shuttle debris (ie space junk)? interesting.
late response, I know, but IIRC, the head alignment program for commodore drives involved running the head to one end or the other, as required, and repeatedly seeking past the end and slamming the head into the end of the track. Made a gawdawful noise, but sure worked. Then I upgraded to the ECI (Emerald Components Intl) drive and never had to align again. Wonder if they're still around...
As a longtime computer user who has recently switched to Linux, I think some of your points miss the point.
vi, emacs, pico, gedit, OpenOffice.org, etc. [...] The problem is that I could use any of those programs[...] But they all use very different interfaces.
I could use Notepad [...] Wordpad if I need [...] The icons in Wordpad are the same as almost every other Windows program. I know which button is the "Save" button [...]. [...] No messy text-based installers, no headaches.
okay, sorry for the messy snipping. Your comparison is not valid. vi, pico, emacs et al are CLI, terminal based editors with a history that predates widespread acceptance of GUI. Notepad, wordpad et al are GUI apps for a GUI OS. Oo.org and Abiword are GUI apps for a GUI OS. They use essentially the same icons and menu structure as the windows apps you mention. True there are differences, but nothing beyond the difference say between Word and WordPerfect. You are comparing pre-GUI terminal apps to GUI apps. Better to compare vi, pico, etc to WordPerfect 5 (I think, was that the last terminal one? can't recall) or to whatever gawdawful editor we used on the old Apple IIe's for Pascal (dating myself) code. Of course the interfaces are different -- its apples and oranges, or penguins and paper-clips.
Choice is not the problem, choice is the solution. We can have whatever we want, and if noone has made it, then we can make it ourselves (assuming a lot here). So if you want to use a Windows type app, you can, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. In current Windows, you don't have the choice. Just try and run an old DOS editor in one of those XP fake MS-DOS shells (going out on a limb here as I've not tried it... making an ass out of uma thurman). Linux has merely allowed you that option, which you can choose to ignore (more and more). Further, apps that compare directly to notepad and wordpad and Word all use nice graphical installers, or can be installed with nice graphical front-ends to CLI package managers.
They want one program that does what they need to do and nothing more.
not true. if it was true, we'd all still be using pentiums with 32 megs and a whopping huge 3 gig HD... people want as much bang as they can get for their buck whether they'll ever use it or not. That's not the point. and frankly, Linux is becoming more and more bang for the buck ($0) as time goes on.
They won't go out of their way to learn something new, [sad but oh so true.]
or use something that's ugly [eye of the beholder]
or inconsistent. [have you looked at anything other than MS proprietary stuff? try all over the map]
The makers of Linux distributions want people to embrace Linux, but they refuse to embrace the average person. The won't budge an inch. They won't emulate Windows concepts, just because it's Windows and it's "evil".
You're right. And it seems they do this for the wrong reasons. If they don't want to embrace Windows concepts in the quest for something different or better or more purple, fine, but this shunning of Windows because of its "Evil", real or perceived, is misguided.
same prob with an old Trident TGUI9440 (actually mine is a 9441 I think)... white screen -- terminals unusable. SSH'd in from another and apt-get installed xserver-xfree86 (after many attempts to make it work) now back up and running though my config files are now so fscked that I get a million and one warnings etc on startx. the problem is, how long do we wait for it to fly again? I'm not relishing doing this over and over til it finally works.
As a loyal and satisfied Debian user, I gotta say this is really sad. A whopping 11 comments (at this time) for a story about one of the [subjective comment follows] most successful open source OS's out there. Sad.
Is there a point at which we reach critical mass and all of us are continual interconnected all the time? At what saturation level do we achieve near 100% (for practical purposes) coverage in everyday life AND have the gear to tap into it at any time?
What if the standard for all mobile connected devices (cell phones, pda's w/ wireless, sat. phones etc) was that any unused bandwidth was offered up on public airwaves? Then your other devices could tap into whatever avail. bandwidth was floating around. With the right technology, you could probably reduce some of the need for wifi repeaters and cell towers in dense urban areas as every device out there could become a repeater/router. My pda could tap into your currently unused bandwidth on the cell phone in your pocket which, was in a shadow from the nearest cell tower, BUT was currently grabbing bandwidth from three other cells phones that were a few yards away and outside that shadow and also grabbing a piece from that laptop over on the bench that was connected through a different network and not in the same shadow....
Maybe the more pertinent question is broader: what can any OS offer that I can't already get from an existing, more established product?
And, what more do people really expect? What idea are out there that could TRULY (I mean TRULY, not market_speak) revolutionize the way people use computers? And, are those ideas actually OS based? or application based? or hardware based?
I suggest that frankly, their isn't that much else out there that operating systems can't already do, or are at least well on their way to doing. Everything else is just incremental improvement and refinement. I, for one, would love to hear what are the truly innovative ideas for computers. I bet they don't belong, or fit, into an operating system unless you are going for market lock and force it into the operating system a la MS and IE (sorry, couldn't resist).
IIRC there was a CHiPs episode about that -- glass delivery truck that reflected light into the eyes of freeway drivers. Amazing 20+ car pile-up and a cop in the ditch. man those were the days.
I can see this used to manage a desktop larger than your screen. or to slide between different work areas on your desktop. Just pick three points on the face to make your triangle and slide the focus based on which part of the screen the face is...umm... facing.
Look to the lower right corner of the screen and the desktop slides to the upper right bringing more real estate into view.
I know there is technology that tracks the eyeballs to shift focus, but this sounds like it might be easier to use. You have to consciously (sp?) shift your head to move the focus.
True, but I think they could have done it years ago.
And as far as biting the bullet, they are still only available essentially as options on certain cars, or in one or two specialized models. I meant something along the lines of -- available on nearly every model with at least one model in every class avail as a hybrid only... I know it's sk(pie)y dreaming and hindsight and all.... It is my belief that they drug their feet 'cause the marketing department was telling them it wouldn't fly when it probably would have.
I wish someone would bite the bullet and produce these things for real. I suppose its getting to that point, but its been slow. I think if either Toyota or Honda had sunk the $ into truly mass producing these things 5 years ago, that they'd have locked up the market and there'd be a lot more of them on the road. I know the marketing research numbers have never really supported these vehicles, but apparently that was a big miss.
This technology has really been around for a long time, along with true hybrids which use the gas engine to only drive a generator. I suspect it would have been adopted much earlier if the ar makers had just "done it".
Slashdot Mirror
Pity a 5KW generation system costs $25000 all up - but they expect it to last for 25 years or more.
.0000228 cents per KW/hr or pretty darn cheap... of course there's maintenance costs too...
so that works out to
An array of 32 by 48 individual photo detectors in its "palm", tracks a ball's trajectory at high speed. And a series of specialised image processing circuits recognise this movement almost instantly.
If a ball was flying right at YOUR eyes at
any speed, you'd catch that mother too!
do you mean that brief left-to-right flashing dot? runs from about the top of the OFA to the right of the screen? seems to me to pretty closely parallel the horizon which would likely make it a satelite? or non-shuttle debris (ie space junk)? interesting.
late response, I know, but IIRC, the head alignment program for commodore drives involved running the head to one end or the other, as required, and repeatedly seeking past the end and slamming the head into the end of the track. Made a gawdawful noise, but sure worked. Then I upgraded to the ECI (Emerald Components Intl) drive and never had to align again. Wonder if they're still around...
whooo man. looks like you guys spend a lot of time hanging out getting stoned! ;)
can I come work with you guys?
I can't wait til I'm Elderly!
seems to be a good generalized form that can perform a wide variety of tasks with or without specialized tools.
try getting an auto-plant welding-bot to weed your garden for you....
make for great fireworks, but not much in the way of produce....
As a longtime computer user who has recently switched to Linux, I think some of your points miss the point.
vi, emacs, pico, gedit, OpenOffice.org, etc. [...] The problem is that I could use any of those programs[...] But they all use very different interfaces.
I could use Notepad [...] Wordpad if I need [...] The icons in Wordpad are the same as almost every other Windows program. I know which button is the "Save" button [...]. [...] No messy text-based installers, no headaches.
okay, sorry for the messy snipping. Your comparison is not valid. vi, pico, emacs et al are CLI, terminal based editors with a history that predates widespread acceptance of GUI. Notepad, wordpad et al are GUI apps for a GUI OS. Oo.org and Abiword are GUI apps for a GUI OS. They use essentially the same icons and menu structure as the windows apps you mention. True there are differences, but nothing beyond the difference say between Word and WordPerfect. You are comparing pre-GUI terminal apps to GUI apps. Better to compare vi, pico, etc to WordPerfect 5 (I think, was that the last terminal one? can't recall) or to whatever gawdawful editor we used on the old Apple IIe's for Pascal (dating myself) code. Of course the interfaces are different -- its apples and oranges, or penguins and paper-clips.
Choice is not the problem, choice is the solution. We can have whatever we want, and if noone has made it, then we can make it ourselves (assuming a lot here). So if you want to use a Windows type app, you can, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. In current Windows, you don't have the choice. Just try and run an old DOS editor in one of those XP fake MS-DOS shells (going out on a limb here as I've not tried it... making an ass out of uma thurman). Linux has merely allowed you that option, which you can choose to ignore (more and more). Further, apps that compare directly to notepad and wordpad and Word all use nice graphical installers, or can be installed with nice graphical front-ends to CLI package managers.
They want one program that does what they need to do and nothing more.
not true. if it was true, we'd all still be using pentiums with 32 megs and a whopping huge 3 gig HD... people want as much bang as they can get for their buck whether they'll ever use it or not. That's not the point. and frankly, Linux is becoming more and more bang for the buck ($0) as time goes on.
They won't go out of their way to learn something new, [sad but oh so true.]
or use something that's ugly [eye of the beholder]
or inconsistent. [have you looked at anything other than MS proprietary stuff? try all over the map]
The makers of Linux distributions want people to embrace Linux, but they refuse to embrace the average person. The won't budge an inch. They won't emulate Windows concepts, just because it's Windows and it's "evil".
You're right. And it seems they do this for the wrong reasons. If they don't want to embrace Windows concepts in the quest for something different or better or more purple, fine, but this shunning of Windows because of its "Evil", real or perceived, is misguided.
It took me many tries, but I finally got myself a virtual PAPER AIRPLANE
same prob with an old Trident TGUI9440 (actually mine is a 9441 I think)... white screen -- terminals unusable. SSH'd in from another and apt-get installed xserver-xfree86 (after many attempts to make it work) now back up and running though my config files are now so fscked that I get a million and one warnings etc on startx. the problem is, how long do we wait for it to fly again? I'm not relishing doing this over and over til it finally works.
As a loyal and satisfied Debian user, I gotta say this is really sad. A whopping 11 comments (at this time) for a story about one of the [subjective comment follows] most successful open source OS's out there. Sad.
Of course, it was posted on a saturday...
Is there a point at which we reach critical mass and all of us are continual interconnected all the time? At what saturation level do we achieve near 100% (for practical purposes) coverage in everyday life AND have the gear to tap into it at any time?
What if the standard for all mobile connected devices (cell phones, pda's w/ wireless, sat. phones etc) was that any unused bandwidth was offered up on public airwaves? Then your other devices could tap into whatever avail. bandwidth was floating around. With the right technology, you could probably reduce some of the need for wifi repeaters and cell towers in dense urban areas as every device out there could become a repeater/router. My pda could tap into your currently unused bandwidth on the cell phone in your pocket which, was in a shadow from the nearest cell tower, BUT was currently grabbing bandwidth from three other cells phones that were a few yards away and outside that shadow and also grabbing a piece from that laptop over on the bench that was connected through a different network and not in the same shadow....
Maybe the more pertinent question is broader: what can any OS offer that I can't already get from an existing, more established product?
And, what more do people really expect? What idea are out there that could TRULY (I mean TRULY, not market_speak) revolutionize the way people use computers? And, are those ideas actually OS based? or application based? or hardware based?
I suggest that frankly, their isn't that much else out there that operating systems can't already do, or are at least well on their way to doing. Everything else is just incremental improvement and refinement. I, for one, would love to hear what are the truly innovative ideas for computers. I bet they don't belong, or fit, into an operating system unless you are going for market lock and force it into the operating system a la MS and IE (sorry, couldn't resist).
IIRC there was a CHiPs episode about that -- glass delivery truck that reflected light into the eyes of freeway drivers. Amazing 20+ car pile-up and a cop in the ditch. man those were the days.
I can see this used to manage a desktop larger than your screen. or to slide between different work areas on your desktop. Just pick three points on the face to make your triangle and slide the focus based on which part of the screen the face is ...umm... facing.
Look to the lower right corner of the screen and the desktop slides to the upper right bringing more real estate into view.
I know there is technology that tracks the eyeballs to shift focus, but this sounds like it might be easier to use. You have to consciously (sp?) shift your head to move the focus.
A
man that's cool. puts some nipples on it and away you go...
seriously though, what a cool product. I wonder what kind of typing speeds you can get with proficiency...
There's something strangely comforting about a diagram that includes the tag "other nifty volatiles" halfway down this page.
I've always felt that technical language scared off too many people.
True, but I think they could have done it years ago.
And as far as biting the bullet, they are still only available essentially as options on certain cars, or in one or two specialized models. I meant something along the lines of -- available on nearly every model with at least one model in every class avail as a hybrid only... I know it's sk(pie)y dreaming and hindsight and all.... It is my belief that they drug their feet 'cause the marketing department was telling them it wouldn't fly when it probably would have.
I tried that, but every time I get it up to 25 and set the dang thing, there's another stop sign. sheesh.
You'd think anything that claims to be
the Internet's largest hybrid mileage database.
outgh to be designed to handle the traffic [rimshot].
I wish someone would bite the bullet and produce these things for real. I suppose its getting to that point, but its been slow. I think if either Toyota or Honda had sunk the $ into truly mass producing these things 5 years ago, that they'd have locked up the market and there'd be a lot more of them on the road. I know the marketing research numbers have never really supported these vehicles, but apparently that was a big miss.
This technology has really been around for a long time, along with true hybrids which use the gas engine to only drive a generator. I suspect it would have been adopted much earlier if the ar makers had just "done it".
ah well.
I assume you mean: ship us off to the Gulag
surely this is true, but in order to facilitate the
destroy[ing] us all with a ray gun.
he'll want to ship
us off to the Galapacos[sic] Islands
to increase the odds of running across the required sharks with laser beams
Pocket office to include a variety of games including...
Pocket Pool
Pocket Rocket
Is that an office in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
and don't forget... PIRATES!!!! Aarrrrrgh!
by how slow this thing is? The one at the bank really rips along, and for the money, I want a FUN ride!