How common they are? You can't even buy them anymore. They are not made. That you have boxes of them that you can't bring yourself to throw away does not make them common.
So... you want a Wacom Cintiq? All the way from 12" to 24". Of course they start at $1000 and top out at $2600. Why? Because making a photo-quality touch screen with high enough precision and low enough latency to mimic paper is damn expensive. It's also heavy and bulky, with the smallest 12" model weighing 4.4 lbs and 3/4 of an inch thick.
And they still need to plug into a computer.
And none of this will show up in tablets for the foreseeable future. Because if it could be done cheaper or lighter or more portable Wacom wouldn't have spent the last decade as the only company making them.
The command line is a limited and narrow way of interacting with files on the computer.
As someone who does graphic arts and video, having to deal with a CLI would come with a significant productivity cost. It would mean losing the ability to preview dozens (or hundreds) of clips and media samples without having to open each individually. I can select and move a dozen out of a selection of hundreds of arbitrarily named files with a few clicks of the mouse. The same effort would represent a significant amount of typing. For that matter, CLI and text interfaces are not particularly useful for even viewing lists of large volumes of files.
CLI is an efficient way of doing a small number of specialized tasks. For the minor number of users that spend their time doing only those tasks it is superior. For any task that has risen to prominence in the last decade, probably not.
I'd object to the description 'patent parasite'. Assholes, jerks and many other derogatory terms may be appropriate, but 'patent parasite' implies that they are leaching off others. Instead they are the ones pushing the market in every way, but using patents to stop others from following the same strategies. It's not nice, and it's not healthy for competition, but it's also not parasitic.
It would cost a student working on their free time more than $99 to replicate the hosting and distribution that comes along with the developer license.
Any job that doesn't need a degree (and most of the ones that do) probably has a certain level of hoop-jumping associated with it. May as well recruit for those who can handle it.
'College Education' is not a requirement, it is a filter. See, they don't care that you can do the job. So can a hundred other people. So how to cut down the number of applicants to a number worth going through? Stick on an education requirement. At the very least it makes sure that everyone has proven their ability to read boring material and then write the necessary boring reports if needed. A truly universal skill.
You have the knowledge to do the job but no degree? So what? Among the dozens of applicants that do have degrees there are at least a few that can also do everything you can do. Among those there will be at least one or two who will be a good fit for the workplace. Mission accomplished! Why is their incentive to give every special little snowflake a shot?
Well, that's a problem. When you went to school the computers allowed you to emulate the things you saw in 'real' programs of the 80's. With a bit of ingenuity you could make examples of almost any current program. It was your door to computers and the idea that you could make them do all the same things that you saw around you.
And in order to inspire this in the next generation you are going to give them a computer that... emulates the kind of things you did with computers in the 80's? Really?
Here's the thing. No kid who plays a bit of PS3 or Starcraft before school is going to go to class and get excited about being able to access memory addresses. Ever. Under any circumstances.
You want them to get excited in computer science? Sit them down with a level editor to their favorite game. Then when they hit the limits show them the scripting languages available. Then when they hit the limits of those sit them down with some C++ and really open the hood. And every step of the way they will be able to see the real effects and progress of their learning.
The current temperatures are not the perfect ones for the planet. The planet doesn't care. The current temperatures are perfect for us and the food crops and animals we have based our civilization around.
Yes, the pilots look out the windows. It's particularly important for smaller aircraft and helicopters which are both more likely to be flying closer to the ground than larger planes.
And it doesn't matter if they need to look out the windows or not because if the laser hits them the right way it will blind the whole cockpit. There are a couple good videos on youtube, if you want to go digging for them, of pilots demonstrating what happens when a laser hits the acrylic canopy of a helicopter. The light diffuses right out and glares over the entire cockpit. From inside it looks like the windows have been converted into big green spotlights.
Yeah, accountable to the people who vote for them. Who, incidentally, all just got jobs in the nice new factory built in the middle of their nowhere electoral district.
What, you thought politicians were responsible to some greater purpose?
Unfortunately, saying "NASA is notorious for that sort of thing" implies that they are somehow responsible for it. It would be more accurate to say that congress is notorious for doing this with the NASA budget. NASA's money is already spent before it even gets to them.
Steam includes an integrated webkit browser overlay that lets you check sites without exiting your game. I assume that it meant you could use this browser to play the game.
The 'heat' is the solar radiation heating up what it strikes. That heat will radiate back out into space. Likewise the dark side of the space craft will be close to absolute zero.
This is an imperfect understanding of heat and how it works in space. Heat is HARD to get rid of. Very, very, hard. Heat hitting the craft will radiate back into space? Not very efficiently. Radiated energy is about the least effective way to get rid of heat. Very space and mass intensive. The ISS has almost as many square meters of heat radiators as it does solar panels. And the ISS has it easy, with a planetary shadow to work with.
Why is it so hard? Because space isn't cold. The whole 'space-is-barely-above-absolute-zero' thing is technically true and yet wildly inaccurate. Yes, the total amount of energy in a given volume of space is absurdly low. But that's not because the contents are cold. It's because there is nothing there to be measured. Space is a vacuum. As in vacuum thermos. That magical container that keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.
To say that the absolute cold of space will keep things cold implies that there is some cold substance in space that the heat can be transferred to. That simply isn't the case.
The far side of the spacecraft from the sun is going to be exactly the same temperature as the near side because the natural heat conductivity will be orders of magnitude higher than any heat differential caused by radiating heat. Both sides will be baking.
Actually, as far as Canada in concerned at least, we are already farming about as much as can be farmed. There is farming and ranching at least up to 60* latitude, probably further in some places. Gets nice and warm in the summer too. Axial tilt means looooooong summer days. Lots of light, very good growing season. Get far enough north and the sun doesn't set. My uncle has a ranching operation and the long days mean that he can grow as much hay in three months of almost continuous sunshine as some places can grow in five at lower latitudes.
Land not being farmed now is not being farmed because of other reasons. Middle of no-where and can't get to market. Bad geography. Bad soil. Lot of things that global warming won't change.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer?
Well, I'd think all software released under the GPL and similar licenses would qualify. Particularly GPL3 which was explicitly created to prevent released software from being run on non-compliant hardware. You don't like Apple restricting what hardware their software can run on? Fine, but any loss for Apple in that area is a direct blow to the enforceability of the Open Source license of your choice.
Actually, no. The third party chipsets include hardware for better up-scaling and decoding of h.264. Removes a lot of noise and produces a better result, particulartly if you are outputting to something like a TV.
Yes, but handling it in software isn't anywhere near as efficient. And less efficient means more power consumed. Software video, particularly processor intensive video like h.264, will suck through battery like nothing else.
A consortium of everybody except Google bid on (and won) those patents. And Google was invited. Everybody else just wanted them off the table. Google was the only one who wanted independent rights to them, presumably for use in their own lawsuits.
Everybody but Google banded together. Google was invited to join the same group. The explicit idea was to get them out of the way so no one could use them to sue anyone else. Google is the only one who refused to play along and tried to gain them independently. Shows who is serious about trying to avoid patent fights.
It is neither overwhelmingly verified nor agreed upon
Actually, yes it is. 98% of climate scientists agree that not only is global warming happening, but that it is being influenced by humans. So, out f the people that have the training and dedication to be fully educated on the matter there is overwhelming consensus. The facts have been looked at and the theories have been gone over and everyone says the conclusions are on pretty solid ground. Yes, I know that the link is a mainstream media blog, but it does include links to pdfs of the original studies, so a pretty decent source.
If 98% of all mechanics said your car had a problem you would be crazy to ignore them, no matter how inconvenient it was going to be for you. If 98% of doctors thought you had a heath problem it would be something that you would need to deal with, despite any unfortunate costs involved.
To the best of our understanding, global warming is happening. To act on any other assumption is to ignore the most likely reality.
Slashdot Mirror
especially given how common PS/2 devices are.
How common they are? You can't even buy them anymore. They are not made. That you have boxes of them that you can't bring yourself to throw away does not make them common.
So... you want a Wacom Cintiq? All the way from 12" to 24". Of course they start at $1000 and top out at $2600. Why? Because making a photo-quality touch screen with high enough precision and low enough latency to mimic paper is damn expensive. It's also heavy and bulky, with the smallest 12" model weighing 4.4 lbs and 3/4 of an inch thick.
And they still need to plug into a computer.
And none of this will show up in tablets for the foreseeable future. Because if it could be done cheaper or lighter or more portable Wacom wouldn't have spent the last decade as the only company making them.
The command line is a limited and narrow way of interacting with files on the computer.
As someone who does graphic arts and video, having to deal with a CLI would come with a significant productivity cost. It would mean losing the ability to preview dozens (or hundreds) of clips and media samples without having to open each individually. I can select and move a dozen out of a selection of hundreds of arbitrarily named files with a few clicks of the mouse. The same effort would represent a significant amount of typing. For that matter, CLI and text interfaces are not particularly useful for even viewing lists of large volumes of files.
CLI is an efficient way of doing a small number of specialized tasks. For the minor number of users that spend their time doing only those tasks it is superior. For any task that has risen to prominence in the last decade, probably not.
I'd object to the description 'patent parasite'.
Assholes, jerks and many other derogatory terms may be appropriate, but 'patent parasite' implies that they are leaching off others. Instead they are the ones pushing the market in every way, but using patents to stop others from following the same strategies. It's not nice, and it's not healthy for competition, but it's also not parasitic.
It would cost a student working on their free time more than $99 to replicate the hosting and distribution that comes along with the developer license.
Any job that doesn't need a degree (and most of the ones that do) probably has a certain level of hoop-jumping associated with it. May as well recruit for those who can handle it.
'College Education' is not a requirement, it is a filter. See, they don't care that you can do the job. So can a hundred other people. So how to cut down the number of applicants to a number worth going through? Stick on an education requirement. At the very least it makes sure that everyone has proven their ability to read boring material and then write the necessary boring reports if needed. A truly universal skill.
You have the knowledge to do the job but no degree? So what? Among the dozens of applicants that do have degrees there are at least a few that can also do everything you can do. Among those there will be at least one or two who will be a good fit for the workplace. Mission accomplished! Why is their incentive to give every special little snowflake a shot?
Well, that's a problem. When you went to school the computers allowed you to emulate the things you saw in 'real' programs of the 80's. With a bit of ingenuity you could make examples of almost any current program. It was your door to computers and the idea that you could make them do all the same things that you saw around you.
And in order to inspire this in the next generation you are going to give them a computer that... emulates the kind of things you did with computers in the 80's? Really?
Here's the thing. No kid who plays a bit of PS3 or Starcraft before school is going to go to class and get excited about being able to access memory addresses. Ever. Under any circumstances.
You want them to get excited in computer science? Sit them down with a level editor to their favorite game. Then when they hit the limits show them the scripting languages available. Then when they hit the limits of those sit them down with some C++ and really open the hood. And every step of the way they will be able to see the real effects and progress of their learning.
The current temperatures are not the perfect ones for the planet. The planet doesn't care. The current temperatures are perfect for us and the food crops and animals we have based our civilization around.
No, it's proof that people will only buy non-apple tablets when they can get $500 of hardware for $100.
That's not the same as a $100 tablet.
Yes, the pilots look out the windows. It's particularly important for smaller aircraft and helicopters which are both more likely to be flying closer to the ground than larger planes.
And it doesn't matter if they need to look out the windows or not because if the laser hits them the right way it will blind the whole cockpit. There are a couple good videos on youtube, if you want to go digging for them, of pilots demonstrating what happens when a laser hits the acrylic canopy of a helicopter. The light diffuses right out and glares over the entire cockpit. From inside it looks like the windows have been converted into big green spotlights.
So a very real safety risk.
Yeah, accountable to the people who vote for them. Who, incidentally, all just got jobs in the nice new factory built in the middle of their nowhere electoral district.
What, you thought politicians were responsible to some greater purpose?
Unfortunately, saying "NASA is notorious for that sort of thing" implies that they are somehow responsible for it. It would be more accurate to say that congress is notorious for doing this with the NASA budget. NASA's money is already spent before it even gets to them.
70's is 40 years ago. Equivalent of taking about stuff from the 30's back in the 70's
However, from a 'we are trying to convince people to buy this instead of ____' point of view it is completely accurate.
Steam includes an integrated webkit browser overlay that lets you check sites without exiting your game. I assume that it meant you could use this browser to play the game.
I want an option to automatically load all the comments on an article. not 250 at a time, everything. Every time. Automatically.
The 'heat' is the solar radiation heating up what it strikes. That heat will radiate back out into space. Likewise the dark side of the space craft will be close to absolute zero.
This is an imperfect understanding of heat and how it works in space. Heat is HARD to get rid of. Very, very, hard. Heat hitting the craft will radiate back into space? Not very efficiently. Radiated energy is about the least effective way to get rid of heat. Very space and mass intensive. The ISS has almost as many square meters of heat radiators as it does solar panels. And the ISS has it easy, with a planetary shadow to work with.
Why is it so hard? Because space isn't cold. The whole 'space-is-barely-above-absolute-zero' thing is technically true and yet wildly inaccurate. Yes, the total amount of energy in a given volume of space is absurdly low. But that's not because the contents are cold. It's because there is nothing there to be measured. Space is a vacuum. As in vacuum thermos. That magical container that keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.
To say that the absolute cold of space will keep things cold implies that there is some cold substance in space that the heat can be transferred to. That simply isn't the case.
The far side of the spacecraft from the sun is going to be exactly the same temperature as the near side because the natural heat conductivity will be orders of magnitude higher than any heat differential caused by radiating heat. Both sides will be baking.
Actually, as far as Canada in concerned at least, we are already farming about as much as can be farmed. There is farming and ranching at least up to 60* latitude, probably further in some places. Gets nice and warm in the summer too. Axial tilt means looooooong summer days. Lots of light, very good growing season. Get far enough north and the sun doesn't set. My uncle has a ranching operation and the long days mean that he can grow as much hay in three months of almost continuous sunshine as some places can grow in five at lower latitudes.
Land not being farmed now is not being farmed because of other reasons. Middle of no-where and can't get to market. Bad geography. Bad soil. Lot of things that global warming won't change.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer?
Well, I'd think all software released under the GPL and similar licenses would qualify. Particularly GPL3 which was explicitly created to prevent released software from being run on non-compliant hardware. You don't like Apple restricting what hardware their software can run on? Fine, but any loss for Apple in that area is a direct blow to the enforceability of the Open Source license of your choice.
Actually, no. The third party chipsets include hardware for better up-scaling and decoding of h.264. Removes a lot of noise and produces a better result, particulartly if you are outputting to something like a TV.
Yes, but handling it in software isn't anywhere near as efficient. And less efficient means more power consumed. Software video, particularly processor intensive video like h.264, will suck through battery like nothing else.
A consortium of everybody except Google bid on (and won) those patents. And Google was invited. Everybody else just wanted them off the table. Google was the only one who wanted independent rights to them, presumably for use in their own lawsuits.
Everybody but Google banded together. Google was invited to join the same group. The explicit idea was to get them out of the way so no one could use them to sue anyone else. Google is the only one who refused to play along and tried to gain them independently. Shows who is serious about trying to avoid patent fights.
It is neither overwhelmingly verified nor agreed upon
Actually, yes it is. 98% of climate scientists agree that not only is global warming happening, but that it is being influenced by humans. So, out f the people that have the training and dedication to be fully educated on the matter there is overwhelming consensus. The facts have been looked at and the theories have been gone over and everyone says the conclusions are on pretty solid ground. Yes, I know that the link is a mainstream media blog, but it does include links to pdfs of the original studies, so a pretty decent source.
If 98% of all mechanics said your car had a problem you would be crazy to ignore them, no matter how inconvenient it was going to be for you. If 98% of doctors thought you had a heath problem it would be something that you would need to deal with, despite any unfortunate costs involved.
To the best of our understanding, global warming is happening. To act on any other assumption is to ignore the most likely reality.