Would be to deposit the money in a trust and have the trustee silently monitor this guys life. If he ever gets sick or ever experiences misfortune (we all get old), he would then be authorized to step in and anonymously help him with whatever was needed. That way, he gains the benefit of the money he won while maintaining the purity of the lifestyle he desires.
I recommend a subscription to Nuts and Volts mag - they have been publishing high altitude balloon projects using low cost microprocessors and embedded systems for years now. Great resource for h/w, robotics, and embedded systems hackers. They are online at www.nutsvolts.com
Remember the hippie-era cartoon that shows an owl swooping down on a mouse who is gamely flipping off the owl? The caption was "The last great act of defiance". The mouse knows he is totally toast but wants to go out while he still has a pair.
Right, wrong, makes no difference whatsoever. If China wants Google to disappear, they will be gone faster than a Republican can say "No".
The fundamental difference between embedded software development and developing applications for PCs is this: embedded software can have no bugs. Unless the device has built-in flash or other mechanisms for upgrading, you absolutely, positively must have the software perfect before the device ships, cuz there ain't gonna be a version 2.0. In embedded software, it is the code that brings the hardware to life, and any bug effectively kills it. When a 3-year accidentally presses the "talk" and "burp" buttons at the same time on her Suzy Flatulence doll and it bursts into flames, not only are you totally fired for not properly safety-testing your code, but the company that you used to work for is totally hosed, along with all your coworkers - and of course all the crispy kids that owned the flaming Suzy dolls.
Or ask any owner of a car that has a drive-by-wire accelerator whether they think a bug or two is OK.
Sure, PC application programmers can worry about bugs, but they know that deep down, if there's something wrong with the hyperlink resolution code in their browser app, that they will probably get a chance to fix it. Not so with their embedded developer brothers - when one of *their* products ship, it's usually a scrotum-tightening, make-or-break deal.
And that's why I'll hire an embedded systems programmer over a.NET GUI weenie any day.
You want to either buy, rent, or find a service provider that can do large-format scanning using Contex scanners or other large format scanner. These utilize multiple CCDs or CISs to enable single pass color capture of large blueprint or map size documents. These can be at native resolutions of 72, 100, 200 dpi or higher. Can't help you with the GIS, but if you want fast, quality digitization, stick with an actual scanner made to do the job.
The idea that your notions are in any way representative of the Open Source community, let alone of the Open Source business community is completely ludicrous... and completely wrong.
Stupid me, I thought the site's motto was "News for Nerds", not "News for Open Source advocates only". Perhaps the site should be segregated so that only those with similar outlooks post together. That way we can all wallow in joyous, nerdy, comforting cohesiveness, constantly reassured that our particular slant on things is the one true religion.
...for wanting to absolutely control the apps that are sold through their store, and their developer license simply reflects that reality.
If you were running a grocery store, wouldn't YOU want to have the final say on what products YOU stock in the store? Wouldn't you want to be able to decide not to stock a product if they do something you don't like? (genetically altered produce is a no-no here, etc). They set the entry bar high so they don't have to wade through a ton of crap when deciding what to sell.
Apple's claim to fame is that they sell products that are easy to use, stylish, aren't prone to infectuous diseases, and have nice snob appeal. Grandma can feel nice and safe buying one. She doesn't need to worry about hard drives, drivers, which graphics board she needs and how to install it - she pays her money and shit just works like its suppose to, and THAT experience is precisely why Apple is enjoying such success in the consumer electronics marketplace. The idea that Grandma would ever buy ANYTHING from some 19-year old DRM-busting, open source Linux jockey is completely ludicrous.
I agree that it's tons of fun to poke sticks at market leaders, but that doesn't mean it's a productive activity.
...describing the "world of tomorrow", showing flying cars, people movers, and personal jet packs. Most detailed, meaningful predictions - even by informed people - are almost invariably wrong. I can agree that the internet is basically an information conduit that focuses us on what is happening "now", but as for the ways in which it will morph in the future and become something much more, I disagree. In the early days of television, it could easily have been predicted (and probably was) that the medium would be used to do away with classrooms and bring education into the home, but in reality it turned into a vehicle for watching trailer trash win prizes and distributing serial stories of meaningless drivel. Thus are the noble dreams of the educated and visionary elite hammered into reality by the voracious appetites of the masses for ever-increasing couch-based entertainment.
Lesson: If you have a noble ambition for your invention, never, ever, let the public "help" you mold it.
FYI - For laughs I ordered a lockpick set, instruction book, and video ( $50 or so) off the web and tried my novice hand at it. After just a couple of hours, I could open any pin tumbler lock that I found in the house (including door locks) in under a minute. There's a technique called "scrubbing" the pins that works well on most pin tumbler locks and it certainly worked for me. Actually "picking" the lock - where you put tension on it while feeling out and slowly setting each pin could take a while as you indicate, but even this method is doable in under 2 minutes with just a bit of practice - especially on the typical 4-pin door locks. It was cheap fun to learn the techniques and there are even groups that get together and have picking contests if you get bitten by the competition bug.
The problem was introduced when software was inserted between the driver and the throttle. The amount of code and it's dependency on external sensors means that it is virtually impossible to test all possible scenarios - i.e. there are bugs in the code that can remain undetected right up to the point where the computer goes batshit and drives the poor passengers off a cliff.
If you really, really want to eliminate the software as a source of the problem, go back to a direct linkage between pedal and throttle - no more drive-by-wire.
Every floppy and disk drive I can recall (even back to 8-inch floppy days) uses some type of controller. The controller translates your track and sector requests into stepping motions of the write arm(s) on the drive. Once the controller indicates that the head is positioned over your requested track, there is a latency while you wait for the "index" mark to appear which indicates the start of the track data. At that point you supply special codes to tell the controller that you are starting a new sector, the sector number, sector size, etc, after which you send the data. All of the sector info and data are encoded automatically by the controller and combined (at least in MFM encoding) into a bit stream. My belief is that attempting to work out all the combinations needed to get exactly the series of 1's and 0's you want is probably not a practical solution.
About the only solution I can think of that would allow you to do this is to actually hack into the signal supplied to the recording head at the end of the write arm. That means that you will need an oscilliscope to locate the signal and determine the voltage and duration required to write 1's and 0's. You will also need to understand whatever mechanism the drive uses to detect the index mark (the start of a track). If the drive does not use index marks, you won't be able to align the bits on one track in relationship to the bits on any other track. Assuming you manage to obtain all this info, you will then need to cut the drive line from the controller to the head and splice in your own drive line that will supply the raw write signals.
My guess is that this will not be a practical method for achieving whatever it is you are aiming for, in which case I agree with the previous poster that recommended the use of a XY table driving a custom write head over a custom magnetic surface.
On the other hand, you didn't specify that you need to be able to *read* any of the bits you want to lay down, so why not just hand in any old drive and tell them it was a piece of cake and let them worry about how to verify your work:-)
On a more practical note, if what you want is to lay down an exact pattern of bits onto a magnetic surface, the easiest path might be to use a cheap off-the-shelf laser printer. Simply create a 300 dpi image of the bit pattern and print it. You can them pick up the pattern off the printer drum.
...is an educated customer with which your technical support people can converse in an intelligent manner so they can listen as the user recreates the error by performing the original error-causing actions again.
Barring any intelligence on the other end, we have had good success with extensive error logs that are either automatically emailed to us or sent by the user to our technical support people. These logs tend to contain brief information that points directly to the offending code - i.e. routine name and even line number if possible, with small variable or data dumps when that would be helpful. This way our developers can see exactly where the error occurs and can either build in some bulletproofing or can backtrack the logic to see where the error originated. Just logging "error 5576" doesn't cut it unless there is only one place in the code where that error occurs and the developers can find it quickly by searching their code.
This type of log can be generated in cooperation with technical support - i.e. the end user selects a preference that starts logging - or it can simply run all the time and software keeps only the last few days of logs while deleting the older ones.
Another solution is to use webex - that way you can start a remote session and watch in almost real time as the user works - you can often catch things happening that the user would otherwise not report. This isa big help in rooting out issues where the real problem is user error.
This is a direct marketing approach to non-technical users - i.e. it will just work - like magic.
Most of the posters I've seen on Slashdot seem to believe that the success of any new gadget has some direct bearing on the number of features or its "openess" or hackability. Sorry, but I don't buy a refrigerator because its easy to swap out the compressor or because there are 10 different sources for the compressor or because the compressor also lets me hook up and drive my compressed air tools. Real humans that live on earth buy refrigerators because they match the color of their kitchen and can keep their food cold and frozen. If they want their friends to really drool, they buy a built-in refrigerator with high-end styling.
And that's exactly why the iPhone will continue to kick Android butt and why the iPad will be popular and make Apple tons of money. No one really cares about those antique build-it-yourself component-based computers anymore except an ever-dwindling group of geeks like us - and it would probably benefit us all to try and evolve into evaluating technology in a way that differs from the past focus on speed, components, and interfaces.
As the article states, when people listen to music it often evokes an emotional response. This doesn't happen when you simply teach a computer how to play chords and then toss in a random number generator - there must be a story told, some type of structure.
Cope's genius was in defining - admittedly in his own terms - what different portions of a composition were attempting to achieve: "statement, preparation, extension, antecedent, consequent". Once he had defined those and could define how different composers achieved them, he could more easily have the computer express new, cogent themes based on older masters. And because the new themes were expressed using the same techniques, they tended to sound like the the old composers to the point where people could recognize them.
His new "Emily Howell" software is an extension of that capability, but apparently also allows the composer to define their own techniques for achieving "statement, preparation, etc", providing a powerful aide to modern composers. They can start with an idea for a general theme and the software can help expand it into a composition expressed using techniques the composer prefers to use.
In just about any field of human study, things can seem magical until some analytical thinker helps to define the language of the underlying subject, whether that is logic constructs in software, mathematics, physics, or astronomy - or musical composition. Once the language has been defined, it allows us to conceptualize the formerly magical-seeming process as a series of definable operations - i.e. it becomes something humans can understand and talk about.
If Cope is also street-smart, he will productize "Emily Howell" and make it the industry standard for computational assistance in the composing arts.
...any numbers they supply will be the wrong ones. Regardless of what the numbers indicate, the companies will inevitably get beat up about it from some sector - either by the government, some minority rep with an agenda, or anyone that thinks they can gain some publicity by hammering on a large company. There simply is no benefit whatsoever to releasing information about the racial or gender mix of your employees. None.
...that almost passed the bill setting the value of pi to 3?
Also from the educated state of Utah comes the following:
- It is illegal NOT to drink milk.
- It is a felony to persistently tread on the cracks between paving stones on the sidewalk of a state highway.
- It is against the law to fish from horseback.
- No one may have sex in the back of an ambulance if it is responding to an emergency call. (I would love to know the story that prompted the passing of this law).
Lest we laugh too hard at Utah, you can easily find stupid laws on the books in every state. Makes me wonder exactly how serious they were being when they passed them. I can just imagine a couple of reps tossing around ideas for hilarious new laws. "Hey Bob, I got one - let's outlaw global warming! Problem solved!".
I buy a smartphone because it can fit in my pocket plus do phone calls, email, browsing, video, cameras, games, and some light special purpose business apps.
I buy a laptop because there are times when a smartphone isn't beefy enough, I need to do serious data input, document editing, presentations, or just about anything else I can do with a desktop.
I see no compelling reason for any tablet to replace either of these devices. If I want convenience, I can grab my smartphone. If I want power and am willing to put up with a device that won't fit in my pocket, I can grab my laptop or netbook.
I certainly wouldn't think "Hey, what I really need is a larger smartphone that won't fit in my pocket or a laptop without the nice tactile keyboard I am used to."
So - the negatives of a tablet are that it won't fit in your pocket and doesn't have the single, reliable input device we are all familiar with - the keyboard. In my mind, the pluses would need to be significant to overcomes these drawbacks.
If it had a roll-up or fold up screen that allowed it to still fit in my pocket, while having the power of a laptop, you might get me to take a second look.
These articles about company or product X bowing to the Chinese censors are often accompanied by calls to boycott the product in the US. Completely insane.
Wake up. We are in a trade war with China and must be complete agnostics when doing business there. We should cheer every inroad a US company makes in China. Attempting to hurt a US company just because you disagree with the way China is run is like shooting your foxhole buddy because you don't like Nazism.
Wrong target and wrong tactic. You cannot win unless you remain on the playing field.
Establishing the ability to comment using a verified, real username in no way inhibits you from continuing to use all the fake names you wish - i.e. when I want my opinion taken seriously, I can use a real ID, and if I'm just wasting my time (and everyone elses), I can use an anonymous one.
Might be an interesting experiment to establish a website that allows you to link a verified name, address, picture, etc with IDs used on various websites. For example, if I used "stinky123" on Slashdot and "clueless987" on CNN, I could associate both of these with my real identity. Over time, would sites such as CNN limit commenters to those users brave enough to provide a real identity? Would sites provide discounts to those users or special trusted features?
Again, being able to use a verified ID on some sites doesn't prevent me from continuing to use the anonymous, IQ-lowering crap we have come to know and abhor.
Only allow people to comment that have provided some kind of verified name and address. It's easy to heckle someone from the cheap seats, but if you are up on center stage, your comments are likely to be much more civil.
There must be real-life social consequences to making an ass of yourself before you see any improvement in the tone of the average comment forum.
That's my 2 cents, and my username is my real name. (admittedly unverified since there is no way I know of to do this currently).
After reading this announcement, I tried to imagine the earliest possible year in which a technical reader would be able to comprehend what is being described. 2004? 1998? Last week? Never heard of either the Remus Project or the Xen hypervisor, and yet here I sit, merrily cranking out successful commercial software products, as I've been doing for the past 30 years. It took me a bit of browsing to understand what was being described.
I wonder how many readers completely understood this announcement at face value without doing a little digging. 5? 10? Everybody but me?
I think if you tried keeping up with all the technology/terms in our field, it would be a full time job.
Same thing happened to me a few years ago at Disney World when I was attempting to juggle a hot dog, my digital camera, and some Mickey Mouse balloons I had bought for the kids. The strings got tangled in the camera and when I went to munch on the hot dog, the balloon slipped from my fingers and I watched helplessly as my camera sailed into the unknown.
But it gets better!
Several weeks later, I received an anonymous UPS package containing my digital camera! A quick glance showed that the Disney shots were still there, but there were some added shots that were somehow snapped on my camera's inadvertent journey. Some brief examples: (a) a shot of a 757 passenger jet with some astonished but blurred looking people looking out at Mickey; (2) a shot that showed a rocket launch at the Cape - from above!; (3) a nice clear shot that showed another group of brightly painted balloons that read "Visit Exciting Sydney!"; (4) a dim but unmistakable shot of the Shuttle as it came in for re-entry.
Of course there were a bunch more boring random shots of earth from way up high, but who cares about those?
I suspect I am not alone in this - has anyone else ever run an inadvertent "experiment" that accidentally took you to the edge of space? If getting close to the final frontier is actually this easy, it won't be long before we make it to the moon!
The idea of having a searchable, hyperlinked encyclopedia at my fingertips that didn't require online access is quite attractive, but much less so if I can't slip it in my pocket and carry it around. I'd prefer a thin, iPod touch-size doobie with the same super battery life. If it had the form-factor, I'm OK with it's other limitations.
I've followed the development of these extremely small flyers for some time and it seems to me that the real technical issue is not the smarts and sensors that you need to build into them - after all, we can make custom circuits just about as small as we need to. The real issue with these flyers and even smaller nanoscale devices is a viable power source. Every video you have seen to date has run these things tethered to an external power source. It just won't be real until the bee (or nano device) can lift off the ground while carrying its own power supply, whatever that might be. Until then, it's all just marketing hype (not to take anything away from the incredible technical achievements so far).
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Would be to deposit the money in a trust and have the trustee silently monitor this guys life. If he ever gets sick or ever experiences misfortune (we all get old), he would then be authorized to step in and anonymously help him with whatever was needed. That way, he gains the benefit of the money he won while maintaining the purity of the lifestyle he desires.
I recommend a subscription to Nuts and Volts mag - they have been publishing high altitude balloon projects using low cost microprocessors and embedded systems for years now. Great resource for h/w, robotics, and embedded systems hackers. They are online at www.nutsvolts.com
Remember the hippie-era cartoon that shows an owl swooping down on a mouse who is gamely flipping off the owl? The caption was "The last great act of defiance". The mouse knows he is totally toast but wants to go out while he still has a pair.
Right, wrong, makes no difference whatsoever. If China wants Google to disappear, they will be gone faster than a Republican can say "No".
The fundamental difference between embedded software development and developing applications for PCs is this: embedded software can have no bugs. Unless the device has built-in flash or other mechanisms for upgrading, you absolutely, positively must have the software perfect before the device ships, cuz there ain't gonna be a version 2.0. In embedded software, it is the code that brings the hardware to life, and any bug effectively kills it. When a 3-year accidentally presses the "talk" and "burp" buttons at the same time on her Suzy Flatulence doll and it bursts into flames, not only are you totally fired for not properly safety-testing your code, but the company that you used to work for is totally hosed, along with all your coworkers - and of course all the crispy kids that owned the flaming Suzy dolls.
Or ask any owner of a car that has a drive-by-wire accelerator whether they think a bug or two is OK.
Sure, PC application programmers can worry about bugs, but they know that deep down, if there's something wrong with the hyperlink resolution code in their browser app, that they will probably get a chance to fix it. Not so with their embedded developer brothers - when one of *their* products ship, it's usually a scrotum-tightening, make-or-break deal.
And that's why I'll hire an embedded systems programmer over a .NET GUI weenie any day.
You want to either buy, rent, or find a service provider that can do large-format scanning using Contex scanners or other large format scanner. These utilize multiple CCDs or CISs to enable single pass color capture of large blueprint or map size documents. These can be at native resolutions of 72, 100, 200 dpi or higher. Can't help you with the GIS, but if you want fast, quality digitization, stick with an actual scanner made to do the job.
The idea that your notions are in any way representative of the Open Source community, let alone of the Open Source business community is completely ludicrous...
and completely wrong.
Stupid me, I thought the site's motto was "News for Nerds", not "News for Open Source advocates only". Perhaps the site should be segregated so that only those with similar outlooks post together. That way we can all wallow in joyous, nerdy, comforting cohesiveness, constantly reassured that our particular slant on things is the one true religion.
...for wanting to absolutely control the apps that are sold through their store, and their developer license simply reflects that reality.
If you were running a grocery store, wouldn't YOU want to have the final say on what products YOU stock in the store? Wouldn't you want to be able to decide not to stock a product if they do something you don't like? (genetically altered produce is a no-no here, etc). They set the entry bar high so they don't have to wade through a ton of crap when deciding what to sell.
Apple's claim to fame is that they sell products that are easy to use, stylish, aren't prone to infectuous diseases, and have nice snob appeal. Grandma can feel nice and safe buying one. She doesn't need to worry about hard drives, drivers, which graphics board she needs and how to install it - she pays her money and shit just works like its suppose to, and THAT experience is precisely why Apple is enjoying such success in the consumer electronics marketplace. The idea that Grandma would ever buy ANYTHING from some 19-year old DRM-busting, open source Linux jockey is completely ludicrous.
I agree that it's tons of fun to poke sticks at market leaders, but that doesn't mean it's a productive activity.
...describing the "world of tomorrow", showing flying cars, people movers, and personal jet packs. Most detailed, meaningful predictions - even by informed people - are almost invariably wrong. I can agree that the internet is basically an information conduit that focuses us on what is happening "now", but as for the ways in which it will morph in the future and become something much more, I disagree. In the early days of television, it could easily have been predicted (and probably was) that the medium would be used to do away with classrooms and bring education into the home, but in reality it turned into a vehicle for watching trailer trash win prizes and distributing serial stories of meaningless drivel. Thus are the noble dreams of the educated and visionary elite hammered into reality by the voracious appetites of the masses for ever-increasing couch-based entertainment.
Lesson: If you have a noble ambition for your invention, never, ever, let the public "help" you mold it.
FYI - For laughs I ordered a lockpick set, instruction book, and video ( $50 or so) off the web and tried my novice hand at it. After just a couple of hours, I could open any pin tumbler lock that I found in the house (including door locks) in under a minute. There's a technique called "scrubbing" the pins that works well on most pin tumbler locks and it certainly worked for me. Actually "picking" the lock - where you put tension on it while feeling out and slowly setting each pin could take a while as you indicate, but even this method is doable in under 2 minutes with just a bit of practice - especially on the typical 4-pin door locks. It was cheap fun to learn the techniques and there are even groups that get together and have picking contests if you get bitten by the competition bug.
The problem was introduced when software was inserted between the driver and the throttle. The amount of code and it's dependency on external sensors means that it is virtually impossible to test all possible scenarios - i.e. there are bugs in the code that can remain undetected right up to the point where the computer goes batshit and drives the poor passengers off a cliff.
If you really, really want to eliminate the software as a source of the problem, go back to a direct linkage between pedal and throttle - no more drive-by-wire.
Every floppy and disk drive I can recall (even back to 8-inch floppy days) uses some type of controller. The controller translates your track and sector requests into stepping motions of the write arm(s) on the drive. Once the controller indicates that the head is positioned over your requested track, there is a latency while you wait for the "index" mark to appear which indicates the start of the track data. At that point you supply special codes to tell the controller that you are starting a new sector, the sector number, sector size, etc, after which you send the data. All of the sector info and data are encoded automatically by the controller and combined (at least in MFM encoding) into a bit stream. My belief is that attempting to work out all the combinations needed to get exactly the series of 1's and 0's you want is probably not a practical solution.
About the only solution I can think of that would allow you to do this is to actually hack into the signal supplied to the recording head at the end of the write arm. That means that you will need an oscilliscope to locate the signal and determine the voltage and duration required to write 1's and 0's. You will also need to understand whatever mechanism the drive uses to detect the index mark (the start of a track). If the drive does not use index marks, you won't be able to align the bits on one track in relationship to the bits on any other track. Assuming you manage to obtain all this info, you will then need to cut the drive line from the controller to the head and splice in your own drive line that will supply the raw write signals.
My guess is that this will not be a practical method for achieving whatever it is you are aiming for, in which case I agree with the previous poster that recommended the use of a XY table driving a custom write head over a custom magnetic surface.
On the other hand, you didn't specify that you need to be able to *read* any of the bits you want to lay down, so why not just hand in any old drive and tell them it was a piece of cake and let them worry about how to verify your work :-)
On a more practical note, if what you want is to lay down an exact pattern of bits onto a magnetic surface, the easiest path might be to use a cheap off-the-shelf laser printer. Simply create a 300 dpi image of the bit pattern and print it. You can them pick up the pattern off the printer drum.
...is an educated customer with which your technical support people can converse in an intelligent manner so they can listen as the user recreates the error by performing the original error-causing actions again.
Barring any intelligence on the other end, we have had good success with extensive error logs that are either automatically emailed to us or sent by the user to our technical support people. These logs tend to contain brief information that points directly to the offending code - i.e. routine name and even line number if possible, with small variable or data dumps when that would be helpful. This way our developers can see exactly where the error occurs and can either build in some bulletproofing or can backtrack the logic to see where the error originated. Just logging "error 5576" doesn't cut it unless there is only one place in the code where that error occurs and the developers can find it quickly by searching their code.
This type of log can be generated in cooperation with technical support - i.e. the end user selects a preference that starts logging - or it can simply run all the time and software keeps only the last few days of logs while deleting the older ones.
Another solution is to use webex - that way you can start a remote session and watch in almost real time as the user works - you can often catch things happening that the user would otherwise not report. This isa big help in rooting out issues where the real problem is user error.
This is a direct marketing approach to non-technical users - i.e. it will just work - like magic.
Most of the posters I've seen on Slashdot seem to believe that the success of any new gadget has some direct bearing on the number of features or its "openess" or hackability. Sorry, but I don't buy a refrigerator because its easy to swap out the compressor or because there are 10 different sources for the compressor or because the compressor also lets me hook up and drive my compressed air tools. Real humans that live on earth buy refrigerators because they match the color of their kitchen and can keep their food cold and frozen. If they want their friends to really drool, they buy a built-in refrigerator with high-end styling.
And that's exactly why the iPhone will continue to kick Android butt and why the iPad will be popular and make Apple tons of money. No one really cares about those antique build-it-yourself component-based computers anymore except an ever-dwindling group of geeks like us - and it would probably benefit us all to try and evolve into evaluating technology in a way that differs from the past focus on speed, components, and interfaces.
As the article states, when people listen to music it often evokes an emotional response. This doesn't happen when you simply teach a computer how to play chords and then toss in a random number generator - there must be a story told, some type of structure.
Cope's genius was in defining - admittedly in his own terms - what different portions of a composition were attempting to achieve: "statement, preparation, extension, antecedent, consequent". Once he had defined those and could define how different composers achieved them, he could more easily have the computer express new, cogent themes based on older masters. And because the new themes were expressed using the same techniques, they tended to sound like the the old composers to the point where people could recognize them.
His new "Emily Howell" software is an extension of that capability, but apparently also allows the composer to define their own techniques for achieving "statement, preparation, etc", providing a powerful aide to modern composers. They can start with an idea for a general theme and the software can help expand it into a composition expressed using techniques the composer prefers to use.
In just about any field of human study, things can seem magical until some analytical thinker helps to define the language of the underlying subject, whether that is logic constructs in software, mathematics, physics, or astronomy - or musical composition. Once the language has been defined, it allows us to conceptualize the formerly magical-seeming process as a series of definable operations - i.e. it becomes something humans can understand and talk about.
If Cope is also street-smart, he will productize "Emily Howell" and make it the industry standard for computational assistance in the composing arts.
I wonder if the spammers follow Slashdot?
...any numbers they supply will be the wrong ones. Regardless of what the numbers indicate, the companies will inevitably get beat up about it from some sector - either by the government, some minority rep with an agenda, or anyone that thinks they can gain some publicity by hammering on a large company. There simply is no benefit whatsoever to releasing information about the racial or gender mix of your employees. None.
...that almost passed the bill setting the value of pi to 3?
Also from the educated state of Utah comes the following:
- It is illegal NOT to drink milk.
- It is a felony to persistently tread on the cracks between paving stones on the sidewalk of a state highway.
- It is against the law to fish from horseback.
- No one may have sex in the back of an ambulance if it is responding to an emergency call. (I would love to know the story that prompted the passing of this law).
Lest we laugh too hard at Utah, you can easily find stupid laws on the books in every state. Makes me wonder exactly how serious they were being when they passed them. I can just imagine a couple of reps tossing around ideas for hilarious new laws. "Hey Bob, I got one - let's outlaw global warming! Problem solved!".
I buy a smartphone because it can fit in my pocket plus do phone calls, email, browsing, video, cameras, games, and some light special purpose business apps.
I buy a laptop because there are times when a smartphone isn't beefy enough, I need to do serious data input, document editing, presentations, or just about anything else I can do with a desktop.
I see no compelling reason for any tablet to replace either of these devices. If I want convenience, I can grab my smartphone. If I want power and am willing to put up with a device that won't fit in my pocket, I can grab my laptop or netbook.
I certainly wouldn't think "Hey, what I really need is a larger smartphone that won't fit in my pocket or a laptop without the nice tactile keyboard I am used to."
So - the negatives of a tablet are that it won't fit in your pocket and doesn't have the single, reliable input device we are all familiar with - the keyboard. In my mind, the pluses would need to be significant to overcomes these drawbacks.
If it had a roll-up or fold up screen that allowed it to still fit in my pocket, while having the power of a laptop, you might get me to take a second look.
These articles about company or product X bowing to the Chinese censors are often accompanied by calls to boycott the product in the US. Completely insane.
Wake up. We are in a trade war with China and must be complete agnostics when doing business there. We should cheer every inroad a US company makes in China. Attempting to hurt a US company just because you disagree with the way China is run is like shooting your foxhole buddy because you don't like Nazism.
Wrong target and wrong tactic. You cannot win unless you remain on the playing field.
Establishing the ability to comment using a verified, real username in no way inhibits you from continuing to use all the fake names you wish - i.e. when I want my opinion taken seriously, I can use a real ID, and if I'm just wasting my time (and everyone elses), I can use an anonymous one.
Might be an interesting experiment to establish a website that allows you to link a verified name, address, picture, etc with IDs used on various websites. For example, if I used "stinky123" on Slashdot and "clueless987" on CNN, I could associate both of these with my real identity. Over time, would sites such as CNN limit commenters to those users brave enough to provide a real identity? Would sites provide discounts to those users or special trusted features?
Again, being able to use a verified ID on some sites doesn't prevent me from continuing to use the anonymous, IQ-lowering crap we have come to know and abhor.
Only allow people to comment that have provided some kind of verified name and address. It's easy to heckle someone from the cheap seats, but if you are up on center stage, your comments are likely to be much more civil.
There must be real-life social consequences to making an ass of yourself before you see any improvement in the tone of the average comment forum.
That's my 2 cents, and my username is my real name. (admittedly unverified since there is no way I know of to do this currently).
After reading this announcement, I tried to imagine the earliest possible year in which a technical reader would be able to comprehend what is being described. 2004? 1998? Last week? Never heard of either the Remus Project or the Xen hypervisor, and yet here I sit, merrily cranking out successful commercial software products, as I've been doing for the past 30 years. It took me a bit of browsing to understand what was being described.
I wonder how many readers completely understood this announcement at face value without doing a little digging. 5? 10? Everybody but me?
I think if you tried keeping up with all the technology/terms in our field, it would be a full time job.
Same thing happened to me a few years ago at Disney World when I was attempting to juggle a hot dog, my digital camera, and some Mickey Mouse balloons I had bought for the kids. The strings got tangled in the camera and when I went to munch on the hot dog, the balloon slipped from my fingers and I watched helplessly as my camera sailed into the unknown.
But it gets better!
Several weeks later, I received an anonymous UPS package containing my digital camera! A quick glance showed that the Disney shots were still there, but there were some added shots that were somehow snapped on my camera's inadvertent journey. Some brief examples: (a) a shot of a 757 passenger jet with some astonished but blurred looking people looking out at Mickey; (2) a shot that showed a rocket launch at the Cape - from above!; (3) a nice clear shot that showed another group of brightly painted balloons that read "Visit Exciting Sydney!"; (4) a dim but unmistakable shot of the Shuttle as it came in for re-entry.
Of course there were a bunch more boring random shots of earth from way up high, but who cares about those?
I suspect I am not alone in this - has anyone else ever run an inadvertent "experiment" that accidentally took you to the edge of space? If getting close to the final frontier is actually this easy, it won't be long before we make it to the moon!
The idea of having a searchable, hyperlinked encyclopedia at my fingertips that didn't require online access is quite attractive, but much less so if I can't slip it in my pocket and carry it around. I'd prefer a thin, iPod touch-size doobie with the same super battery life. If it had the form-factor, I'm OK with it's other limitations.
I've followed the development of these extremely small flyers for some time and it seems to me that the real technical issue is not the smarts and sensors that you need to build into them - after all, we can make custom circuits just about as small as we need to. The real issue with these flyers and even smaller nanoscale devices is a viable power source. Every video you have seen to date has run these things tethered to an external power source. It just won't be real until the bee (or nano device) can lift off the ground while carrying its own power supply, whatever that might be. Until then, it's all just marketing hype (not to take anything away from the incredible technical achievements so far).