The real question is, will nVIDIA allow it to run Linux satisfactorily?
Unlike the Harmony reference design on Tegra 2, for which it has stopped offering Linux (L4T - and Android driver) support, if the design Google chooses sells in large numbers, nVIDIA might be compelled to make specifications and drivers available for porting Linux on it.
Which brings us to the next question: is Linux ready to work on a full touch environment, or will we be forced to carry a keyboard or a dock wherever we go?
According to this article (http://www.engadget.com/updates/devices-ice-cream-sandwich/) on Engadget, devices with 512 MB ROM or less will be left out of ICS coolness. My GB phone is in the left out list too.
I have an Android tablet, and I don't use Apple products, but I have come to believe that the 16:9 format is not that good for a tablet. For one, it is too short vertically in landscape format to accommodate an on screen keyboard and have a generous amount of viewing space available. If one wants to type with one hand while holding the tablet in the other, the keys on the sides also seem a bit too far away (my experience is with a 10" screen). In portrait mode, the keyboard gets a bit too narrow. The screen also seems to be a bit too narrow when reading books in portrait.
On the other hand, I now find the 7" screen size to be much more handy, and probably the keys would not be too far away. Has anybody any idea about how easy or difficult it is to read books on such a screen?
Another thing that has me wondering is the price tag: how can Google afford to sell the tablet for $199 / $249 with a Tegra 3 board, while Samsung charges around $800 (in India, where I live) for the Galaxy S III?
I chose an HTPC with AMD processor and graphics over the one with Intel/nVIDIA, thinking it would have better Linux support, and an nVIDIA based Android tablet thinking it will get good OEM and driver support. Turns out that now I am stuck with both.
How can you insert a pre-written sequence in an organism and ensure it plays out perfectly? Wouldn't the system monitoring and affecting the state of each particle introduce unintended changes in other particles? Also note that without this system, you would need to write down the state of every particle that interacted with the 'being' during its life time and ensure that the interaction was replayed exactly. However, this would necessitate isolating the new organism completely from any other external influence and close any path for information escaping, which would also mean that you would have no way in the world to know if the experience of the new organism was the same.
Oh, by the way, the act of measuring the particle states of the original organism would also introduce changes, which means that...eventually you would need to map and isolate the entire universe and measure it over infinity...and...
Well, you'd need to be a god, or something even beyond a god.
The GPL may be enforceable, at least till Telstra continues to distribute the devices on outright sale. DTH operators, on the other hand, make their customers sign a contract that specifies that the Set Top Boxes / DVRs being provided are solely the property of the operator, and are being leased to the customer with minimal rights being transferred. Most of these devices use the Linux kernel and other GPL / open source tools to function.
In such a case, the operator may take a plea that by leasing the device, it is not Distributing the software, and therefore is not liable for compliance with GPL. This plea may be used even if there is no provision for return, replacement or repair of the device beyond its warranty period, and the payment made by the customer is equal to the market price for similar equipment.
I am not sure if the excuse mentioned by the operator is legally tenable (in whichever jurisdiction), but it sure does put a stop to many people's impulses to tweak and tinker.
Now, I have received a free HD DVR with my TV purchase, and I can't even try to hack it to do more or expose its guts. What a shame.
Donate eyes, liver, kidneys or whichever organs can survive 'death', and cremate the remainder. There will only be a finite number of corpses that medical research can accept.
On the other hand, if we cease to exist when we die, how can we decide what to do with the corpse after death? It should be left to the family members or community or government to decide how to recycle or treat the waste.
Next up: flamewars about inheritance and communism
From TFA: "How can we put the site down? The only means that we can put the site down is [by launching a] denial-of-service [attack]. Basically we have to flood [the site] with millions and millions of requests and put the site down."
They are not sending *one* well-designed exploit, but millions and millions of 'requests'.
Hey, they could just post the links on/. instead and we'll do the DoS for them!
Although a slim chance, a file-sharing site may have legitimate users. A DoS attack by analogy would be like pushing hordes of protesters inside a mall where some shops may be selling pirated CDs. At least the mall can restrict the right to entry and lodge a police complaint if people try to force their way in, while this may not be possible in the virtual world.
Would it be possible for the site owner to notify ISPs about this unwanted traffic and try to get some IP addresses blacklisted?
If political parties can hold entire cities and states to ransom for their jingoistic agendas like enforcing the use of their regional languages, or as a protest to some trivial insult to some historic figures, or for banning a book that 'hurts' their 'religious or cultural feelings', or thrash people up for trying to celebrate Valentine's Day, there is no doubt a DoS attack would be condoned even if illegal.
Ironically, certain aspects of the Indian cyber laws are really draconian, paranoid and against free speech (which is only a right with stipulations in India). Unfortunately, nobody cares.
Idiots even think the UID program will help thwart terrorism, and they don't realise that it would only be another tool in hands of politicians, bureaucrats and the police to harass citizens even more than they are doing now.
I was wondering about that ever since watching the robotic prosthetics on NHK and especially the said TED video. Would it be possible to tap into nerves on a patch of skin (e.g. where the missing appendage should have been) and 'train' the brain to read impulses there, rather than directly meddle with it surgically?
If you can read the electrical impulses non-intrusively and with a lightweight headgear, and then use an adaptive algorithm to learn an individual's 'fingerprint' brainwave patterns, you can easily use the technology to control everything from powered wheelchairs to those cool animatronic prosthetics developed by the Japanese. Of course, you will also need some corrective algorithms so that empathically generated signals do not start to control the hardware;)
Hehe...while shopping in a third world country. Books here at airports are overpriced, and I won't buy them.
Anyway, what I mean to emphasize is that selling an ebook costs a little fraction of selling a paperback, and cheap ebooks can actually improve volumes especially where reading habits tend to be poor (e.g. due to cost, as in developing countries).
Again, with paperbacks or hardcovers, if people are only a bit curious about a title, they will try to borrow it and then return it, and would buy titles that they really want to keep. Or read something and give it away.
A cheap ebook could enable people to read more, just for curiosity, if it is a matter of small change.
Why doesn't anyone speak about the need for cheaper ebooks? At $9.99, they still cost *twice* as much as economy version paperback and as much as a premium one, at least in developing countries. And paperbacks come with all the freedom you want.
If they are cutting all middlemen out, apart from the printing and transportation costs, they will still end up making a good deal of money at prices below $4.99 per book. Even lower prices will see greater volumes, so the authors also will not complain.
I believe the current prices will just encourage a greater amount of piracy, with rapidly falling costs of the e-readers especially where there are alternatives that don't tie you in to a specific store pr format.
I forgot to mention that Better Place proposes to own the battery, which it will lease to the EV owner. This creates both distributed ownership and storage!
Now, if you can predict wind power generation to some degree of accuracy (already happening with weather station data), and if you can also provide instantaneous generation data to a consumer (also possible through 'The Power Of Technology', email and two way radios?), you could theoretically design a system where an EV being charged through a recharging point or a (ideally) battery swapping station could curtail or increase their power demand along with the changing pattern of wind power generation.
Of course, the burst generation from wind power gusts probably needs to be addressed differently. Wind turbines these days have instantaneous blade pitching and variable speed drives to handle a part of the load. Secondly, a smaller storage could be devised (by someone. I am not an engineer) to temporarily store the balance peaks and release it over time, much like in a hydraulic coupling system that provides mechanical shock protection.
This is briefly the idea that has been obsessing me for a year now, and I wish I could test its practicality.
Slashdot Mirror
They have only killed it for Linux and Android, and it never existed for iOS. You can still target Windows and OSX users with it, do not despair.
The real question is, will nVIDIA allow it to run Linux satisfactorily?
Unlike the Harmony reference design on Tegra 2, for which it has stopped offering Linux (L4T - and Android driver) support, if the design Google chooses sells in large numbers, nVIDIA might be compelled to make specifications and drivers available for porting Linux on it.
Which brings us to the next question: is Linux ready to work on a full touch environment, or will we be forced to carry a keyboard or a dock wherever we go?
According to this article (http://www.engadget.com/updates/devices-ice-cream-sandwich/) on Engadget, devices with 512 MB ROM or less will be left out of ICS coolness. My GB phone is in the left out list too.
I have an Android tablet, and I don't use Apple products, but I have come to believe that the 16:9 format is not that good for a tablet. For one, it is too short vertically in landscape format to accommodate an on screen keyboard and have a generous amount of viewing space available. If one wants to type with one hand while holding the tablet in the other, the keys on the sides also seem a bit too far away (my experience is with a 10" screen). In portrait mode, the keyboard gets a bit too narrow. The screen also seems to be a bit too narrow when reading books in portrait.
On the other hand, I now find the 7" screen size to be much more handy, and probably the keys would not be too far away. Has anybody any idea about how easy or difficult it is to read books on such a screen?
Another thing that has me wondering is the price tag: how can Google afford to sell the tablet for $199 / $249 with a Tegra 3 board, while Samsung charges around $800 (in India, where I live) for the Galaxy S III?
I chose an HTPC with AMD processor and graphics over the one with Intel/nVIDIA, thinking it would have better Linux support, and an nVIDIA based Android tablet thinking it will get good OEM and driver support. Turns out that now I am stuck with both.
...but the antenna section is in the hub-by.
How can you insert a pre-written sequence in an organism and ensure it plays out perfectly? Wouldn't the system monitoring and affecting the state of each particle introduce unintended changes in other particles? Also note that without this system, you would need to write down the state of every particle that interacted with the 'being' during its life time and ensure that the interaction was replayed exactly. However, this would necessitate isolating the new organism completely from any other external influence and close any path for information escaping, which would also mean that you would have no way in the world to know if the experience of the new organism was the same.
Oh, by the way, the act of measuring the particle states of the original organism would also introduce changes, which means that...eventually you would need to map and isolate the entire universe and measure it over infinity...and...
Well, you'd need to be a god, or something even beyond a god.
The GPL may be enforceable, at least till Telstra continues to distribute the devices on outright sale. DTH operators, on the other hand, make their customers sign a contract that specifies that the Set Top Boxes / DVRs being provided are solely the property of the operator, and are being leased to the customer with minimal rights being transferred. Most of these devices use the Linux kernel and other GPL / open source tools to function.
In such a case, the operator may take a plea that by leasing the device, it is not Distributing the software, and therefore is not liable for compliance with GPL. This plea may be used even if there is no provision for return, replacement or repair of the device beyond its warranty period, and the payment made by the customer is equal to the market price for similar equipment.
I am not sure if the excuse mentioned by the operator is legally tenable (in whichever jurisdiction), but it sure does put a stop to many people's impulses to tweak and tinker.
Now, I have received a free HD DVR with my TV purchase, and I can't even try to hack it to do more or expose its guts. What a shame.
THIS is the perfect opportunity for someone to use the phrase "When are you?"
Donate eyes, liver, kidneys or whichever organs can survive 'death', and cremate the remainder. There will only be a finite number of corpses that medical research can accept.
On the other hand, if we cease to exist when we die, how can we decide what to do with the corpse after death? It should be left to the family members or community or government to decide how to recycle or treat the waste.
Next up: flamewars about inheritance and communism
That ain't Bollywood, even if the title says so. It is a patently Tamil movie.
From TFA:
"How can we put the site down? The only means that we can put the site down is [by launching a] denial-of-service [attack]. Basically we have to flood [the site] with millions and millions of requests and put the site down."
They are not sending *one* well-designed exploit, but millions and millions of 'requests'.
Hey, they could just post the links on /. instead and we'll do the DoS for them!
I was talking about the legitimacy of files being shared on such sites, and not the possibility of shutting them down.
By the way, the assholes in question use DoS attacks, because DDos attacks might mean they have created a botnet.
Although a slim chance, a file-sharing site may have legitimate users. A DoS attack by analogy would be like pushing hordes of protesters inside a mall where some shops may be selling pirated CDs. At least the mall can restrict the right to entry and lodge a police complaint if people try to force their way in, while this may not be possible in the virtual world.
Would it be possible for the site owner to notify ISPs about this unwanted traffic and try to get some IP addresses blacklisted?
If political parties can hold entire cities and states to ransom for their jingoistic agendas like enforcing the use of their regional languages, or as a protest to some trivial insult to some historic figures, or for banning a book that 'hurts' their 'religious or cultural feelings', or thrash people up for trying to celebrate Valentine's Day, there is no doubt a DoS attack would be condoned even if illegal.
Ironically, certain aspects of the Indian cyber laws are really draconian, paranoid and against free speech (which is only a right with stipulations in India). Unfortunately, nobody cares.
Idiots even think the UID program will help thwart terrorism, and they don't realise that it would only be another tool in hands of politicians, bureaucrats and the police to harass citizens even more than they are doing now.
They do it on http://www.magnatune.com/ but then rock stars would rather be rock stars than be good artists.
AC speaks up against hypocrisy. Should have been brave enough to post under own ID.
Yes, but what stops us from trying? Thanks for the very valid points, anyway.
I was wondering about that ever since watching the robotic prosthetics on NHK and especially the said TED video. Would it be possible to tap into nerves on a patch of skin (e.g. where the missing appendage should have been) and 'train' the brain to read impulses there, rather than directly meddle with it surgically?
Sci-fi time.
Everybody must have seen this video on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html
If you can read the electrical impulses non-intrusively and with a lightweight headgear, and then use an adaptive algorithm to learn an individual's 'fingerprint' brainwave patterns, you can easily use the technology to control everything from powered wheelchairs to those cool animatronic prosthetics developed by the Japanese. Of course, you will also need some corrective algorithms so that empathically generated signals do not start to control the hardware ;)
Hehe...while shopping in a third world country. Books here at airports are overpriced, and I won't buy them.
Anyway, what I mean to emphasize is that selling an ebook costs a little fraction of selling a paperback, and cheap ebooks can actually improve volumes especially where reading habits tend to be poor (e.g. due to cost, as in developing countries).
Again, with paperbacks or hardcovers, if people are only a bit curious about a title, they will try to borrow it and then return it, and would buy titles that they really want to keep. Or read something and give it away.
A cheap ebook could enable people to read more, just for curiosity, if it is a matter of small change.
Why doesn't anyone speak about the need for cheaper ebooks? At $9.99, they still cost *twice* as much as economy version paperback and as much as a premium one, at least in developing countries. And paperbacks come with all the freedom you want.
If they are cutting all middlemen out, apart from the printing and transportation costs, they will still end up making a good deal of money at prices below $4.99 per book. Even lower prices will see greater volumes, so the authors also will not complain.
I believe the current prices will just encourage a greater amount of piracy, with rapidly falling costs of the e-readers especially where there are alternatives that don't tie you in to a specific store pr format.
Just a pet peeve of mine.
Mundane, meaning related to the Earth?
uhh...long post.
I forgot to mention that Better Place proposes to own the battery, which it will lease to the EV owner. This creates both distributed ownership and storage!
Now, if you can predict wind power generation to some degree of accuracy (already happening with weather station data), and if you can also provide instantaneous generation data to a consumer (also possible through 'The Power Of Technology', email and two way radios?), you could theoretically design a system where an EV being charged through a recharging point or a (ideally) battery swapping station could curtail or increase their power demand along with the changing pattern of wind power generation.
Of course, the burst generation from wind power gusts probably needs to be addressed differently. Wind turbines these days have instantaneous blade pitching and variable speed drives to handle a part of the load. Secondly, a smaller storage could be devised (by someone. I am not an engineer) to temporarily store the balance peaks and release it over time, much like in a hydraulic coupling system that provides mechanical shock protection.
This is briefly the idea that has been obsessing me for a year now, and I wish I could test its practicality.