But as has already been pointed out in other posts in this story, if users need to rely on other users to rate the download good or bad, then the situation is right back where it started from. Untrustworthy users uploading trojaned executables will just rate their own stuff as good.
I thought the primary purpose of P2P filesharing was to share legally swappable media files as well as other files like documents and useful freeware applications. Is there some nefarious entity flooding the P2P networks with garbage disguised as those files above? Why would you need to know the quality of the file's reputation?
These things can be fixed pretty easily. All current members with valid logins will just get new passwords assigned to them and the world will keep spinning like it always does.
But it points to a completely different, much more significant problem. That is of using the same password for every login. I admit that I do it too because it is much easier to remember one or two basic passwords than trying to remember a different password for each site that I log in to. But as this latest breach of security shows us, doing that jeopardizes all other logins on other sites.
One can only hope that they don't keep the passwords in a plaintext file and that a strong one-way encryption scheme is used to scramble the passwords in the database.
Also, I wonder who thinks it is useful to hack these sites in retaliation for some perceived wrong against a stranger? The hackers at fault here prove no point, present no agenda, and generally smear the image of computer enthusiasts in the public eye. I'd rather they find a better way to protest than to attack private property.
The first order of space flight ought to be the safety of the crew, not how many pounds of payload can be shoved into orbit by bigger and bigger rocket engines. NASA, in a completely predictable move, sent the shuttle up unprepared and now we are watching in horror as the astronauts forego any attempt at the scientific experiments they went up for, instead fighting for their lives with a stick of velcro and some prayers from the world.
Maybe it's time to take NASA out of the equation. Fund some of these little guys like Rutan and Carmack and get some real money behind people with actual egos that stand to get destroyed if something tragic happens. NASA is led by bureaucrats who wouldn't know which end of the main booster rocket is up if it had a big sign saying "this end up". Better to scrap the entire division, separate off those aspects that are useful to the military and give the rest to the public.
NASA has shown that they have neither the brains nor the patience to do things correctly. It is time that they step out of the way and let people with dreams lead the way into space.
On first glance, the Baidu site looks like a very spartan search engine, but the links at the top lead to a much more involved "portal" website more akin to Yahoo! than Google. If the site was allowing downloads of the movie and music in question, then this lawsuit will likely go ahead. I'm not too clear on Chinese securities law, but I wasn't aware that a company that was caught in illegal activity could be prevented from selling stock.
From a friend, I have heard that doing business in China is rife with this kind of IP infringement. Set up an office in Shanghai making widgets, and 2 months later you will be in competition with the company upstairs that makes the exact same widgets as you, staffed with the employees you had hired 2 months prior. The culture simply has no qualms with this type of unlimited copying, whether it be copying of CDs and movies or patents and business models.
It's a huge market, so it is very attractive to investors. However, it is also very threatening to companies that rely on information hoarding rather than manufacturing, and thus presents a double-edged sword to foreign companies.
This case, if successfully prosecuted, will send a strong message to the West that foreign investments are safe in China.
I am not sure I can agree with your position, though I agree with your sentiment. I don't think I implied that robots ought to be shunned in favor of sending humans to do a job. Robots indeed have their place, as do computers, calculators, and every other technology that makes exploring and researching more fruitful. But I do not think that technology is the be-all and end-all in science. It may be helpful to overcome barriers, but at the core it is humans who must make the final fateful decisions. And a human who is on-site can make a better snap decision than one who is away in a laboratory staring at a video monitor with a 3 second delay between his commands and the robot's actions.
I understand your unwillingness to want to pay for such "extravagancies". Just as you don't want to pad some scientist's budget, I perhaps do not want to pad some artist's funding. However, a government that works best is one that helps the society it governs progress with as little human suffering as possible and at the lowest cost to its citizens. As such, I have to think that it would be far more proper to have informed people making the decision as to how to spend allocated funds rather than trusting each citizen to specifically designate where each penny of their taxes goes. Universities have a much better perspective than the common layperson when it comes to scientific research, and I think it ought to be they who make the decision as to how to spend allocated government funds.
Science is absolutely about adventure and excitement. It is the excitement of discovering something new, of finding something that no one has ever found before, of creating something that no one has ever created before. Science is about getting "out there" and finding stuff. It sustains itself with people who are excited about finding stuff. You can't take that away and give it to the robots and expect to have scientists lining up to fill the labs forever.
There was a quote that really struck me as odd and out of place in a science department.
quote "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer./quote
I can't believe that a scientist would forego the adventure and excitement of actually visiting and investigating on-site the things she wants to learn about. Robots and video cameras and sensors have their place, especially in areas where it is still impossible to go. However, replacing the actual experience of seeing these things firsthand, trading that for lily-white labcoats and sterile research labs is the opposite direction scientists should be heading, in my opinion.
I, for one, would rather head down to the depths of the ocean or fly to the next planet personally than have some robot do that in my place, if I had the choice.
I was under the impression that cars typically had at least two computer systems. One for the in-cabin niceities like A/C and Audio, and another totally separate system for the engine. Has there been some sort of merging of these two systems recently?
The "comfort" system may need Bluetooth to talk to personal devices to download music, among other tasks. But what possible reason could there be to have the engine system talking to the comfort system? They would seem to be two totally different areas without any relation to each other.
The article is pretty vague about the consequences, but it does include a quote from a Symantec engineer who thinks it is possible that the engine system could be infected. I just don't see that happening.
Sometimes, with our very limited 80 year lifespans, we start to think that everything that we do now is the absolutely most important thing ever, and we make decisions based on that rather than looking to history for a sense of scale. 500 years ago, people weren't reading, they weren't really doing much of anything productive. It wasn't until the Renaissance that things really started humming.
So 500 years from now, with a whole hour of time slip, what will they think of how we just decided to change the manner in which we adjust time?
In China, there is only one timezone, but it works terribly since half the country wakes up in the dark and the other half wakes up in bright sunlight. They have adapted to this by "unofficially" setting work hours according to the longitudinal timezone rather than the government-mandated timezone. I wonder if there were a huge leap second buildup whether people would just start waking up according to the absolute time rather than the political time.
I think it's a bad idea, and I can't think of the benefits. But I guess I'm not a scientist, so I wouldn't understand those issues.
Every other week or so there is some big success story regarding the regrowth of neural tissue using spinal stem cells, but hardly a word about embryonic stem cells. I understand that there is a ban on using government funds to pursue embryonic stem cell research, however I would like to know whether such research is taking place anywhere. And if it is, why aren't the dramatic results we see with spinal stem cells also being trumpeted by embryonic stem cell researchers?
There are many people who could ultimately benefit from this research, and it certainly shows much promise. I know several people personally who could stand to regain some quality of life if doctors could regrow nerve tissues in humans.
Are spinal stem cells better than embryonic stem cells at growing this type of tissue, or is it simply a case of too little money going into embryonic stem cell research?
Considering that modern birds are almost all nurturers of their young, it stands to reason that dinosaurs, the precursors to birds, would also have exhibited nurturing behaviors towards their hatchlings. On the other hand, reptiles, the other modern descendant of the dinosaurs by and large do not nurture their young, some, like the green sea turtle, lay their eggs in the sand and never see the babies again.
I wonder how much nurturing had a part in the evolution of birds and reptiles. Whether the nurturing behavior in early birdlike dinosaurs led to the modern birds of today. And whether the non-nurturing behavior of other dinosaurs led to the separate branch which is populated by modern-day reptiles.
But the question on everyone's mind is, how tasty are those embryos?
I usually take the network administrators for granted and I think that's a testament to the great work that they do. Like the best technology, the best system administrators run so smoothly that you don't even think about them.
I've been lucky in that every company that I've worked at has had very professional and very knowledgeable system administrators. I know there are a lot of system administrators on this site. I'd like to take this opportunity to say Thank you.
I'll be sure to kick the ethernet cable out of the wall and "forget" my password just for them.
I am willing to accept that there are patent applications coming into the USPTO in torrents, but I can't accept the EFF's stance that it is because of this deluge that the patent examiners are leaving. It's probably something much more mundane like bad management or lack of upward mobility in the position that is the root cause of the fleeing.
Remember, this is the government we are talking about. They are under no pressure to approve patents in a timely manner. The applicants will wait for as long as it takes to get their patents.
The EFF is right, of course, in that the patent system needs to be overhauled so that the system can't be used as a weapon anymore. Unfortunately, they seem to make a non-existent connection between that valid point and the other vaporous point that tons of applications is leading to mass quitting at the USPTO. I think they damage their reputation when they try to argue in such a flawed manner.
We need to vote into office people who understand the issues, not those that are in the back pocket of the corporations.
I suppose that if there is no God when I die and that my belief in Him was for naught, that I can at least take satisfaction in how I lived my life trying to do my best to be patient and kind to other people and generally doing my best to live rightly.
What I mean is, is there some valuable component or application of Firefox that can be used by product or service companies beyond the basic browser application? IE, for example, is a modular browser component that can be reused in private applications. Linux is useful in a broad range of products/services that aren't simply desktop and server operating systems.
Is Firefox modular enough to break out valuable, reusable parts and implement something new out of them?
I use Firefox on most of my computers, so I'm responsible for about 5 of those 75 million downloads. 30, if they are counting each patch too.
It seems my personal observations do not jibe with the actual numbers in regards to the NintendoDS and PSP. I see PSPs all around (not in the creepy 6th Sense way, just they seem to be pretty popular), but I hardly ever see the DS. I looked up the latest sales numbers for this past week and it looks like the DS is outpacing the PSP by about 60% in Japan.
It is reminiscent of the PSP and Gameboy Advance
on
Tapwave Closes its Doors
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· Score: 1, Troll
The gadget seems to have been a multi-purpose device that played games in addition to being a standard PDA.
I wonder, in this day and age, whether such combination devices are really that useful/usable. There is a very strong drive to integrate all sorts of technologies together into super-portable-do-it-all devices (like "smart" phones). However, is there really a market for an All-in-one device like the Zodiac?
What I see is a PDA with a gaming API grafted on, not a solid gaming device. The device itself looks like a gaming device (sans nice styling), but that pretty much precludes it from being a portable/usable PDA due to the larger size.
I think we can chalk this one up as another failure in the handheld gaming device category, joining GB3D, Lynx, TG-portable, and the latest NintendoDS.
But inquiring minds want to know, will the existing stock be made available at reduce prices?
In the case of a spy or defector, governments will go to such lengths as to arrest and execute national traitors who may have given up sensitive information to the enemy. So important is that information.
Companies just do this on a smaller scale. They state up front in the employment contract that you cannot work on related projects for X number of years after the termination of employment. This really isn't anything new, I don't think.
The primary reason for this "sudden" growth industry of suing former employees is that employees these days actually carry sensitive information in their heads. In the days of industrial might, the product was a tangible thing which could be taken apart and analyzed by rival companies. Now with software, these things are pretty much black boxes. The only way to know what's happening on the inside is to get that information from someone who has inside information.
So we come to this point where people can't be employed doing things that they've done before.
I try to keep my head clean of any and all information, thus ensuring my continued employability.;-)
There is a scene in Terminator where the rise of the machines is discussed and how the robots were unable at first to infiltrate the human ranks. The reason was primarily that the rubber skin didn't look sufficiently human to fool real humans.
On the other hand, the animators of Toy Story 2 recognized the problem of human replication as the innate ability of humans to recognize when something is amiss with images of humans that were "too perfect". The result is that they decided to give the human characters in the movie not-so-perfect skin, even down to details like acne and pock marks.
Take the Final Fantasy movie as an example of utterly fake looking CG characters. Everything looks fine, as long as you try to think of the characters as cartoons. However, the instant you think that they are humans, the whole illusion falls apart under its own perfection.
This robot may look human, but any human should be able to recognize it as something "other". As for human movement, the ASIMO is very far along in mimicking human movement.
Nice of me to state the obvious there in the subject line.:-)
The article requires some non-negligble amount of registration, so I will simply forego all that and give my impressions of my experience with distributed development.
DON'T DO IT!!
I believe that was Sam Kinison's advice on a host of things.
The biggest problem with distributed development is lack of coordination between members. Especially on public Open Source projects where members may not show up on time or even at all, and there really isn't any way to force them to do so.
This means that the biggest challenge in running a successful project is to staff it with sufficiently trustworthy engineers who see the success of the project as a common goal. This isn't unlike typical closed source project management except that you can't really fire anyone.
I've found that once you've got a critical mass of dependable engineers working on the project, that much of the development takes care of itself. Active mailing lists are mandatory, as are clear objectives. But if you don't have people you can trust submitting code, then you're basically doing it all by yourself.
Even when raining, the outdoor light feels much more comfortable and natural than indoor incandescent lightbulbs. I imagine the idea has been around since Gog the Hut Thatcher fell through one of his creations and the hut owners just left the hole in the roof.
Nowadays, they've got a nice system where the light is guided through a reflective tube that can be directed to any room in the house.
It was only natural that the techonology would progress to where we are splitting the sunshine into fiber optics and redirecting them all over the house. However, 2007 is a pretty long way off for what seems to be a relatively simple application of existing technologies.
I believe that the UW study was on the affects of cellular radiation on mice, and the results were equally disturbing. The exposed mice were invariably stricken with cancer while the unexposed mice remained at the norm.
But that study also showed that such effects were only engendered when the amount of radiation was both high and prolonged. The bovine lenses in this article were exposed to cellular radiation for 22 hours a day. If the exposure intensity is to be believed, then the transmitting antennas were placed right against the eyeball.
Neither of those situations is remotely near what normal cellular phone usage patterns resemble (unless you are a teenage girl, I suppose, but even then you aren't sticking the phone in your eye) (are you?).
So more study is necessary. The edge cases like the ones in the article and the UW study are very important to know, but the results of real-world testing ought to be examined as well. If we see a huge increase in the number of cancer and scratched lens cases in the coming years, there may be some validity to these studies.
I'll continue using my cellular phone, though. The convenience is just too great to pass up.
It's simply amazing the amount of progress two dedicated youths can make in such a short time.
One thing I used to have a lot of time to think about was how much time I was wasting, having forced myself into a very uncomfortable place. It's quite heartening to see these kids doing great work, even if it is just for themselves as a hobby (even moreso, in my opinion).
I'm not sure that the thing is useful, but it's definitely a cool hack.
Levanta is right in that the most crucial aspect of running a Linux network is having the manpower available to handle all the issues that arise. They solve this by introducing their hardware/software combination that makes such administration easier and more automated than before.
But you'd never know it by skimming their site. Like many tech wizards, they get bogged down with technical details and fail to clearly present their product in a coherent manner.
For all the slick web designing that went into their site, someone could have had the decency to tell them to "dumb it down" for the CIOs out there who haven't got the time to dig into their literature.
After reading the site, I'm still not clear on what the name of the administrative tool is, nor the limitations as to the number of nodes I can attach to the admin machine.
There are some very keen concepts that seem to mimic the concept of a system emulator, where the administrator can deploy experimentally and see the results of those deployments without causing system-wide disaster.
There are some times I wish I had spent a little more time studying electronics than doing other things, and this is definitely one of those times. The most impressive part of the project is the variable resistor that allows him to control turntable speed manually. Unfortunately for me, I haven't got the knowledge, much less the gumption, to figure something like that out on my own.
I don't suppose he tested the torque of the motor to see how quickly he could get the record to playing speed. That's one of the key features that I understand to be important to audiophiles. And for the DJs, I imagine they are interested in what sort of clutch (?) mechanism there is that could help the motor recover from an accidental reversing of direction.
Seriously, I need to go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a book on basic electronics. It's one of those itches that I just haven't had the resources to scratch.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.
But as has already been pointed out in other posts in this story, if users need to rely on other users to rate the download good or bad, then the situation is right back where it started from. Untrustworthy users uploading trojaned executables will just rate their own stuff as good.
I thought the primary purpose of P2P filesharing was to share legally swappable media files as well as other files like documents and useful freeware applications. Is there some nefarious entity flooding the P2P networks with garbage disguised as those files above? Why would you need to know the quality of the file's reputation?
These things can be fixed pretty easily. All current members with valid logins will just get new passwords assigned to them and the world will keep spinning like it always does.
But it points to a completely different, much more significant problem. That is of using the same password for every login. I admit that I do it too because it is much easier to remember one or two basic passwords than trying to remember a different password for each site that I log in to. But as this latest breach of security shows us, doing that jeopardizes all other logins on other sites.
One can only hope that they don't keep the passwords in a plaintext file and that a strong one-way encryption scheme is used to scramble the passwords in the database.
Also, I wonder who thinks it is useful to hack these sites in retaliation for some perceived wrong against a stranger? The hackers at fault here prove no point, present no agenda, and generally smear the image of computer enthusiasts in the public eye. I'd rather they find a better way to protest than to attack private property.
The first order of space flight ought to be the safety of the crew, not how many pounds of payload can be shoved into orbit by bigger and bigger rocket engines. NASA, in a completely predictable move, sent the shuttle up unprepared and now we are watching in horror as the astronauts forego any attempt at the scientific experiments they went up for, instead fighting for their lives with a stick of velcro and some prayers from the world.
Maybe it's time to take NASA out of the equation. Fund some of these little guys like Rutan and Carmack and get some real money behind people with actual egos that stand to get destroyed if something tragic happens. NASA is led by bureaucrats who wouldn't know which end of the main booster rocket is up if it had a big sign saying "this end up". Better to scrap the entire division, separate off those aspects that are useful to the military and give the rest to the public.
NASA has shown that they have neither the brains nor the patience to do things correctly. It is time that they step out of the way and let people with dreams lead the way into space.
On first glance, the Baidu site looks like a very spartan search engine, but the links at the top lead to a much more involved "portal" website more akin to Yahoo! than Google. If the site was allowing downloads of the movie and music in question, then this lawsuit will likely go ahead. I'm not too clear on Chinese securities law, but I wasn't aware that a company that was caught in illegal activity could be prevented from selling stock.
From a friend, I have heard that doing business in China is rife with this kind of IP infringement. Set up an office in Shanghai making widgets, and 2 months later you will be in competition with the company upstairs that makes the exact same widgets as you, staffed with the employees you had hired 2 months prior. The culture simply has no qualms with this type of unlimited copying, whether it be copying of CDs and movies or patents and business models.
It's a huge market, so it is very attractive to investors. However, it is also very threatening to companies that rely on information hoarding rather than manufacturing, and thus presents a double-edged sword to foreign companies.
This case, if successfully prosecuted, will send a strong message to the West that foreign investments are safe in China.
I am not sure I can agree with your position, though I agree with your sentiment. I don't think I implied that robots ought to be shunned in favor of sending humans to do a job. Robots indeed have their place, as do computers, calculators, and every other technology that makes exploring and researching more fruitful. But I do not think that technology is the be-all and end-all in science. It may be helpful to overcome barriers, but at the core it is humans who must make the final fateful decisions. And a human who is on-site can make a better snap decision than one who is away in a laboratory staring at a video monitor with a 3 second delay between his commands and the robot's actions.
I understand your unwillingness to want to pay for such "extravagancies". Just as you don't want to pad some scientist's budget, I perhaps do not want to pad some artist's funding. However, a government that works best is one that helps the society it governs progress with as little human suffering as possible and at the lowest cost to its citizens. As such, I have to think that it would be far more proper to have informed people making the decision as to how to spend allocated funds rather than trusting each citizen to specifically designate where each penny of their taxes goes. Universities have a much better perspective than the common layperson when it comes to scientific research, and I think it ought to be they who make the decision as to how to spend allocated government funds.
Science is absolutely about adventure and excitement. It is the excitement of discovering something new, of finding something that no one has ever found before, of creating something that no one has ever created before. Science is about getting "out there" and finding stuff. It sustains itself with people who are excited about finding stuff. You can't take that away and give it to the robots and expect to have scientists lining up to fill the labs forever.
There was a quote that really struck me as odd and out of place in a science department.
/quote
quote
"This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer.
I can't believe that a scientist would forego the adventure and excitement of actually visiting and investigating on-site the things she wants to learn about. Robots and video cameras and sensors have their place, especially in areas where it is still impossible to go. However, replacing the actual experience of seeing these things firsthand, trading that for lily-white labcoats and sterile research labs is the opposite direction scientists should be heading, in my opinion.
I, for one, would rather head down to the depths of the ocean or fly to the next planet personally than have some robot do that in my place, if I had the choice.
I was under the impression that cars typically had at least two computer systems. One for the in-cabin niceities like A/C and Audio, and another totally separate system for the engine. Has there been some sort of merging of these two systems recently?
The "comfort" system may need Bluetooth to talk to personal devices to download music, among other tasks. But what possible reason could there be to have the engine system talking to the comfort system? They would seem to be two totally different areas without any relation to each other.
The article is pretty vague about the consequences, but it does include a quote from a Symantec engineer who thinks it is possible that the engine system could be infected. I just don't see that happening.
Sometimes, with our very limited 80 year lifespans, we start to think that everything that we do now is the absolutely most important thing ever, and we make decisions based on that rather than looking to history for a sense of scale. 500 years ago, people weren't reading, they weren't really doing much of anything productive. It wasn't until the Renaissance that things really started humming.
So 500 years from now, with a whole hour of time slip, what will they think of how we just decided to change the manner in which we adjust time?
In China, there is only one timezone, but it works terribly since half the country wakes up in the dark and the other half wakes up in bright sunlight. They have adapted to this by "unofficially" setting work hours according to the longitudinal timezone rather than the government-mandated timezone. I wonder if there were a huge leap second buildup whether people would just start waking up according to the absolute time rather than the political time.
I think it's a bad idea, and I can't think of the benefits. But I guess I'm not a scientist, so I wouldn't understand those issues.
Every other week or so there is some big success story regarding the regrowth of neural tissue using spinal stem cells, but hardly a word about embryonic stem cells. I understand that there is a ban on using government funds to pursue embryonic stem cell research, however I would like to know whether such research is taking place anywhere. And if it is, why aren't the dramatic results we see with spinal stem cells also being trumpeted by embryonic stem cell researchers?
There are many people who could ultimately benefit from this research, and it certainly shows much promise. I know several people personally who could stand to regain some quality of life if doctors could regrow nerve tissues in humans.
Are spinal stem cells better than embryonic stem cells at growing this type of tissue, or is it simply a case of too little money going into embryonic stem cell research?
Considering that modern birds are almost all nurturers of their young, it stands to reason that dinosaurs, the precursors to birds, would also have exhibited nurturing behaviors towards their hatchlings. On the other hand, reptiles, the other modern descendant of the dinosaurs by and large do not nurture their young, some, like the green sea turtle, lay their eggs in the sand and never see the babies again.
I wonder how much nurturing had a part in the evolution of birds and reptiles. Whether the nurturing behavior in early birdlike dinosaurs led to the modern birds of today. And whether the non-nurturing behavior of other dinosaurs led to the separate branch which is populated by modern-day reptiles.
But the question on everyone's mind is, how tasty are those embryos?
I usually take the network administrators for granted and I think that's a testament to the great work that they do. Like the best technology, the best system administrators run so smoothly that you don't even think about them.
I've been lucky in that every company that I've worked at has had very professional and very knowledgeable system administrators. I know there are a lot of system administrators on this site. I'd like to take this opportunity to say Thank you.
I'll be sure to kick the ethernet cable out of the wall and "forget" my password just for them.
I am willing to accept that there are patent applications coming into the USPTO in torrents, but I can't accept the EFF's stance that it is because of this deluge that the patent examiners are leaving. It's probably something much more mundane like bad management or lack of upward mobility in the position that is the root cause of the fleeing.
Remember, this is the government we are talking about. They are under no pressure to approve patents in a timely manner. The applicants will wait for as long as it takes to get their patents.
The EFF is right, of course, in that the patent system needs to be overhauled so that the system can't be used as a weapon anymore. Unfortunately, they seem to make a non-existent connection between that valid point and the other vaporous point that tons of applications is leading to mass quitting at the USPTO. I think they damage their reputation when they try to argue in such a flawed manner.
We need to vote into office people who understand the issues, not those that are in the back pocket of the corporations.
I suppose that if there is no God when I die and that my belief in Him was for naught, that I can at least take satisfaction in how I lived my life trying to do my best to be patient and kind to other people and generally doing my best to live rightly.
What I mean is, is there some valuable component or application of Firefox that can be used by product or service companies beyond the basic browser application? IE, for example, is a modular browser component that can be reused in private applications. Linux is useful in a broad range of products/services that aren't simply desktop and server operating systems.
Is Firefox modular enough to break out valuable, reusable parts and implement something new out of them?
I use Firefox on most of my computers, so I'm responsible for about 5 of those 75 million downloads. 30, if they are counting each patch too.
It seems my personal observations do not jibe with the actual numbers in regards to the NintendoDS and PSP. I see PSPs all around (not in the creepy 6th Sense way, just they seem to be pretty popular), but I hardly ever see the DS. I looked up the latest sales numbers for this past week and it looks like the DS is outpacing the PSP by about 60% in Japan.
http://www.m-create.com/eng/e_ranking.html
The gadget seems to have been a multi-purpose device that played games in addition to being a standard PDA.
I wonder, in this day and age, whether such combination devices are really that useful/usable. There is a very strong drive to integrate all sorts of technologies together into super-portable-do-it-all devices (like "smart" phones). However, is there really a market for an All-in-one device like the Zodiac?
What I see is a PDA with a gaming API grafted on, not a solid gaming device. The device itself looks like a gaming device (sans nice styling), but that pretty much precludes it from being a portable/usable PDA due to the larger size.
I think we can chalk this one up as another failure in the handheld gaming device category, joining GB3D, Lynx, TG-portable, and the latest NintendoDS.
But inquiring minds want to know, will the existing stock be made available at reduce prices?
In the case of a spy or defector, governments will go to such lengths as to arrest and execute national traitors who may have given up sensitive information to the enemy. So important is that information.
;-)
Companies just do this on a smaller scale. They state up front in the employment contract that you cannot work on related projects for X number of years after the termination of employment. This really isn't anything new, I don't think.
The primary reason for this "sudden" growth industry of suing former employees is that employees these days actually carry sensitive information in their heads. In the days of industrial might, the product was a tangible thing which could be taken apart and analyzed by rival companies. Now with software, these things are pretty much black boxes. The only way to know what's happening on the inside is to get that information from someone who has inside information.
So we come to this point where people can't be employed doing things that they've done before.
I try to keep my head clean of any and all information, thus ensuring my continued employability.
There is a scene in Terminator where the rise of the machines is discussed and how the robots were unable at first to infiltrate the human ranks. The reason was primarily that the rubber skin didn't look sufficiently human to fool real humans.
On the other hand, the animators of Toy Story 2 recognized the problem of human replication as the innate ability of humans to recognize when something is amiss with images of humans that were "too perfect". The result is that they decided to give the human characters in the movie not-so-perfect skin, even down to details like acne and pock marks.
Take the Final Fantasy movie as an example of utterly fake looking CG characters. Everything looks fine, as long as you try to think of the characters as cartoons. However, the instant you think that they are humans, the whole illusion falls apart under its own perfection.
This robot may look human, but any human should be able to recognize it as something "other". As for human movement, the ASIMO is very far along in mimicking human movement.
Nice of me to state the obvious there in the subject line. :-)
The article requires some non-negligble amount of registration, so I will simply forego all that and give my impressions of my experience with distributed development.
DON'T DO IT!!
I believe that was Sam Kinison's advice on a host of things.
The biggest problem with distributed development is lack of coordination between members. Especially on public Open Source projects where members may not show up on time or even at all, and there really isn't any way to force them to do so.
This means that the biggest challenge in running a successful project is to staff it with sufficiently trustworthy engineers who see the success of the project as a common goal. This isn't unlike typical closed source project management except that you can't really fire anyone.
I've found that once you've got a critical mass of dependable engineers working on the project, that much of the development takes care of itself. Active mailing lists are mandatory, as are clear objectives. But if you don't have people you can trust submitting code, then you're basically doing it all by yourself.
Even when raining, the outdoor light feels much more comfortable and natural than indoor incandescent lightbulbs. I imagine the idea has been around since Gog the Hut Thatcher fell through one of his creations and the hut owners just left the hole in the roof.
Nowadays, they've got a nice system where the light is guided through a reflective tube that can be directed to any room in the house.
http://www.solatube.com/
It was only natural that the techonology would progress to where we are splitting the sunshine into fiber optics and redirecting them all over the house. However, 2007 is a pretty long way off for what seems to be a relatively simple application of existing technologies.
I believe that the UW study was on the affects of cellular radiation on mice, and the results were equally disturbing. The exposed mice were invariably stricken with cancer while the unexposed mice remained at the norm.
But that study also showed that such effects were only engendered when the amount of radiation was both high and prolonged. The bovine lenses in this article were exposed to cellular radiation for 22 hours a day. If the exposure intensity is to be believed, then the transmitting antennas were placed right against the eyeball.
Neither of those situations is remotely near what normal cellular phone usage patterns resemble (unless you are a teenage girl, I suppose, but even then you aren't sticking the phone in your eye) (are you?).
So more study is necessary. The edge cases like the ones in the article and the UW study are very important to know, but the results of real-world testing ought to be examined as well. If we see a huge increase in the number of cancer and scratched lens cases in the coming years, there may be some validity to these studies.
I'll continue using my cellular phone, though. The convenience is just too great to pass up.
It's simply amazing the amount of progress two dedicated youths can make in such a short time.
One thing I used to have a lot of time to think about was how much time I was wasting, having forced myself into a very uncomfortable place. It's quite heartening to see these kids doing great work, even if it is just for themselves as a hobby (even moreso, in my opinion).
I'm not sure that the thing is useful, but it's definitely a cool hack.
Is anyone offering them a job yet?
Levanta is right in that the most crucial aspect of running a Linux network is having the manpower available to handle all the issues that arise. They solve this by introducing their hardware/software combination that makes such administration easier and more automated than before.
But you'd never know it by skimming their site. Like many tech wizards, they get bogged down with technical details and fail to clearly present their product in a coherent manner.
For all the slick web designing that went into their site, someone could have had the decency to tell them to "dumb it down" for the CIOs out there who haven't got the time to dig into their literature.
After reading the site, I'm still not clear on what the name of the administrative tool is, nor the limitations as to the number of nodes I can attach to the admin machine.
There are some very keen concepts that seem to mimic the concept of a system emulator, where the administrator can deploy experimentally and see the results of those deployments without causing system-wide disaster.
I just wish it were better presented.
There are some times I wish I had spent a little more time studying electronics than doing other things, and this is definitely one of those times. The most impressive part of the project is the variable resistor that allows him to control turntable speed manually. Unfortunately for me, I haven't got the knowledge, much less the gumption, to figure something like that out on my own.
I don't suppose he tested the torque of the motor to see how quickly he could get the record to playing speed. That's one of the key features that I understand to be important to audiophiles. And for the DJs, I imagine they are interested in what sort of clutch (?) mechanism there is that could help the motor recover from an accidental reversing of direction.
Seriously, I need to go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a book on basic electronics. It's one of those itches that I just haven't had the resources to scratch.