I think the problem is availability of power. When you are talking about facilities that consume so much power that, when built, their proximity to a power station is taken into account, you can't just slap one down at the poles and call it good. I would imagine that lack of bandwidth is a MAJOR issue as well........one field where I think storing servers at the poles would be amazing is super computing. Supercomputers don't require the massive ammounts of bandwidth that webservers etc do. You send a cluster a chunk of data for processing, it processes it, and it gets sent back. For really REALLY large datasets (government stuff)...just fill a jet with hard-disks and have it to the server center in a few hours.
At the end he makes a very good point. Your arms get tired after a while. As cool as the interface in minority report might be....it isn't very practical. Keyboard and mouse interfaces have lasted for so long because they are VERY VERY good....a mouse is a perfect way of interacting with your monitor...you're using a 2d surface to interface with another 2d surface (not to mention the fact that you can let go of a mouse, and it stays in the same place....unlike a wacom tablet, or this thing). If we ever get to a point where monitors truly are 3d (which seems rather pointless to me, albeit cool)...then something like this MIGHT make sense....that is if you tracked it in all 3 dimensions.
YOu're right, the jump between DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is HUGE, but it isn't the same as the jump between VHS and DVD.
While the difference in pixels per square inch might be higher, the actually perceivable "quality difference" isn't the same. Look at it like this: The jump between 32kbps Mp3 and 128kbps Mp3 isn't as big as the jump between 128, and 320 the difference is much more noticeable. This is why we don't see a huge demand for anything much higher than 192 in Mp3s...most people just don't care because its reached a point of being acceptable.
Until the price point for 1080p disks drops to something acceptable, the current standard (which is DVD) will continue to be.....the standard.
These things are still far to expensive. The jump between VHS quality and DVD quality was HUGE!! Not only did you start getting things like director's commentary and deleted scenes, but you got a much more "cinema like" experience. 5.1 dolby (in multiple languages if you need it), 16x9 Aspect ratio etc. etc. etc.
Blu-ray/hddvd don't offer THAT huge of a jump from DVD....certainly not enough of an improvement to justify their [still] astronomical prices, not to mention the limited selection of titles.
The first one to come out with a 30 dollar player will win the war.
hopefully students these days start learning their lesson:
Instead of performing obvious cries for attention like hacking into your schools DB and changing your grades, just start working for the Russian Mob botting computers and sending spam.
Have you ever actually tried to get a technical person on the phone by calling the company number that is listed on their website?
Girls Voice: "Thank you for calling [$company]:
start: para espanol markke' dose (----bad spelling)." Pause, Pause, Pause, Pause, Pause 1. If this is a tech support question 2. If you would like to speak with a sales person 3. If you would like to speak to customer service 4. To repeat this menut
------0-------
"0 is not a recognized option" goto start
There is a reason that companies dont' post real phone numbers on their websites...... BECAUSE THEY ARE A LOT EASIER TO CRAWL THAN A WHOIS!
Also, trying to navigate around a website filled with flash and god knows what else in elinks is a pain in the ass.
I say IE and Mozilla battle it out, release the product, and may the best man win. Unfortunately, if that happens, the best man won't win. Firefox doesn't have NEARLY the market penetration required to actually stand toe to toe agains IE in something like this. Thats why there are "standards" out there that nobody complies with; because IE doesn't.
There needs to be a third pary arbitrator here. And hopefully that arbitrator tells them all to just STFU up and use python:).
Whois is (can be) a great resource for tracking down the admin of a network (which is what it was INTENDED for). When i see a machine trying to guess default password to my FTP and its obviously a bot, whois makes it really easy to determine if it is some kid sitting on a cable modem, or if its a real domain. It its a real life domain, then it makes things much easier, there is a phone number i can call and complain to (UN-BOT YOUR FREAKING MACHINES!).
Also, when i look through apache2/access_log I can see who is looking at my cartoons:)....lots and lots of addresses that end in.asu.edu means that somebody broke the first rule of fightclub.
Basically my point is, if your hosting some website to show the world pictures of your cat, then use a private WHOIS registration service, if you're an actual company, with a big honkin' domain, then people grabbing information from whois probably isn't MUCH of a concern to you.
This just sounds like a bunch of people with a solution who are looking for a problem to me.
Well, i would imagine that the target of technology like this is people who are actually security conscious. If you have set up your system correctly, then the only people who should have access to anything of worth are people who actually need it, and understand how much of a problem it would be if anybody got their password. There is absolutely NO REASON the receptionist needs access to, well, much of anything really; a regular old plain-text password would be just fine for her.
The people who are there at 2:00am working in the database, and who have complete, unfettered access to EVERYTHING are the ones who would need id mechanisms like smart cards and weird, off-the-wall stuff like this. Those are the people who's job depends on the security of the database, they are going to choose something other than a smiley....
And if they don't I'll be glad to teach them a lesson about passwords;-)
I don't know of a single audiophile out there who uses any digital component in their system. Its all turntables and tubes. Even if you do have a CD player in the system, all of the audio processing is done in the unit. Its passing an analog signal to your amplifier.
Trust me - on my multi-thousand $ system (Aragon, B&K, MSB, etc...) I could detect no audible difference between the most expensive cables I could borrow ($1000 MIT), and the $15 set that I soldered myself. There is your problem. Yes, B&K is really nice stuff.....(its what i have in my theater), but you are nowhere NEAR the realm of a true reference system yet.
This is starting to become a new cliche' on slashdot, making fun of people who spend a lot of money on audio gear. Well guess what guys, if they have the money for them, and it sounds better to them (because of placebo effect or whatever it is) then WHO CARES! The only reason you have to make fun of these people is your inability to drop a half million dollars on speakers, 80 grand on cables, etc.
People who's job it is to know good sound (mastering engineers) are the people out there proclaiming that these 80k cables, and whatnot are worth it, just pick up a copy of audiophile or hi-fi and read it.
Obligatory car analogy: I can go out and buy a shifter cart that will outperform a $250,000 ferrari by leaps and bounds for about a 10th the cost. SO why do people buy ferraris? why do I want a ferrari? BECAUSE THEY'RE freaking COOL! The people out buying these things work really hard for their money (yes, being locked inside of an office for 12 hours a day , 7 days a week IS hard work), but they work really hard so that they can have the luxury of spending it on dumb crap! If these cables and speakers and pre-amps, and turntables are all so ridiculous then why don't all of you who are suddenly "experts" on the subject start manufacturing them?
If you're in college and want something huge to play halo on the, yes, hacking together an old overhead-projector and an LCD will work GREAT! No, that isn't sarcasm, I've played on home built-projectors, and they're really fun.
But, if you're building a "reference" home-theater, you're probably going to want to lean a little more towards one of These....
prepare to open your checkbook though, these things cost around $50,000+ dollars.
There are a LOT of expensive and probably useless room treatments. For me, the ultimate sound didn't come from watts or speaker power-handling but in properly sound-proofing the room against external noise. The lower the noise floor, the clearer the sound. This is key to having a good movie experience, I'd say, because you don't need it loud to be dynamic. yes, yes, yes, yes, yeS!!
Sound-proofing a room is, IMHO, the MOST important thing that you can do for a home theater (or stereo room, if you're an audiophile). Not ONLY because it makes the experience better for you while you're watching the movie, but because it gives you the ability to listen at whatever sound level you want, whenever you want, without worrying about waking the kids.
We bought a house with a theater that the previous owner put some serious work into. One major area of focus was the soundproofing of the room. This has been invaluable. When everyone is asleep and I'm in the middle of an all-nigh code-session and want a break, I can thrown in a movie and actually LISTEN to it without having to worry about waking the 2 year old.
Exactly what I thought of. I've run cubase SX (think pro-tools if you don't know what cubase is) with 4 tracks coming in off the firepod (a firewire music interface for PCs) with almost 0% latency on a 660 mhz intel celeron! I've got a 500mhz p3 thats functioning as a VPN server, a squid proxy, a webserver with PHP and MYSQL, and an FTP...all of this for about 50 users, and the thing has 64mb of ram! Paid 20 bucks for it! (go go ASU surplus ranger!)
That said, at a $200 pricepoint, and what they say is a small form factor, this box could possibly become a replacement for some of my soekris boxen. 1.5 GHZ cpu and 512mb of RAM! This could, quite possibly, be the most powerful computer i've ever owned if i buy one!
HOLY SHIT, $200 MYTHBOX!!!!!!!!! At this price/horsepower ratio...the possibilities are pretty endless. Good form wal-mart (except the big case...BOO!)
Getting open source developers to even *care* about social networking would be a small miracle. Getting them to actually start developing code for one a step above that, and getting them to all agree on the same protocol/interface simply impossible. Don't speak for all of us. Personally i think that social networking sites are kindof neat. I use facebook all time. Its a great little time waster for when I'm dizzy from staring at consoles full of perl code all day:). On top of that, it lets me keep in light contact with my friends that are still in school. I really think this is a generation thing. While previous generations had telephones and "little black books" we have myspace and buddy-lists. Things like facebook, or myspace aren't really that new, IMHO they're sortof an evolution of the old party lines.
That said, lumping all devs out there in with those who think that facebook/myspace are reserved for 14 year old girls is ridiculous.
Just buy the warranty for it. Honestly, I was just on the phone with HP about it last night, the warranty for my laptop is about 200 bucks....this covers EVERYTHING (including, the very very cute sounding persian girl from canada told me, dropping it into a tank of water while its still running).
I know that slashdot is home to some hard-core hardware nerds, and some very legit engineers, but Come on guys, how many of us can replace a video card that is soldered onto the motherboard.
This will be the 2nd time that i have had to use the warranty for my laptop (meaning i'm batting 2 for 2 right now).
If you're like me, and actually USE your laptop for its intended purpose (meaning having it thrown in the back of a car for countless trips for coffee) for god's sake
Slashdot Mirror
I think the problem is availability of power. When you are talking about facilities that consume so much power that, when built, their proximity to a power station is taken into account, you can't just slap one down at the poles and call it good. I would imagine that lack of bandwidth is a MAJOR issue as well..... ...one field where I think storing servers at the poles would be amazing is super computing. Supercomputers don't require the massive ammounts of bandwidth that webservers etc do. You send a cluster a chunk of data for processing, it processes it, and it gets sent back. For really REALLY large datasets (government stuff)...just fill a jet with hard-disks and have it to the server center in a few hours.
Does anybody else hear the song:
;-)
"Wake Me up...When september ends!"
and laugh uncontrollably? Maybe think that Green Day is a bunch of usenet users.
yeah, me neither
At the end he makes a very good point. Your arms get tired after a while. As cool as the interface in minority report might be....it isn't very practical. Keyboard and mouse interfaces have lasted for so long because they are VERY VERY good....a mouse is a perfect way of interacting with your monitor...you're using a 2d surface to interface with another 2d surface (not to mention the fact that you can let go of a mouse, and it stays in the same place....unlike a wacom tablet, or this thing). If we ever get to a point where monitors truly are 3d (which seems rather pointless to me, albeit cool)...then something like this MIGHT make sense....that is if you tracked it in all 3 dimensions.
I made a background out of your concept.....
figured it was only fair to share it with you.
Gone Phishing
YOu're right, the jump between DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is HUGE, but it isn't the same as the jump between VHS and DVD.
While the difference in pixels per square inch might be higher, the actually perceivable "quality difference" isn't the same.
Look at it like this:
The jump between 32kbps Mp3 and 128kbps Mp3 isn't as big as the jump between 128, and 320 the difference is much more noticeable. This is why we don't see a huge demand for anything much higher than 192 in Mp3s...most people just don't care because its reached a point of being acceptable.
Until the price point for 1080p disks drops to something acceptable, the current standard (which is DVD) will continue to be.....the standard.
These things are still far to expensive. The jump between VHS quality and DVD quality was HUGE!! Not only did you start getting things like director's commentary and deleted scenes, but you got a much more "cinema like" experience. 5.1 dolby (in multiple languages if you need it), 16x9 Aspect ratio etc. etc. etc.
Blu-ray/hddvd don't offer THAT huge of a jump from DVD....certainly not enough of an improvement to justify their [still] astronomical prices, not to mention the limited selection of titles.
The first one to come out with a 30 dollar player will win the war.
Don't we have a rule against linking directly to videos? The video is almost dead already, and as of now there aren't even any comments yet!
on another note.
I can has space race?
Whoever has the biggest vacuum tube on their ray gun.
hopefully students these days start learning their lesson:
Instead of performing obvious cries for attention like hacking into your schools DB and changing your grades, just start working for the Russian Mob botting computers and sending spam.
DUH!
When will kids learn?
Have you ever actually tried to get a technical person on the phone by calling the company number that is listed on their website?
Girls Voice: "Thank you for calling [$company]:
start:
para espanol markke' dose (----bad spelling)."
Pause, Pause, Pause, Pause, Pause
1. If this is a tech support question
2. If you would like to speak with a sales person
3. If you would like to speak to customer service
4. To repeat this menut
------0-------
"0 is not a recognized option"
goto start
There is a reason that companies dont' post real phone numbers on their websites......
BECAUSE THEY ARE A LOT EASIER TO CRAWL THAN A WHOIS!
Also, trying to navigate around a website filled with flash and god knows what else in elinks is a pain in the ass.
There needs to be a third pary arbitrator here.
And hopefully that arbitrator tells them all to just STFU up and use python
Whois is (can be) a great resource for tracking down the admin of a network (which is what it was INTENDED for). When i see a machine trying to guess default password to my FTP and its obviously a bot, whois makes it really easy to determine if it is some kid sitting on a cable modem, or if its a real domain. It its a real life domain, then it makes things much easier, there is a phone number i can call and complain to (UN-BOT YOUR FREAKING MACHINES!).
:)....lots and lots of addresses that end in .asu.edu means that somebody broke the first rule of fightclub.
Also, when i look through apache2/access_log I can see who is looking at my cartoons
Basically my point is, if your hosting some website to show the world pictures of your cat, then use a private WHOIS registration service, if you're an actual company, with a big honkin' domain, then people grabbing information from whois probably isn't MUCH of a concern to you.
This just sounds like a bunch of people with a solution who are looking for a problem to me.
Well, i would imagine that the target of technology like this is people who are actually security conscious. If you have set up your system correctly, then the only people who should have access to anything of worth are people who actually need it, and understand how much of a problem it would be if anybody got their password. There is absolutely NO REASON the receptionist needs access to, well, much of anything really; a regular old plain-text password would be just fine for her.
;-)
The people who are there at 2:00am working in the database, and who have complete, unfettered access to EVERYTHING are the ones who would need id mechanisms like smart cards and weird, off-the-wall stuff like this.
Those are the people who's job depends on the security of the database, they are going to choose something other than a smiley....
And if they don't I'll be glad to teach them a lesson about passwords
But does it run skullbocks?
I don't know of a single audiophile out there who uses any digital component in their system. Its all turntables and tubes. Even if you do have a CD player in the system, all of the audio processing is done in the unit. Its passing an analog signal to your amplifier.
Yes, B&K is really nice stuff.....(its what i have in my theater), but you are nowhere NEAR the realm of a true reference system yet.
This is starting to become a new cliche' on slashdot, making fun of people who spend a lot of money on audio gear. Well guess what guys, if they have the money for them, and it sounds better to them (because of placebo effect or whatever it is) then WHO CARES! The only reason you have to make fun of these people is your inability to drop a half million dollars on speakers, 80 grand on cables, etc.
People who's job it is to know good sound (mastering engineers) are the people out there proclaiming that these 80k cables, and whatnot are worth it, just pick up a copy of audiophile or hi-fi and read it.
Obligatory car analogy:
I can go out and buy a shifter cart that will outperform a $250,000 ferrari by leaps and bounds for about a 10th the cost. SO why do people buy ferraris? why do I want a ferrari? BECAUSE THEY'RE freaking COOL! The people out buying these things work really hard for their money (yes, being locked inside of an office for 12 hours a day , 7 days a week IS hard work), but they work really hard so that they can have the luxury of spending it on dumb crap! If these cables and speakers and pre-amps, and turntables are all so ridiculous then why don't all of you who are suddenly "experts" on the subject start manufacturing them?
If you're in college and want something huge to play halo on the, yes, hacking together an old overhead-projector and an LCD will work GREAT! No, that isn't sarcasm, I've played on home built-projectors, and they're really fun.
But, if you're building a "reference" home-theater, you're probably going to want to lean a little more towards one of These....
prepare to open your checkbook though, these things cost around $50,000+ dollars.
Sound-proofing a room is, IMHO, the MOST important thing that you can do for a home theater (or stereo room, if you're an audiophile). Not ONLY because it makes the experience better for you while you're watching the movie, but because it gives you the ability to listen at whatever sound level you want, whenever you want, without worrying about waking the kids.
We bought a house with a theater that the previous owner put some serious work into. One major area of focus was the soundproofing of the room. This has been invaluable. When everyone is asleep and I'm in the middle of an all-nigh code-session and want a break, I can thrown in a movie and actually LISTEN to it without having to worry about waking the 2 year old.
Exactly what I thought of. I've run cubase SX (think pro-tools if you don't know what cubase is) with 4 tracks coming in off the firepod (a firewire music interface for PCs) with almost 0% latency on a 660 mhz intel celeron! I've got a 500mhz p3 thats functioning as a VPN server, a squid proxy, a webserver with PHP and MYSQL, and an FTP...all of this for about 50 users, and the thing has 64mb of ram! Paid 20 bucks for it! (go go ASU surplus ranger!)
That said, at a $200 pricepoint, and what they say is a small form factor, this box could possibly become a replacement for some of my soekris boxen. 1.5 GHZ cpu and 512mb of RAM! This could, quite possibly, be the most powerful computer i've ever owned if i buy one!
HOLY SHIT, $200 MYTHBOX!!!!!!!!!
At this price/horsepower ratio...the possibilities are pretty endless.
Good form wal-mart (except the big case...BOO!)
I really think this is a generation thing. While previous generations had telephones and "little black books" we have myspace and buddy-lists. Things like facebook, or myspace aren't really that new, IMHO they're sortof an evolution of the old party lines.
That said, lumping all devs out there in with those who think that facebook/myspace are reserved for 14 year old girls is ridiculous.
Which is exactly why I plan on DBANing the disk before I send it in. :)
"I don't know why there isn't anything on the disk....maybe it got a virus!"
Just buy the warranty for it.
Honestly, I was just on the phone with HP about it last night, the warranty for my laptop is about 200 bucks....this covers EVERYTHING (including, the very very cute sounding persian girl from canada told me, dropping it into a tank of water while its still running).
I know that slashdot is home to some hard-core hardware nerds, and some very legit engineers, but Come on guys, how many of us can replace a video card that is soldered onto the motherboard.
This will be the 2nd time that i have had to use the warranty for my laptop (meaning i'm batting 2 for 2 right now).
If you're like me, and actually USE your laptop for its intended purpose (meaning having it thrown in the back of a car for countless trips for coffee) for god's sake
BUY THE STINKING WARRANTY FOR IT!
NO, i think he GOT GP's post and is illustrating that its wrong.
Yeah, you could do that....
or you could use a mechanical device that sits inside of the groove, and transmits an electromagnetic signal to a pre-amp.
Yeah, good thing those helicopters never got "man-rated"...that would be a disaster!
"man-rated"...i think I'm going to start using that in totally in-applicable situations:
Guy: "Holy shit Ryan, this server weighs like 300 lbs!"
Me: "Yeah, dude this thing is fucking MAN-RATED!"