Apart from making the man "wearing" it look like a douchebag (what is this, an airplane Halloween costume?), it has the extra benefit putting your head right on front, so you can enjoy the potential impact at its full force.
There's a reason why the more serious engineers of personal flying vehicles claim it's not possible to make it safe without making it fully automatic (computerized).
It's not in the capability of an average man to pilot his own personal plane, be it just pair of wings on his back, unless a computer does 99.9% of the job. And if it does it, then it better be coordinated centrally with all other flying personal jets in the area. Automatically again.
If they ever release this thing with jet engines, they'll probably make you sign tons of legalese that they're not responsible if you die within one minute of flight, not to mention you'll not be allowed to fly above, or near, urban areas.
Why have we gone backwards in this area when compared to a mainframe system of fourty years ago?
For the same reason why experienced car drivers crash in ridiculous situations: they are too sure of themselves.
The industry is so huge, that the separate areas of our computers just accept the rest is a magic box that should magically operate as is written in the spec. Screwups don't happen too often, and when they happen they are not detectable, hence no one woke up to it.
That said don't feel bad, we're not going downwards. It just so happened speed and flashy graphics will play important role for another couple of years. Then after we max this out, the industry will seek to improve another parameter of their products, and sooner or later we'll hit back the data integrity issue:D
Look at hard disks: does the casual consumer need more than 500 GB? So now we see the advent of faster hybrid (flash+disk) storage devices, or pure flash memory devices.
So we've tackled storage size, we're about to tackle storage speed. And when it's fast enough, what's next, encryption and additional integrity checks. Something for the bullet list of features...
Apart from the shitty "translation", it'll be ok if you give the guy a little credit.
Yes I agree if he didn't do it, someone else would. But Microsoft pioneered the software licensing as a business, and THEY were the ones who did it. Give some credit to the ones who did it. It was not easy, and it was not obvious at the time (except to Gates and his company).
I'd argue if Apple was in their place, the same would happen, but might've taken at least twice the time. Steve Jobs is too much of a control freak to have left this develop on its own terms.
The fact that IBM lost control over the PC specs also helped immensely the industry grow and develop fast. The funnier evidence of this is how Apple used to have its own computer architecture, and slowly transitioned to PC, down to the very CPU.
I think this article should have been filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" as the notion that Microsoft 'laid the foundation' for anything is humorous.
Right, right... I really hope you're just too young and time will fix you.
What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television.
Now, now. Don't be so quick. I agree we're in the early stages of transition, and in the next years we'll see lots of channels broadcast on the internet, but don't kill classic TV just yet.
You know they killed radio and cinema when TV was introduced, and killed cinema yet again with VHS. Then with DVD again (but ok.. VHS died:) ).
There are currently a billion or more folks world wide at 30+ who prefer the passive experience of cable/air TV (I'm not saying it's a bad thing either), and the market will continue to deliver to this market, if even for the sheer amount of investment in broadcast equipment they already have.
For the longest time I see content being broadcast on both classical TV and on demand. While in the next 5 years I expect the Internet on-demand/live streaming business will boom, I expect it won't be before 20-30 years that we see classic broadcast TV become a niche and disappear, if ever.
In other words, no existing institution would accept the good doctor, so he made his own, and issued a press release written in false third person.
On the other hand even the current institutions started as someone creating them at some point. And quite a lot of scientists were ridiculed by the establishment at a time they made a revolutionary discovery.
What worries me more is his unsubstantiated "if we just scale it up" argument. That doesn't stand basic math/logic/physics.
Well, they were just showing Heroes over the summer in Poland. I'm not sure if it was a hit or not, but its hard for such shows to be successful when they're voiced-over... I really wish Poland would move to subtitles, but then again, it could have something to do with the literacy rate -- and quality dubbing is expensive.
It's more about wrong perception. You see, in USA people are really receiving subtitled movies poorly. I've heard of plenty of silly stories where they'd by a non-US title (such as Pan's Labyrinth - outstanding movie) and returning it, whining "but it's subtitled, I didn't know that!".
So the studios demand that titles are dubbed in other countries, hoping for a better profit. Likewise for the translated game titles.
And just like you, I think they just wreck it and make it unwatchable/unplayable. Their target audience knows English quite well, but they can't figure it out we prefer subtitles versus totally ruining the sound of the movie.
Only recently have content-producing companies, and TV channels started to offer their video content on-line (sometimes for free).
Only weeks ago was Flash with MPEG4+AAC beta announced. And only days ago was Silverlight 1.0 with WMV support announced.
I expect in the next 5 years we'll see a huge surge in online video as video content producers scramble to take a foot in this brand new market.
And I actually expect online video will outdo bittorrent traffic, since a large part of bittorent traffic now is actually various TV series and movies, things that will be legally available for streaming in the near future.
The big question mark is: what do ISP-s do about it. They can filter and slow down bittorrent traffic since the popular opinion is it consists mostly of illegal content (and it's mostly, though not entirely correct). They'll have a quite unique problem doing so with streaming media (and you can wrap streaming in HTTP traffic on port 80 too) when official distributors start streaming DVD or HD quality content as the rule, rather than the exception.
I wonder why we don't just scale up a bridge right to Mars and drive to there with a drag racer car. If the latter is too slow, I suppose no problem, we can scale it up as necessary.
Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week.
Right, just like a scaled up ant could carry a house. In movies.
But as any junior engineer knows, you can't just scale things up linearly and expect linearly scaled integrity and results.
In other words, there are solar powered toy cars out there. But math and physics prevent us from simply "scaling" this up to drive actual cars with linearly scaled up speeds.
That's trivial... all that has to happen is a fundamental change of the gravitational constant. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out just how that happens.
We bomb the Moon so the falling pieces increase the mass of Earth and hence increasing the gravity pull?
We can't use water as a reference since the molecules in the water are constantly splitting into ions and reforming as molecules. So it is essentially impossible to get 1000 cm^3 of "pure" water.
One would think it'll still be a better reference than a chunk of rusty metal kept under lock.
The silicon sphere can be worked on in the mean time.
Not to mention you need a container to keep it in...
Right, let me think.. if your scales show weight X on empty container (never mind what it is) and it shows 1kg+X after you put in 100cm^3, then I guess your scales measures properly.
I believe it is moral. It might not agree with your morals but it does with mine. I download a lot of media (mostly TV & anime) and I also buy a lot of DVDs. I refuse to pay the excessive costs that these companies try to charge. I just download until the price is more reasonable.
eg.. Full Metal Alchemist 51 episodes & a movie.. just over 18 hours of media for $419. I'll buy it when its $40.
You realize you could not buy if it's expensive, and not download at the same time? Or is music/movies like drugs to you.
The penalties are not fair and way excessive. The Mpaa has records of all P2p filesharing transactions throught 3rd parties who monitor. Penalties should be spread around to everyone and no a few. $10-20 fine would be good.
You're making me laugh. The fines were originally created to penalize organized crime groups creating bootleg video/audio casettes bring them enormous profits from the copying of a single product.
Fining them $10-$20 for distributing 30 thousand copies of Die Hard 4 would be hysterical.
The law needs to be refined. Exempts must be made, the copyright offense should be considered in the context given.
But even in the case about some kido downloading illegal MP3, $10-$20 is a joke. This is not product cost he's paying, it's a penalty. If you don't buy a ticket when you drive the train, if you're caught they don't just charge you few dollars more than the ticket price. They penalize you for working around the system and not paying in the first place.
I would consider $200-$300 per copyrighted material to be closer to how I see it. And with a ceiling if the offense is subject to one of the exempts (so having too much content at once doesn't make you a slave to RIAA until you die).
Face it: downloading music/movies is in fact not moral or just. It's just a side effect of the industry being too stupid and slow to react to the Internet and adapt its business models to it.
Still, it's not moral or just. We just shouldn't let the industry sue people with loose evidence and enslave them for *maybe* copying some movies on their computers.
they think nothing of suing mothers and teenagers apparently just for the hell of it?
Some people are trying to justify their job. They're in major stress, and stupid. So they sue mothers and teenagers.
You know, it's the outcome of the system we exist in. Doesn't justify their nonsense, but I thought I'd put things in a little perspective for you.
The moment that worries me is that it took long, long time for the legal system to start (albeit slowly) reacting against those frivolous suits.
RIAA as a private organization can't be trusted to be just and reasonable in the pursuit of its goals. The legal system however was supposed to handle this properly.
You DO realize most clips they send notice to are totally the book example of why DMCA notice should be sent.
Mistakes happen on both sides. There's absolutely nothing to drag Viacom in the court about. Mistake happened, counterclaim files, clip restored. Viacom is happy, poster is happy.
Just zealots aren't happy, but they're never happy, right?
"Customers." They keep using that word. I do not think that word means what most of us think it means.
OEMs are the customer. The end user who purchases a PC from an OEM and finds himself dependent on Microsoft is not the customer, he is the product.
Oh, really. I really don't like when a Slashdotter pulls a one-bit logic on a painful issue.
How about a more realistic look: OEMs are the customer who buys the Windows licenses. And end-users are the customers of the hardware vendors who preinstall Windows on their machines to make them usable for the masses.
But wait, that doesn't sound shocking now, it sounds like the normal business it is.
If these are shows that are broadcast over the airwaves, don't you have the legal right to receive them? If you _download_ a show that you already have rights to watch as an OTA broadcast, how is it copyright infringement?
It doesn't need to be tested in court: bittorrent means you also broadcast as you download.
If you're in US. Otherwise, bittorents it is... It's funny that physical borders are off and we can travel wherever we want, but now we have to fight legal borders.
Its sales exceed that of the Xbox 360 despite Microsoft's console having a year-long head start.
I don't get it. This reads as "He runs faster, despite his competitor, Bob, has no legs."
Of course, if you released a year *earlier* your sales slow down as time goes, so it's not "despite", it's "partially because".
It'll be interesting to see how many units are sold total. If Wii leads here (versus sales/month), now I'll agree the "despite" mark.
I guess the saddest one in this situation is PS3. Released late, too expensive, no sales. But Sony knew this, and proceeded to kill PS3 anyway, so Blu Ray can live.
Everyone got what he wants, a big happy corporate family.
On the flip side, pressing exactly two HD-DVDs with random data, and distributing these to your bankings sites for the most sensitive information is getting more and more cost effective.
Yup, with this fast Internet, they just rip it, and mail it to their server center..
Slashdot Mirror
Upon further inspection (understand: I RTFA), this has got to be a joke.
This is the supposed design of the Gryphon.
Apart from making the man "wearing" it look like a douchebag (what is this, an airplane Halloween costume?), it has the extra benefit putting your head right on front, so you can enjoy the potential impact at its full force.
This better be some hell of a helmet he has.
There's a reason why the more serious engineers of personal flying vehicles claim it's not possible to make it safe without making it fully automatic (computerized).
It's not in the capability of an average man to pilot his own personal plane, be it just pair of wings on his back, unless a computer does 99.9% of the job. And if it does it, then it better be coordinated centrally with all other flying personal jets in the area. Automatically again.
If they ever release this thing with jet engines, they'll probably make you sign tons of legalese that they're not responsible if you die within one minute of flight, not to mention you'll not be allowed to fly above, or near, urban areas.
Why have we gone backwards in this area when compared to a mainframe system of fourty years ago?
:D
For the same reason why experienced car drivers crash in ridiculous situations: they are too sure of themselves.
The industry is so huge, that the separate areas of our computers just accept the rest is a magic box that should magically operate as is written in the spec. Screwups don't happen too often, and when they happen they are not detectable, hence no one woke up to it.
That said don't feel bad, we're not going downwards. It just so happened speed and flashy graphics will play important role for another couple of years. Then after we max this out, the industry will seek to improve another parameter of their products, and sooner or later we'll hit back the data integrity issue
Look at hard disks: does the casual consumer need more than 500 GB? So now we see the advent of faster hybrid (flash+disk) storage devices, or pure flash memory devices.
So we've tackled storage size, we're about to tackle storage speed. And when it's fast enough, what's next, encryption and additional integrity checks. Something for the bullet list of features...
It's the suv4x4 way.
...
Am I surprised someone with a nickname of suv4x4 is narrow minded and pigeonholing the original poster? Not really
I've a simple litmus test I use. When someone replies attacking my position by making fun of my nickname, then he's out of anything sensible to say.
It works every time. In fact, I should pick even sillier nickname so I detect bullshit earlier.
They said they won't do email, chat, financial information, spreadsheets or horoscopes (making fun of Yahoo and Microsoft).
And short of horoscopes, they now do all of this.
Apart from the shitty "translation", it'll be ok if you give the guy a little credit.
... I really hope you're just too young and time will fix you.
Yes I agree if he didn't do it, someone else would. But Microsoft pioneered the software licensing as a business, and THEY were the ones who did it. Give some credit to the ones who did it. It was not easy, and it was not obvious at the time (except to Gates and his company).
I'd argue if Apple was in their place, the same would happen, but might've taken at least twice the time. Steve Jobs is too much of a control freak to have left this develop on its own terms.
The fact that IBM lost control over the PC specs also helped immensely the industry grow and develop fast. The funnier evidence of this is how Apple used to have its own computer architecture, and slowly transitioned to PC, down to the very CPU.
I think this article should have been filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" as the notion that Microsoft 'laid the foundation' for anything is humorous.
Right, right
What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television.
:) ).
Now, now. Don't be so quick. I agree we're in the early stages of transition, and in the next years we'll see lots of channels broadcast on the internet, but don't kill classic TV just yet.
You know they killed radio and cinema when TV was introduced, and killed cinema yet again with VHS. Then with DVD again (but ok.. VHS died
There are currently a billion or more folks world wide at 30+ who prefer the passive experience of cable/air TV (I'm not saying it's a bad thing either), and the market will continue to deliver to this market, if even for the sheer amount of investment in broadcast equipment they already have.
For the longest time I see content being broadcast on both classical TV and on demand. While in the next 5 years I expect the Internet on-demand/live streaming business will boom, I expect it won't be before 20-30 years that we see classic broadcast TV become a niche and disappear, if ever.
In other words, no existing institution would accept the good doctor, so he made his own, and issued a press release written in false third person.
On the other hand even the current institutions started as someone creating them at some point.
And quite a lot of scientists were ridiculed by the establishment at a time they made a revolutionary discovery.
What worries me more is his unsubstantiated "if we just scale it up" argument. That doesn't stand basic math/logic/physics.
Well, they were just showing Heroes over the summer in Poland. I'm not sure if it was a hit or not, but its hard for such shows to be successful when they're voiced-over... I really wish Poland would move to subtitles, but then again, it could have something to do with the literacy rate -- and quality dubbing is expensive.
It's more about wrong perception. You see, in USA people are really receiving subtitled movies poorly. I've heard of plenty of silly stories where they'd by a non-US title (such as Pan's Labyrinth - outstanding movie) and returning it, whining "but it's subtitled, I didn't know that!".
So the studios demand that titles are dubbed in other countries, hoping for a better profit. Likewise for the translated game titles.
And just like you, I think they just wreck it and make it unwatchable/unplayable. Their target audience knows English quite well, but they can't figure it out we prefer subtitles versus totally ruining the sound of the movie.
Only recently have content-producing companies, and TV channels started to offer their video content on-line (sometimes for free).
Only weeks ago was Flash with MPEG4+AAC beta announced. And only days ago was Silverlight 1.0 with WMV support announced.
I expect in the next 5 years we'll see a huge surge in online video as video content producers scramble to take a foot in this brand new market.
And I actually expect online video will outdo bittorrent traffic, since a large part of bittorent traffic now is actually various TV series and movies, things that will be legally available for streaming in the near future.
The big question mark is: what do ISP-s do about it. They can filter and slow down bittorrent traffic since the popular opinion is it consists mostly of illegal content (and it's mostly, though not entirely correct). They'll have a quite unique problem doing so with streaming media (and you can wrap streaming in HTTP traffic on port 80 too) when official distributors start streaming DVD or HD quality content as the rule, rather than the exception.
I wonder why we don't just scale up a bridge right to Mars and drive to there with a drag racer car. If the latter is too slow, I suppose no problem, we can scale it up as necessary.
I don't want to be skeptical, but...:
Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week.
Right, just like a scaled up ant could carry a house. In movies.
But as any junior engineer knows, you can't just scale things up linearly and expect linearly scaled integrity and results.
In other words, there are solar powered toy cars out there. But math and physics prevent us from simply "scaling" this up to drive actual cars with linearly scaled up speeds.
That's trivial... all that has to happen is a fundamental change of the gravitational constant. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out just how that happens.
We bomb the Moon so the falling pieces increase the mass of Earth and hence increasing the gravity pull?
Sci-Fi's business model and Microsoft's have nothing in common.
Microsoft doesn't hand out free copies of Windows with embedded ads in them. But I enjoy your circular logical nonsense nonetheless. Enjoy.
We can't use water as a reference since the molecules in the water are constantly splitting into ions and reforming as molecules. So it is essentially impossible to get 1000 cm^3 of "pure" water.
One would think it'll still be a better reference than a chunk of rusty metal kept under lock.
The silicon sphere can be worked on in the mean time.
Not to mention you need a container to keep it in...
Right, let me think.. if your scales show weight X on empty container (never mind what it is) and it shows 1kg+X after you put in 100cm^3, then I guess your scales measures properly.
I believe it is moral. It might not agree with your morals but it does with mine. I download a lot of media (mostly TV & anime) and I also buy a lot of DVDs. I refuse to pay the excessive costs that these companies try to charge. I just download until the price is more reasonable.
eg.. Full Metal Alchemist 51 episodes & a movie.. just over 18 hours of media for $419. I'll buy it when its $40.
You realize you could not buy if it's expensive, and not download at the same time? Or is music/movies like drugs to you.
The penalties are not fair and way excessive. The Mpaa has records of all P2p filesharing transactions throught 3rd parties who monitor. Penalties should be spread around to everyone and no a few. $10-20 fine would be good.
You're making me laugh. The fines were originally created to penalize organized crime groups creating bootleg video/audio casettes bring them enormous profits from the copying of a single product.
Fining them $10-$20 for distributing 30 thousand copies of Die Hard 4 would be hysterical.
The law needs to be refined. Exempts must be made, the copyright offense should be considered in the context given.
But even in the case about some kido downloading illegal MP3, $10-$20 is a joke. This is not product cost he's paying, it's a penalty. If you don't buy a ticket when you drive the train, if you're caught they don't just charge you few dollars more than the ticket price. They penalize you for working around the system and not paying in the first place.
I would consider $200-$300 per copyrighted material to be closer to how I see it. And with a ceiling if the offense is subject to one of the exempts (so having too much content at once doesn't make you a slave to RIAA until you die).
Face it: downloading music/movies is in fact not moral or just. It's just a side effect of the industry being too stupid and slow to react to the Internet and adapt its business models to it.
Still, it's not moral or just. We just shouldn't let the industry sue people with loose evidence and enslave them for *maybe* copying some movies on their computers.
The evidence must be goddamn solid.
they think nothing of suing mothers and teenagers apparently just for the hell of it?
Some people are trying to justify their job. They're in major stress, and stupid. So they sue mothers and teenagers.
You know, it's the outcome of the system we exist in. Doesn't justify their nonsense, but I thought I'd put things in a little perspective for you.
The moment that worries me is that it took long, long time for the legal system to start (albeit slowly) reacting against those frivolous suits.
RIAA as a private organization can't be trusted to be just and reasonable in the pursuit of its goals. The legal system however was supposed to handle this properly.
Instead, money speaks, as always.
You DO realize most clips they send notice to are totally the book example of why DMCA notice should be sent.
Mistakes happen on both sides. There's absolutely nothing to drag Viacom in the court about. Mistake happened, counterclaim files, clip restored. Viacom is happy, poster is happy.
Just zealots aren't happy, but they're never happy, right?
"Customers." They keep using that word. I do not think that word means what most of us think it means.
OEMs are the customer. The end user who purchases a PC from an OEM and finds himself dependent on Microsoft is not the customer, he is the product.
Oh, really. I really don't like when a Slashdotter pulls a one-bit logic on a painful issue.
How about a more realistic look: OEMs are the customer who buys the Windows licenses. And end-users are the customers of the hardware vendors who preinstall Windows on their machines to make them usable for the masses.
But wait, that doesn't sound shocking now, it sounds like the normal business it is.
If these are shows that are broadcast over the airwaves, don't you have the legal right to receive them? If you _download_ a show that you already have rights to watch as an OTA broadcast, how is it copyright infringement?
It doesn't need to be tested in court: bittorrent means you also broadcast as you download.
You definitely have no license to broadcast.
they removed the Heroes eps from their website after the DVDs were released. I'm not sure I can fault them for doing that...
You can, don't worry. Would it hurt them too much to offer cheap downloads online. Cut the middleman, get more sales.
Not to mention they limit it all to US audience.
If you're in US. Otherwise, bittorents it is... It's funny that physical borders are off and we can travel wherever we want, but now we have to fight legal borders.
Its sales exceed that of the Xbox 360 despite Microsoft's console having a year-long head start.
I don't get it. This reads as "He runs faster, despite his competitor, Bob, has no legs."
Of course, if you released a year *earlier* your sales slow down as time goes, so it's not "despite", it's "partially because".
It'll be interesting to see how many units are sold total. If Wii leads here (versus sales/month), now I'll agree the "despite" mark.
I guess the saddest one in this situation is PS3. Released late, too expensive, no sales. But Sony knew this, and proceeded to kill PS3 anyway, so Blu Ray can live.
Everyone got what he wants, a big happy corporate family.
On the flip side, pressing exactly two HD-DVDs with random data, and distributing these to your bankings sites for the most sensitive information is getting more and more cost effective.
Yup, with this fast Internet, they just rip it, and mail it to their server center..