I've met some of the researchers in this lab, and I've attended talks on their work. They definitely don't mean this prototype to be represented as a practical paperphone device to be sold anytime soon.
The prototype is being used simply to investigate bending gestures as a means to UI navigation, complementary to touch and buttons. From what I recall their results have been promising for certain types of behaviour, and it certainly is great to have this level of basic investigation being done long before these types of devices hit the market.
I hate to argue with someone when the contested point is mostly personal opinion, BUT...
I have a gut feeling that macbook airs are selling at a faster rate than 12" powerbooks ever did. I think this is an issue of a number of vocal 12" PB advocates on the net making a lot more noise than the greater number of plain ol' consumers who are buying macbook airs. You can complain about apple not making the perfect laptop for you, but you can't complain about apple going after the most profitable market segment.
As far as cultural value is concerned, that's not part of the current copyright system. I wasn't arguing whether the system is currently right or wrong!
As far as the public domain goes, I personally believe it can only be the author's choice whether or not his work is for the public's gain, or for his own. I don't like the fact that all work is implicitly copyrighted as soon as it's produced, or that we have such long terms of copyright protection. But I do feel that, as a content creator myself, I should be able to decide where my hard work is used.
Under a system where the author is given an explicit choice of "share or keep", you can always make use of public domain/"open" works and be happy to know the author agrees with your view of the greater good.
Yeah I'll have to agree here that the parent is NOT a troll, he's simply stating that once a work is produced, it's not automatically "culture" so that anyone in the population can copy and share willy-nilly, without the consent of the work's originator.
The fact that certain works become so popular as to be synonymous with a certain culture certainly speaks to the wide distribution available in the age of radio, television and internet. This does not mean, however, that we can simply appropriate someone's work as free and open "culture" once it becomes popular enough.
Getting a LITTLE off topic, but thanks to both of the posts clarifying the relationship of Carbon and Cocoa! As I said, I'm the new guy! But a little more quick research finds that a significant enough part of the community has a hard time with the differences as well. A few informative bits here:
The main difference is that neooffice apparently runs through java on the mac, which is why it takes forever to load and can be very slow on occasion. neooffice is at best a substitute, until a native version is released (which is what is being announced today).
Let me point out something I noticed on the site. I'm a budding mac developer, and in reading the dev FAQ I saw that openoffice is being ported using the Carbon API. This is the old API that apple introduced for developers to more easily port their old OS 9 apps to the "new and shiny" OS X, back when it was actually new and shiny in 2001. Carbon does NOT allow you to take full advantage of OS X features, and it's use is frowned upon for new projects by apple and the dev community.
I'm guessing most of openoffice is written in C++ (never actually looked at the source yet), and Carbon is based in C++ so I'm also guessing they didn't want to rewrite everything in objective-c in order to use Cocoa (the "new" API that is like....7 years old now?). In any case, I'm disappointed that the team isn't going for a more thorough port that will let openoffice shine against the competition. Maybe I should put my keyboard where my mouth is and learn the intricacies of mac porting, hehehe.
Is anyone forgetting that many tasks are simply serial by nature? Without knowing the results of the previous calculation, you can't go on to the next? This is definitely not always the case, but it does occur and there's simply not much you can do about it without guessing techniques (which themselves would be expensive and reduce the accuracy of the results).
disclaimer: I haven't read ALL the comments (if anyone's already said this, sorry!)
Has anyone realized that apple doesn't make much of a profit from the content offered on it's itunes store? If apple is offering all this content simply to push the sales of ipods, macs (and now appletvs) where there IS a lot of profit, why shouldn't apple start offering free video downloads that are ad-supported, with additional drm such that you can't fast-forward while a commercial is on screen? or maybe just make you watch a short ad (not even necessarily embedded in the video file) before you can watch a show...this would be dynamic targeted advertising, but would require an always-on connection, just a possibility.
Bottom line... Who says apple can't provide free downloads? If they have the download infrastructure already in place, wouldn't it actually BENEFIT content providers to just offload video to apple? That way they wouldn't need to spend resources developing their own distribution systems.
Apparently there is some "prior art" (IANAL) from about 1985, from apple of all places! If anyone has ever used a really old mac, they'll know about the Switcher program that allowed programs to switch in and out of memory, effectively allowing the system to "multitask" (it could switch between already started programs, but only one could use the system at any time). Even better, I'm pretty sure the switcher had a scrolling effect applied to programs as they were switched into and out of memory, giving a "spacial relationship" between the "views" you were navigating. Since they would have internal documentation regarding the development and use of this technology (and maybe even some UI patents of their own), this might be a slap in the face to any kind of settlement.
JanneM, i love it. fiction solves all. At least in my world:)
but i'm very saddenned, that being my FIRST post (longtime reader) and here i managed to not actually read the whole story haha. There's nothing special going on here, they're sending wave pulses and not individual photons.
What had me confused is that, in THEORY, anything that literally physically travels faster than "c", like a real photon, would REALLY move backwards in time, and REALLY be received before it was sent, according to relativity (...or was it special relativity?)...The problem is that it would also theoretically take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to that speed. That's more C batteries than i own.
i think the point is that...this result could make us question sense of fate... do you still have freedom of choice if you learn about actions you will perform in the future? if you get a photon out the system before you sent one, are you locked into sending one?
Slashdot Mirror
I've met some of the researchers in this lab, and I've attended talks on their work. They definitely don't mean this prototype to be represented as a practical paperphone device to be sold anytime soon. The prototype is being used simply to investigate bending gestures as a means to UI navigation, complementary to touch and buttons. From what I recall their results have been promising for certain types of behaviour, and it certainly is great to have this level of basic investigation being done long before these types of devices hit the market.
I hate to argue with someone when the contested point is mostly personal opinion, BUT... I have a gut feeling that macbook airs are selling at a faster rate than 12" powerbooks ever did. I think this is an issue of a number of vocal 12" PB advocates on the net making a lot more noise than the greater number of plain ol' consumers who are buying macbook airs. You can complain about apple not making the perfect laptop for you, but you can't complain about apple going after the most profitable market segment.
As far as cultural value is concerned, that's not part of the current copyright system. I wasn't arguing whether the system is currently right or wrong!
As far as the public domain goes, I personally believe it can only be the author's choice whether or not his work is for the public's gain, or for his own. I don't like the fact that all work is implicitly copyrighted as soon as it's produced, or that we have such long terms of copyright protection. But I do feel that, as a content creator myself, I should be able to decide where my hard work is used.
Under a system where the author is given an explicit choice of "share or keep", you can always make use of public domain/"open" works and be happy to know the author agrees with your view of the greater good.
Yeah I'll have to agree here that the parent is NOT a troll, he's simply stating that once a work is produced, it's not automatically "culture" so that anyone in the population can copy and share willy-nilly, without the consent of the work's originator. The fact that certain works become so popular as to be synonymous with a certain culture certainly speaks to the wide distribution available in the age of radio, television and internet. This does not mean, however, that we can simply appropriate someone's work as free and open "culture" once it becomes popular enough.
Getting a LITTLE off topic, but thanks to both of the posts clarifying the relationship of Carbon and Cocoa! As I said, I'm the new guy! But a little more quick research finds that a significant enough part of the community has a hard time with the differences as well. A few informative bits here:
c oa_vs_carbon.html / 10/70789.aspx e quired a rt-12-frozen-in.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/05/23/co
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02
http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/some_assembly_r
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2006/10/pimp-my-code-p
I have much to learn!
The main difference is that neooffice apparently runs through java on the mac, which is why it takes forever to load and can be very slow on occasion. neooffice is at best a substitute, until a native version is released (which is what is being announced today).
Let me point out something I noticed on the site. I'm a budding mac developer, and in reading the dev FAQ I saw that openoffice is being ported using the Carbon API. This is the old API that apple introduced for developers to more easily port their old OS 9 apps to the "new and shiny" OS X, back when it was actually new and shiny in 2001. Carbon does NOT allow you to take full advantage of OS X features, and it's use is frowned upon for new projects by apple and the dev community.
I'm guessing most of openoffice is written in C++ (never actually looked at the source yet), and Carbon is based in C++ so I'm also guessing they didn't want to rewrite everything in objective-c in order to use Cocoa (the "new" API that is like....7 years old now?). In any case, I'm disappointed that the team isn't going for a more thorough port that will let openoffice shine against the competition. Maybe I should put my keyboard where my mouth is and learn the intricacies of mac porting, hehehe.
Is anyone forgetting that many tasks are simply serial by nature? Without knowing the results of the previous calculation, you can't go on to the next? This is definitely not always the case, but it does occur and there's simply not much you can do about it without guessing techniques (which themselves would be expensive and reduce the accuracy of the results). disclaimer: I haven't read ALL the comments (if anyone's already said this, sorry!)
Has anyone realized that apple doesn't make much of a profit from the content offered on it's itunes store? If apple is offering all this content simply to push the sales of ipods, macs (and now appletvs) where there IS a lot of profit, why shouldn't apple start offering free video downloads that are ad-supported, with additional drm such that you can't fast-forward while a commercial is on screen? or maybe just make you watch a short ad (not even necessarily embedded in the video file) before you can watch a show...this would be dynamic targeted advertising, but would require an always-on connection, just a possibility. Bottom line... Who says apple can't provide free downloads? If they have the download infrastructure already in place, wouldn't it actually BENEFIT content providers to just offload video to apple? That way they wouldn't need to spend resources developing their own distribution systems.
Apparently there is some "prior art" (IANAL) from about 1985, from apple of all places! If anyone has ever used a really old mac, they'll know about the Switcher program that allowed programs to switch in and out of memory, effectively allowing the system to "multitask" (it could switch between already started programs, but only one could use the system at any time). Even better, I'm pretty sure the switcher had a scrolling effect applied to programs as they were switched into and out of memory, giving a "spacial relationship" between the "views" you were navigating. Since they would have internal documentation regarding the development and use of this technology (and maybe even some UI patents of their own), this might be a slap in the face to any kind of settlement.
JanneM, i love it. fiction solves all. At least in my world :)
but i'm very saddenned, that being my FIRST post (longtime reader) and here i managed to not actually read the whole story haha. There's nothing special going on here, they're sending wave pulses and not individual photons.
What had me confused is that, in THEORY, anything that literally physically travels faster than "c", like a real photon, would REALLY move backwards in time, and REALLY be received before it was sent, according to relativity (...or was it special relativity?)...The problem is that it would also theoretically take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to that speed. That's more C batteries than i own.
i think the point is that...this result could make us question sense of fate... do you still have freedom of choice if you learn about actions you will perform in the future? if you get a photon out the system before you sent one, are you locked into sending one?