Hydrogren, with its monoproton nucleus, reminds me of the aristocratic monarchy and reeks of feudalism. Politically, I am unable to support anything that does not conform to my ideals of economic freedom and democracy. Down with Hydrogen! Up with Ununoctium!
The table actually does recognize the phone, but you have to put a special barcode on the phone and regsiter the barcode with the table. Same thing with the Zune and the camera. While it does actually transfer pictures from the WiFi enabled camera, it does not actually transfer music to or from the Zune. That is a future concept feature.
Difference with the 'Linux' offering: - Surface is backlit so your hand does not interfere with the image (a matter of implementation probably as long as the detection mechanism used in the 'Linux' version allows for backlighting. - Surface does not require users to touch a grounding pad. Surface detects interaction using cameras and visual processing. It also uses visual processing to detect the barcodes used to identify devices. - Surface does not have problems with multiple touches from the same person. - Surface is unable to distinguish between different people (which the 'Linux' version can do). - Surface uses a custom interface designed from scratch for a multi-touch table instead of reusing a UI designed for mouse and keyboard. The correctness of that decision depends on the intended use of the product.
Surface is unlikely to be a consumer device for a long time. Microsoft is marketing it to hotels and casinos right now.
Do you really think Nintendo isn't in a hurry to make money? They are making and selling them as quickly as they can. They would certainly make them faster if they could.
Simple. They are 'borrowing' energy from the future. We'll be running up a huge temporal energy deficit in a few short years. Luckily, much like the national debt of the USA, we have no requirements to ever pay it back.
We observe the effect of the past borrowing our current energy as entropy. We aren't the only inteligent species in the universe to have discovered this fatastical power source.
Let's just hope we don't discover how to borrow energy from the past. If we were to go back too far we might disrupt the events that started life on this planet and then where would we be?
Funny thing about exponential curves: It always looks like you are always on the 'flat' part when you are looking towards the future. It is only when comparing to the past while ignoring the future that it looks like you are on the steep part, and that is true at any point in time. Unless "progress" ends up being a sigmoid curve, we will always be wondering if the Singularity has happened and if so when was the point it occurred.
The characters in Charles Strauss's novel Accelerando wonder this very thing even after the Earth has been dismantled for computation parts and the character have uploaded their brains into computers capable of simulating an entire human existance in a fraction of a second.
We can modify the entire world so that our current machines can operate effectively, or we can modify our machines to operate in the current world.
We can give every person a serial number and an easy means for machines to track that serial number, or we can train the machines to do voice and face recognition to do authentication the way humans do. We can attach RFID tags to every item sold at every store, or we can develop vision algorithms to recognize and track the items with cameras to achieve the same results.
I worry that modifying the world to make it easy for machines will make the world difficult for humans. We should modify the machines fit our needs not the other way around. I would rather live in a world that is full of robots than live inside a giant world-sized robot.
Changing the environment for to help machines operate is nothing new. Railroad tracks provide navigational control for a very non-intelligent transportation machine.
Work once gave me a laptop with a touchpad that went nuts whenever I tried to use it. The mouse would jump all of the screen while randomly clicking. It was completely unusable. Nobody else had the problems.
One day I discovered that I could hold my finger about and inch above the pad and by concentrating I could make the mouse start clicking repeatedly. I never could get it to move though. And I couldn't really control the clicking -- just turn the repeated clicking on or off.
Some others have commented that building a second elevator is a high priority. Getting the first elevator hooked up is difficult and expensive because you have to drop the end of the cable from space and catch it.
LiftPort is planning for their lift vehicles to do two things (planning is probably too strong of a word though). The lift vehicles will to repair and maintenance of the ribbon and they will add a little bit to the edge of the ribbon. When the ribbon becomes wide enough, a vehicles travelling up splits the ribbon into two. They anchor the new piece on a second floating ocean platform and move it away.
They really don't want to drop a second cable. They expect that to be very expensive.
If you are producing cables on Earth and plan to do a cable drop for each elevator, you will not be able to compete with them.
Dropping things is still the fastest way down. According to LiftPort plans, there will be several loads travelling up the elevator at one time. Once a vehicle arrives at the top it stays there and never comes down. It is simply additional ballast at the end of the tether.
"You've done a man's job" -- Gaff to Deckard on the roof.
I think Deckard was the replicant that they caught trying to sneak into Tyrell Corporation. They erased his memories, implanted new ones, and set him off to kill his comrades. The other replicants react oddly towards him. I think they recognize him and realize something isn't quite right and play along until they figure it out.
But President Bush has deep pockets. He could actually pay the 1.5 million. That could establish precedent and give weight to future law suites. I bet President Bush starts investing in record companies.
Slashdot Mirror
P is equal to NP because processing speed is increasing expoentially. Each year, the amount of processing you can do doubles.
The researchers are just using an expoential number of photons to aid in the processing.
But the good news is that this will result in upward social mobility.
I really, really wanted to like Neuromancer, but honestly I didn't really like it even when I read it in high school.
From a Christian viewpoint, Jesus was God and Jesus was a man. He was both -- not half of each.
What is he now? Is he still man or just God?
$66 today. $120 next year. By the end of the decade, one purchase of Vista in China will pay for the entire year's salary for an American programmer.
Hydrogren, with its monoproton nucleus, reminds me of the aristocratic monarchy and reeks of feudalism. Politically, I am unable to support anything that does not conform to my ideals of economic freedom and democracy. Down with Hydrogen! Up with Ununoctium!
The table actually does recognize the phone, but you have to put a special barcode on the phone and regsiter the barcode with the table. Same thing with the Zune and the camera. While it does actually transfer pictures from the WiFi enabled camera, it does not actually transfer music to or from the Zune. That is a future concept feature.
Difference with the 'Linux' offering:
- Surface is backlit so your hand does not interfere with the image (a matter of implementation probably as long as the detection mechanism used in the 'Linux' version allows for backlighting.
- Surface does not require users to touch a grounding pad. Surface detects interaction using cameras and visual processing. It also uses visual processing to detect the barcodes used to identify devices.
- Surface does not have problems with multiple touches from the same person.
- Surface is unable to distinguish between different people (which the 'Linux' version can do).
- Surface uses a custom interface designed from scratch for a multi-touch table instead of reusing a UI designed for mouse and keyboard. The correctness of that decision depends on the intended use of the product.
Surface is unlikely to be a consumer device for a long time. Microsoft is marketing it to hotels and casinos right now.
Sharing a song via WiFi doesn't add DRM so what are they doing exactly to strip it away?
Do you really think Nintendo isn't in a hurry to make money? They are making and selling them as quickly as they can. They would certainly make them faster if they could.
Simple. They are 'borrowing' energy from the future. We'll be running up a huge temporal energy deficit in a few short years. Luckily, much like the national debt of the USA, we have no requirements to ever pay it back.
We observe the effect of the past borrowing our current energy as entropy. We aren't the only inteligent species in the universe to have discovered this fatastical power source.
Let's just hope we don't discover how to borrow energy from the past. If we were to go back too far we might disrupt the events that started life on this planet and then where would we be?
You should assume the company is going to screw you if it is in their business interests to do so.
Maybe you should read today's news again.
That is a fair response and suggests that the singularity happens at the point that humanity is unable to successfully adapt to the change.
Do you know of a relatively easy to understand source that describes a sixty protien simple regulatory cascade?
Yep. Free horizontal gene sharing is as completely ludicous and unreasonable as his earlier idea of a DysonSphere.
Funny thing about exponential curves: It always looks like you are always on the 'flat' part when you are looking towards the future. It is only when comparing to the past while ignoring the future that it looks like you are on the steep part, and that is true at any point in time. Unless "progress" ends up being a sigmoid curve, we will always be wondering if the Singularity has happened and if so when was the point it occurred.
The characters in Charles Strauss's novel Accelerando wonder this very thing even after the Earth has been dismantled for computation parts and the character have uploaded their brains into computers capable of simulating an entire human existance in a fraction of a second.
We can modify the entire world so that our current machines can operate effectively, or we can modify our machines to operate in the current world.
We can give every person a serial number and an easy means for machines to track that serial number, or we can train the machines to do voice and face recognition to do authentication the way humans do. We can attach RFID tags to every item sold at every store, or we can develop vision algorithms to recognize and track the items with cameras to achieve the same results.
I worry that modifying the world to make it easy for machines will make the world difficult for humans. We should modify the machines fit our needs not the other way around. I would rather live in a world that is full of robots than live inside a giant world-sized robot.
Changing the environment for to help machines operate is nothing new. Railroad tracks provide navigational control for a very non-intelligent transportation machine.
Work once gave me a laptop with a touchpad that went nuts whenever I tried to use it. The mouse would jump all of the screen while randomly clicking. It was completely unusable. Nobody else had the problems.
One day I discovered that I could hold my finger about and inch above the pad and by concentrating I could make the mouse start clicking repeatedly. I never could get it to move though. And I couldn't really control the clicking -- just turn the repeated clicking on or off.
How many angels can fly on the head of a pin?
I can't believe people use to debate that. The answer is obviously "three".
Some others have commented that building a second elevator is a high priority. Getting the first elevator hooked up is difficult and expensive because you have to drop the end of the cable from space and catch it.
LiftPort is planning for their lift vehicles to do two things (planning is probably too strong of a word though). The lift vehicles will to repair and maintenance of the ribbon and they will add a little bit to the edge of the ribbon. When the ribbon becomes wide enough, a vehicles travelling up splits the ribbon into two. They anchor the new piece on a second floating ocean platform and move it away.
They really don't want to drop a second cable. They expect that to be very expensive.
If you are producing cables on Earth and plan to do a cable drop for each elevator, you will not be able to compete with them.
correction:
With a space elevator, all you do is load it up onto a climber and send it up the cable. It'll get there in a few months.
It is 22,000 miles to geosynchronous orbit,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit
Dropping things is still the fastest way down. According to LiftPort plans, there will be several loads travelling up the elevator at one time. Once a vehicle arrives at the top it stays there and never comes down. It is simply additional ballast at the end of the tether.
"You've done a man's job" -- Gaff to Deckard on the roof.
I think Deckard was the replicant that they caught trying to sneak into Tyrell Corporation. They erased his memories, implanted new ones, and set him off to kill his comrades. The other replicants react oddly towards him. I think they recognize him and realize something isn't quite right and play along until they figure it out.
But President Bush has deep pockets. He could actually pay the 1.5 million. That could establish precedent and give weight to future law suites. I bet President Bush starts investing in record companies.
These things take time to evolve.
The drug, spice, Melange you speak of let the navigators see into the future so that they could avoid obstacles. It isn't really getting high.