Re: We've become innured.

Who says you need to move to get the best angle? A proper holographic TV could have something like a jog or shuttle on its remote letting you turn the perspective while not moving yourself. And I was thinking in terms of sports, where things happen spontaneously from unexpected locations. Ever seen a cricket match or whatever where the camera moves one way but the ball actually went the other?

We've become innured.

People don't want stereoscopic TV. They want HOLOGRAPHIC TV. They want the kind of 3D TV you used to see in The Jetsons: where it took up space and can be looked upon from almost any angle. This kind of TV was inherently autostereoscopic and allowed the real wow factor of different points of view (much like how some 3D games let you reposition the camera in various ways).

Re: The (low) price of ad-free TV

"I've said it before (and got downvoted for it) but I'll say it again: advertising is an attempt to steal my time. If I want something, I'll search; if I don't, why would an advert persuade me? Advertising is an increasingly nonsensical way of funding 'entertainment'."

There's no such thing as a free ride. You either pay out of your pocket or pay with your time. it'd be interesting to see the time-to-money ratio for current network television.

Because in ad-supported TV, the Ads are the most important part. Put it this way: the show is just show, the ads are the dough (the TV show COSTS the network, but the embedded ads bring in sponsor revenue to make up the difference). If sponsors get wind of more people using ad-skippers, they'll pressure the producers and cut the money they pay out for sponsoring the show (since they're not getting as much ad exposure back as before). IOW, the networks are being pressured to fight this tech by their sponsors.

Re: Someone has to pay...

"Not to knock Americans at all here, but it's just soooo FUC*KING-IN-YOUR-FACE! It's like the drill sergeant standing an inch away, and yelling at you at the top of his voice. Muppet. After all, what nation came up with unanted pop-ups? Take Windows-xp as an example. Every time I boot, dozens of little balloons appear telling me (I kid you not, on my machine anyway) "New hardware detected: Disk drive" "New hardware detected: CD ROM" etc."

Why? Because these kinds of adverts were BORN in America. As a result, Americans have been exposed to so much of it that they become innured, meaning advertisers need flashier and flashier ways to get your attention. And it's been this way for a LONG time. I recall a chapter in a science fiction novel in which a billboard gets someone's attention by a major light show. The novel was E. E. Smith's "First Lensman," a book Older Than Television, yet it shows the kind of thinking advertisers faced then AND now: how do you draw the attention of people who otherwise wouldn't want anything to do with you (or to paraphrase from a certain TV infomercial, how do you make the fish bite when it isn't hungry)?

Re: It's not ads that are the problem

That ain't the end of it. Some networks now shoehorn ads INLINE with the show so you can't avoid it without skipping part of the show. And mind you, this is on CABLE networks, too, where you'd think they'd get enough from the distribution chains.

Re: How would you save mankind.

Trouble with your last plan is that the richest also have the most flexibility. Take for the example of the ultra-rich who aren't citizens of any western country. They can set down roots anywhere they want, so unless you have a global tax system (impossible in the current political climate), people and companies who don't want to play ball with you can simply pack up and leave, taking all their riches with them. When it takes money to redistribute money, how do you redistribute money when someone has all of it?

Re: How much storage does a small laptop need ?

But what if it's a COPY of the media collection or something else big, bulky, and perhaps required to be local because you may be going somewhere where network access isn't guaranteed, so it's either go big or go home.

Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...

Round here, you try to pass at ANY speed and the other car goes even faster to block you. Meanwhile, the ones behind him speed up and close the gap you left, meaning you can't go back. So what's worse? Speeding or driving the wrong way because you have no other way to get to your side? Where I live, speeding is simply a standard motor offense while driving the wrong way for too long is considered reckless driving: a jailable offense.

Re: Actually, I don't think that's true.

"What we need to do is to get people to take responsibility for their own actions, not give them trite little "rules" which bear little or no relation to reality."

Good luck. Self-denial is practically a survival trait in the modern man. So you either Keep It Simple, Stupid or no one's going to listen. Otherwise, you're basically saying that since the only way people will be safer is to be responsible and most people are categorically incapable of being responsible, we're in a no-win situation. You either let them drive and kill people or bar them from driving to work and grinding modern civilization to a halt since many people can't walk, ride, or use mass transit to get where they need to go (no mass transit nearby) or do what they need to do (big grocery run--need a vehicle with a boot).

Re: Hmmm

The thing is they the price per GB of Flash is still far from competitive with hard drives. There is an order of magnitude problem with the costs of producing flash chips vs. manufacturing magnetic platters, and because the problems are mostly physical in nature, they'll be difficult to overcome (IOW, it would take a novel method of producing flash chips for them to catch up--Flash may be getting cheaper, but so are hard drives, the only reason they're not at the moment is because of temporary supply-side hiccups).

So the best approach may well be to have a foot in both worlds. Flash doesn't need to spin up, so it can be geared to be the first responder, holding the first-line boot system and the pieces of data mostly likely to be called first. While the Flash is handling that end, you can have the hard drive spin up in the background so that by the time Flash is out of stuff, the hard drive's ready to pick up the handoff. It sounds like a reasonable compromise between speed and capacity and it may be the best thing going forward until some other innovation is able to find a better spot on the price/performance/capacity surface.

Re: oooh

It's hard to say where a given theater will bite you--at the ticket stand (where you live) or at the concession stand (where I live). Where I live, even in 3D IMAX, ticket prices are rather lower (about US$9 a piece)--but try to buy a DRINK there ($3 for a small cup?). And no, they won't let you bring in outside stuff--health codes and all that stuff.

Re: Nope!

If that was a joke, that fell flat since policemen are instructed to use your driver's license when issuing speeding tickets. So it wouldn't matter which car you drove, the fine would still fall to you with no involvement from the agency. As for parking tickets, I believe the car would be traced, determined to be a rental, and proper notifications be made then (the rental company could be contacted to fill in the renter's information). Either the driver is informed by the agency to pay up or the driver does it himself when he finds the citation. Again, the card doesn't have to be involved. And since the car has to be returned, it would be inspected for damage before the final bill is made, so the card isn't a necessity there, either.

Re: DoS?

"How would that work? You can have the hashes without the actual pieces. Genuine question in case I've missed something."

How would you know the hash of the pieces before you have the piece itself? It depends on the way the system works, I admit, but if you're forced to check back with a peer with the completed piece already to say whether or not the hash of a particular piece is pass/fail, you only know know the hash of the the piece when you have the completed piece, run a check, and get a pass, I would think (all of which should occur at the end of the connection that obtains the piece in the first place, so there should be a strong likelihood of being able to obtain a response).

Re: DoS?

I would think, the way BitTorrent works, sending an "I've got it all now" message turns you from a Peer into a Seed, which means other peers will expect you to have all the pieces, which can then be verified by hash checks of the individual pieces. Plus, as others have said, IP blocklists have been used with other P2P systems, but perhaps the system is trying to spoof source IP lists to make them go to random locations which can't be blocked.

@Eddy

"Contrast this with the stock market which is not a zero sum game and aggregate wealth can be created and there needn't be any losers because it isn't based on "matter" but on another concept more commonly associated with "utility"."

There, I call false on your claim of falsity. Wealth isn't really CREATED--it's FOUND. Like petroleum. Its wealth value was always there, but someone had to locate it underground first and then figure out how to refine it into useable fuel before its value can be tapped. People invest in new technologies in exchange for a share of this value should it work out.

Or just ordinary people for that matter. So you've got a few ordinary people trying to deal with a mountain of highly-technical patents full of legalese (thanks to patent lawyers)...every year. And you wonder why so many bad patents seem to slip through the cracks. It's like trying to analyze four live television shows...in realtime...simultaneously.

Re: Fresh batteries

Don't patent applications require examples of their use, typically in drawings? Why can't the patent judge simply go, "let's see this example in action"?

But I'll tell you one set of companies that would be dead-set against the idea: pharmaceutical companies. Developing new medicines literally takes years (I once read that out of a 25-year design patent for a medicine, companies can typically only take advantage of five years or so--it takes that long to develop and test new drugs) and costs mucho moola. They take out the design patent as a safeguard against industrial espionage and more-mondane copycatting (few things more frustrating than plunking a few billion into a new wonder drug only to find your rival firm, working independently, beat you to market).

It would take a significant change of patent law to deal with each problem without running afoul of each other.

Re: Fair play to him but he should pay tax at source IMHO

I don't know about that. Look up a strategy known as "Buy, Borrow, and Die". For the richest people, most of their wealth is in pure investments. They make wealth by their assets appreciating, and most countries don't have a good system for taxing income from (unrealized, to use the financial term) asset appreciation if the asset remains intact (only if you sell the asset, then it becomes capital gains). To actually get money, instead of selling the asset they borrow against the asset. Loans typically aren't taxed, either. Finally, the debts are simply carried over until the person dies. The assets are then inherited and their values "stepped up" under the tax code, meaning if they're sold then, there is no capital gain and therefore no tax in their liquidation to pay off the also-carried-over debt.

Re: Really?

"I imagine in that situation a lot of people would suddenly find the idea of proportional deductions "unfair". Imagine if the person in front of you in the queue can buy a mars bar for half the price you must pay."

One problem is a certain quantity called the "cost of living". This quantity for a given area is fixed (as sustenance, shelter, and other requirements tend to be absolute rather than proportional to wealth). One main reason taxes are proportional is because tax burden butts up against the cost of living and thus places increased burden on those who make near and especially below the cost of living (the tax burden makes it difficult to afford a meal, IOW) whereas the excessively wealthy can be taxed heavily and still have more than enough to sustain themselves.

Another problem is that, in a way, wealth has gravity. The more you have, the easier it is to amass more of it (though monetary leverage, economies of scale, and so on). It's like a game of Monopoly or a poker table. Someone with the lead can leverage the lead to drive the smaller guy out, and eventually, someone will get all the money and end the game...unless something is there to redistribute the wealth and keep the game going.

Re: @Jonas

"What an unpleasant streak of bile-fueled ignorance. I think you summed up your position perfectly when you said "The problem with capitalism is that it's not about what you have; it's about what other people have".

Stow your faux-socialism until you have your facts straight."

Actually, it makes sense. Pure capitalism is all about leveraging your own wealth so as to get more back from others. Economics is, at its heart, the sciences involved in the distribution of a finite quantity: wealth (since wealth is based on matter, and matter is finite--ask any physicist--therefore wealth is finite, too). Economics NECESSARILY involves the transfer of wealth, and these transfers must necessarily be from one party to another. What differs is the methodology. So for capitalism, socialism, communism, whatever, it's ALL about what you have in relation to what other people have. It's what determines what happens to that stuff.

The Incredible Machine series was one of my favorites from Sierra. It's rather a shame the series faded into obscurity after Contraptions (with Sierra itself fading later on). That said, there was a spinoff (Sid and Al's Incredible Toons) that took the concept to its cartoonish extreme and was still very fun and amusing. For its day, the games were also decently sophisticated (high-resolution VGA graphics) yet compact (IIRC both TIM and Incredible Toons fit on a single HD floppy). Thing was I ran out of puzzles to play, and this was before the Internet took off.

Re: OMFG. 20W output....

Pardon, but CB radios have been transmitting at 4W (it's part of the standard) for decades. And what about people who have to work around transmission towers, What about microwave ovens? Most tellys, and so on? And then there's the sun, which transmits throughout the EM spectrum, including in the radio bands. We basically get exposed to radio frequencies everyday, everywhere. Have been since before Marconi, so why worry now?

Re: "improved radio resource management"

But you're trying to establish a secure channel between two strangers. The only way you can do that is by a standardized form of communication. Otherwise, the initial link can't be established. Furthermore, since it's a standardized communication between two untrusted individuals, there's no way to detect a third stranger butting into the conversation at the very beginning, either by sniffing out the key (since the key exchange is necessarily standardized, what Bob need to read the key is also what Mallory needs to intercept it--they're one and the same) or by hijacking the initial communique and performing a Man-In-The-Middle attack.

Re: "improved radio resource management"

"The other thing that I've been waiting for (if anyone has any way of putting suggestions), is for a security standard for open APs where the client conencts to the AP in the open, they exchange keys and then switch to encrypted communications. No need to enter a 500 character pass phrase in each bar/cafe, but your comms are reasonably secure (at least from WiFi slurpers) without any hastle, and it's fully automatic for the masses."

The big stumbling block has always been the actual key exchange. Unless this is secured, the communique can still be sniffed by sniffing the key. Don't look at it from the angle of someone passing and sniffing your communique but rather someone waiting for you to come in and then sniffing the conversation from start to fnish. As I understand it, physica only allws two ways to prevent a key from being sniffed: use an already-trusted channel (but that presents the chicken-egg problem when you're trying to establish a secure channel in the first place) or use a side channel (which may not be available to both parties).

Re: I was hoping

"I'm amazed they think that one connect/disconnect cycle per day is enough to design for. Somehow I predict the average connector lifespan to be about 6 years in the real world on cars and something less than 18 months on public charge posts."

Remember, the intention is that the vehicle only gets plugged in at home when it's done for the day and then unplugged the following morning, so yeah once a day.

As for public connectors, it would simply need to be built to higher spec to withstand more abuse, probably with a quick-disconnect design to minimize damage in the event of a drive off (which one of the sense pins is supposed to prevent anyway). Petrol hoses get their knocks as well and have to be maintained or replaced every so often as well, so this isn't anything new.

Beacuse each tech has its detractors.

Nuclear? Guess where the term "Not In My Back Yard" became famous. Everyone's scared of a plant become the next Chernobyl (sorry, but rare as it is, nuclear plants HAVE failed with consequences that are extremely difficult to measure--and therefore VERY scary).

Biofuels? If it were really all that, why aren't private firms lining up at the gate to try to work on the next big thing since the oil well? Indeed, how close are we really to a commercially-useable technology for making fuels from plant byproducts? And for that matter, how do we get the byproducts together to start the process, and all the other small but costly logistics that are needed to get the hob done?

Desalination? Power-intensive, and without access to nuclear power (remember, the next Chernobyl?) it becomes impractical. Most places that desal are like the Middle East or small island nations: lacking in alternatives.

And YES, these detractors REALLY WOULD rather go without than invest in making plenty because they believe excess breeds decadence which in turn could cause corruption and eventually the end of civilization as we know it (just look at Rome, they'll say).

Re: Anti tamper? @Charles9

"Or just use a liquid like biodiesel or ethanol. Tried & tested."

And then rejected. Diesel is too polluting, and biodiesel too low in volume to use mainstream. Meanwhile, ethanol isn't as powerful as petrol and can't be produced in mainstream volumes without eating into food supplies. Meanwhile, synthetic petrol production is still in the initial phases. I would be great if it worked out, thought we'd still need a source of vast power to produce it all (*yawn* call me when you can present a cost-effective land-effective non-fossil non-nuclear power plant design in the 2GW range or so--then we'll talk).

It's the Geography!

Your country's small and therefore pretty easy to wire up. Now try a country as big as the United States with vast rural areas and lots of topography to consider (two mountain ranges, one pretty high, vast plains and a decent desert to the southwest). Unlike in New Zealand (or other tiny and dense countries like say South Korea), it's VERY easy to find yourself in "The Middle of Nowhere", with essentially no civilization for a large radius.

Re: Anti tamper?

IIRC the AC part of the plug's designed to be used in an enclosed setting, such as a garage. If the chav can get into the garage to reach your plug, you have bigger problems than them making off with the cable.

As for the DC part, this is meant for quick applications so exposure there would be limited: more like at the filling station.

Re: What was wrong...

You try running 500V @ 200A through a wire less than 1MM thick. Let's just say you won't have much of a wire (or connector) a moment later. Dealing with current that beefy takes a decent amount of metal to keep the works from melting from its inherent resistance.

Re: Rough and Smooth

But considering how quickly smooth surfaces get roughed up and "hazy" after exposure to the elements (and thus takes on dust and sticky stuff ANYWAY), I would think the rough stuff has a leg up since roughening it MORE probably will have less of an effect while the drawback of attracting dirt isn't as big an issue as first seen.

Re: AR coating?

Most AR coatings are wavelength- and angle-sensitive. They perform differently when different wavelengths of light strike or when they strike at different angles. Usually what happens is that the resultant output of light alters. I believe the scientists are trying to reduce reflection without unduly altering the wavelength of light that comes out (since collectors are more sensitive to certain wavelengths). They may also give a leg up against AR coatings since most coatings aren't close to 100% effective.

Re: Neat!

Except they never say the efficiency of the cells being used to start with. A 47% improvement may sound dandy, but if it's a 47% improvement over 8% efficiency, then the cells are only about 12% efficient and well behind the curve. Overall numbers please.

Re: Click-Clack

The BB&T people were probably amazed to find a place where there was no way of performing any form of electronic communication AT ALL: no direct internet, no cell phone service so you can use stuff like Square or GoPayment, not even a telephone line for a dialup modem,.

Can you do this PASSIVELY?

Because otherwise the whole concept falls apart when the battery's dead. Most NFC solutions are inductive so rely on the vendor transmitting power to power the process: much more reliable. Your SecureID falls flat at one important aspect: simplicity.

Re: Well, I was wondering

A nightingale floor, you mean? That was a real-life concept. Many people who study Japanese architecture have probably read of the nightingale floor.

Given that you were at a car hire firm (I believe Americans refer to them as car rental agencies), the embossment in this case was for the sake of a paper trail: proof that the card was physically present when you performed the transaction. Given the nature of the transaction (a car hire/rental), some heightened scrutiny is warranted.

Re: Eva

Just for the record: it's EVE (all caps, her name was an acronym just like WALL-E's).

Anyway, I'm not too surprised this phone design is being released first on Symbian AND in countries where the "big players" (iOS, Android, WinPho) aren't a big draw. Will this camera come to WinPho? Perhaps, but not for a bit. In any event, given the prevailing attitudes around here, odds are people here will wait for Apple or an Android phone maker (maybe Sony--they make phones AND digital cameras so would have a natural inclination to try) to copycat the idea and then break Nokia's current monopoly on the tech.

Re: Geography

People naturally gravitate towards water. It takes either a whole lot of convincing alternatives (like groundwater) or the fact you just can't travel far (what happened in the old days) to keep you away from sources of water. We need water to live, so it's only natural that we (like any other animal) gravitate toward it.

There's also the need to gravitate toward each other because, even in this day and age, THINGS still need to be passed from person to person. Unless someone can fast-track the Star Trek concept of the matter transporter, this need won't be going away anytime soon (indeed, this is becoming a stumbling block of continuing standards of living--if fuel costs stay up, so do transportation costs, which means the costs of non-local goods also rises, and so on and so forth; this is creating pressure to keep things close).

Re: good. Now perhaps they will sell it outside the USA

Color Nooks don't have 3G. They're WiFi only. The Kindle Fire is WiFi-only also IIRC. Newer products would probably be able to use more frequencies to make them better-suited for international use, if nook intends to increase its international presence. However, they would probably also have to establish whispernet agreements with wireless providers who may not otherwise like nooks piggybacking on their bandwidth.

Re: I'll never understand business

Because while nook is doing great, it's distracting B&N from getting its brick-and-mortar business back on track (remember, Borders collapsed last year, leaving B&N and Books-A-Million the big cheeses in the physical book market--B&N doesn't want to be next). Plus B&N's physical business is dragging the nook in its fight against the all-virtual Amazon and its Kindle line. In addition, there's the risk B&N's physical trouble will tarnish nook's image; in essence, a B&N in trouble could threaten to take nook down with it.

Price of Admission

Because it's either pony up to the publishers or don't play. Commercial software that actually costs money DOES exist on Linux, though it tends to be limited to the professional sectors. If this is what it takes to start a move towards a critical mass of Linux games (and this removing probably the biggest stumbling block to mainstream adoption), then there are far worse things people can endure.

Low-priority cloud storage.

Perhaps people are using Dropbox and the like for low-security things: things which bear little or no ill consequence if leaked (simple things like shopping lists or the phone's camera logs) or basic collaborations on low-security projects. What few things there are that are higher security (like a keyring) aren't left in public folders and have their own encryption.

Or it could be like what happened with encryption embargoes. The military realized that international firms offered similar services, rendering the embargo unenforceable, and the military relaxes the restriction.

Re: Don't know much about Steam but

It will probably work like Steam on Mac. The game selection would have to accommodate. Still, it has to start somewhere.

No. They slip an MBR trojan onto the hard drive while it's in decrypted operation so as to hijack the boot process and gain access to the encrypted drive's contents (that's how Stoned gets around TrueCrypt's techniques).

Once you can get to a prompt, password-erasing tools like NTpassword can remove that barrier to entry, and now Mallory is in Bob's machine...able to sniff out the browser credentials and so on.

So back to square one. How do you prove identity without some form of identity that can be abused elsewhere? And how to you keep track of numerous protected sites with a bad memory and (for security reasons) no ability to store the login credentials?