Posts by poopypants 419 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2013
What international treaties? Your scenario certainly doesn't apply to currently flying drones, so why would it apply to walking drones? If we want to keep ROTM on schedule, it is essential that we start fielding military robots as soon as possible. We mustn't keep the apocalypse waiting.
while we are waiting for prices to fall, there are other uses for this technology.
For example, I live in a small country town that is closer to the Antarctic than it is to Paris, so it would be great if there was an art gallery nearby that had 4K screens on the walls. This would let me see images of some of the art I would otherwise have to travel halfway around the world to see. I could even zoom in on particular areas of a painting, something that in the Louvre would require a large magnifying glass and balls of steel.
The Qualcomm Toq looks like a better design as it lasts 3 days between wireless charges, has a "Mirasol" colour e-Ink display that is visible in bright sunlight, and works with any Android 4.03 or above phone.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/qualcomm-announces-new-toq-smartwatch-for-android-smartphones/
and frankly I don't care that there exists somewhere a database entry, unread by human eyes, that says I like watching cat videos and reading The Register. It means that any ads that manage to sneak through AdBlock are cat related, which is nice, or about predatory birds, which is puzzling.
I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference to the election outcome, though.
In Australia elections are never won by oppositions. They are lost by governments. All Labor had to do to stay in power was not piss people off. Unfortunately, achieving that for six or more years is something that few leaders of any political persuasion ever manage.
Oh, that's right, this story is missing the obligatory statement about how this technology can be used to make airline travel faster, letting passengers arrive much sooner. (And of course when they say "airline" they mean "missile", and when they say "passenger" they mean "warhead". But you already knew that.)
Short battery life.
Won't work with the phone that I own.
Costs too much for what it provides.
Display almost certainly invisible in bright sunlight.
In these modern ecologically aware times shouldn't we strive to use more environmentally friendly tech?
Maybe someone could invent a timekeeping mechanism that worked mechanically.
I know this is a bit fanciful, but some bright researcher might be able to find a way to store potential energy, and gradually release it to drive some sort of mechanical display that shows the time of day.
There would have to be a way to recharge the potential energy, of course,
Perhaps brisk repetitive movement would be suitably familiar.
Whatever modest success WP 8 phones have achieved in the smartphone market has been in no small part due to the excellent hardware designs and respected brand name of Nokia.
If I understand this announcement correctly, future phones will no longer have the Nokia brand name, nor will the hardware be designed by Nokia. It may be designed by some of the same employees, but then again maybe they won't want to work under the infamous Redmond stack ranking scheme. Someone* could well make them a better offer.
*Nokia in the meantime is free to spend the next 15 months quietly working on anything - including presumably a killer Android phone using their unique camera and microphone technology.
(Unless they have agreed not to do that - surely MS have this covered. Right?)
All very interesting. And a bit strange.
Kurt Eichenwald reported in Vanity Fair a year ago that the practice* led employees at Microsoft to avoid working with top developers, not cooperate on projects, and remain focused on short-term achievements rather than long-term goals. (In a first-hand account published on Monday on Slate.com, a former employee called it “as toxic for innovation and integrity and morale as media reports made it out to be, and then some.”) The program was reportedly still around as of July–in a recent interview in the Seattle Times, Ballmer said there had only been “minor changes" to the system.
- from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2013/08/27/with-steve-ballmers-departure-a-look-at-microsofts-flawed-system-of-performance-reviews/
If they want to compete, Microsoft will have to stop making their employees afraid to take risks, or collaborate with others.
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