Topic: Holy Crap! *New Tech/Gadget Thread*

[Shaymin]

There's a baseball team moving to Miami soon, and we're probably a couple of years away from them switching to the AL so they can lose to the Cubs.

[Morari]

One step at a time, Morari. We need the jacket, and then we can get that hoverboard.

But the hoverboard was the only cool item on the list. Everything else was just an tweaked look on what was already popular in the 80s. The style of the 80s was bad enough without a quasi-futuristic slant.

Besides, aren't Nike shoes already expensive enough without this?

[TJ Spyke]

There's a baseball team moving to Miami soon, and we're probably a couple of years away from them switching to the AL so they can lose to the Cubs.

The Florida Marlins play in Miami.

[Caliban]

So it seems the shoes aren't self-lacing, and 1500 pairs are to be auctioned on ebay for Michael J. Fox's Parkinson Research Foundation. http://www.back4thefuture.com/

Also watch this video they made: http://www.back4thefuture.com/#!gallery/23

It seems we're going to have to wait 4 more years to get those self-lacing kicks. Oh well, it will be HH kicks for me until then.

[Shaymin]

There's a baseball team moving to Miami soon, and we're probably a couple of years away from them switching to the AL so they can lose to the Cubs.

The Florida Marlins play in Miami. : :

But they haven't been called the "Miami Marlins" yet. The name changes next year.

[ThePerm]

I've been interested in the dwarf planet for some time, because it takes less time to get to than mars, and the possibility that theres water on the planetoid.

Now one thing that annoys me about Ceres is there is no good photo of it. Theres just this crappy one the hubble space telescope took in 2007



today i was bored, and being a photo-manipulator I decided to increase the saturation on the image for shits and giggles just to see if i could see something. Here is what I got.



this might not mean anything, but i think its interesting.

then i zoomed in on it and noticed green and grey spots



then i traced it and stuff



interesting

unfortunately vesta looks like this in the hubble telescope photo(that i over-saturated)



and looks like this in the dawn photos



i guess we'll have to wait till 2015 to see what Ceres looks like for sure.

[kraken613]

If anyone is daring like I am, you can now download and try the Windows 8 developer preview. I am about to dual boot this with Windows 7 just to give it a try.

http://lifehacker.com/5839977/download-the-windows-8-developer-preview-now

[Ceric]

If anyone is daring like I am, you can now download and try the Windows 8 developer preview. I am about to dual boot this with Windows 7 just to give it a try.

http://lifehacker.com/5839977/download-the-windows-8-developer-preview-now

I just redid my machine... If I knew this was coming earlier I just move to it.

[BranDonk Kong]

Windows 8 is for tablets, isn't it?

[Ceric]

Windows 8 is for tablets, isn't it?

Its for both but its migrating to a more touch friendly UI because that is were MS sees the future for all computing going.  (With all the tablet and smartphones it really is a matter of time before touch screen is standard on are laptops as well.)

[oohhboy]

Yeah, it's MS out to out iOS Apple. OSX has the workflow and clutter just right. While MS has the endless lists and inconsistant UI behaviour. Both OSs has been trending towards iOS-ifcation and I don't like it. The worse example of iOSing is the Nintendo e-shop, just plain awful to navigate.

Until they can make a touch screen that is absolutely smudge proof, I never want to use my finger on it. I always spend more time cleaning the screen than using the device.

[Morari]

As I understand it, the traditional Aero interface will still be available... it'll just be an "app" that launches from within the new Metro interface.

It's great that Microsoft wants their OS to scale like that, but making Metro the default interface (and the entire focus of the release) is fucking retarded. I don't want my OS to be dumbed-down. I don't want less functionality. Touch interfaces are ****, even with the proper devices. I don't want that on my desktop, where I do real work... and I certainly don't want to start in on the slippery slope of control that is an "App Store". We'll see how it actually turns out. It may just hold true to that "skip every other release" doctrine.

What's sad is that even Ubuntu has started to push this kind of crap lately. It was fine when there was just a "Netbook Remix" available... but now they want to force that lame Unity interface down your throat. I've always been a KDE gal myself, but still. Tablet's are a fad that only actually work for a very small portion of people. That's why Microsoft failed to launch the market all those years ago. That's why it took a bunch of brainwashed Apple fanboys to really jump-start it.

[Ceric]

I've been using the Metro interface for my phone for the last half+ year.  For a mobile device its a great interface.  It feels in its own way Star Trek like because there isn't any real dead space.

For a lot of people it would be a less cluttered interface for the more power users just default it to the traditional interface, which you can.

[Morari]

For a lot of people it would be a less cluttered interface for the more power users just default it to the traditional interface, which you can.

For now. What about the version after that? These companies want you using devices with no way to upgrade or repair... only to replace. They want to hold everything ransom in "the cloud". They want to say what you can and cannot install via their proprietary app stores. They want that control. That's what the push towards things like tablets is all about.

Metro is hardly "less cluttered". If anything, it's even more cluttered. There's a lot more information being thrown at you, with a lot less visual distinction. You don't have to be a power user to want your computer to have functionality beyond checking Facebook. I've worked tech support. I know how confused people already get with clearly labeled lists and buttons. This is going to be even worse for those types of people. Add in a bunch of esoteric touch gestures and it gets even more perplexing.

Aero


vs

Metro

[Ceric]

I'm going to assume you get to see peoples computers, Honesly how many desktops have you seen that look that uncluttered from normal users?

Your right they should get rid of that green border.

How can you say its less visually distinct then the Start Menu?

To be honest though most of the time I just go Start- <type in what I want in the search bar> in Win 7.

I wouldn't worry to much about the update and repair stuff with MS.  Apple on the other hand I worry all day with.  MS doesn't have much of a desire to be in Hardware PC Wise.    The Store is more of an answer for a place that is safe for software.  A lot of Windows problem stem from concessions to Third Parties or like, something Apple really doesn't worry about.  Plus there is to much custom software in the wild to ever have everything on a PC come from just one store.

Knowing how Microsoft works these things they just have there store and then a certification for others.  Something like a Certified Safe badge for things like Steam.

Though its been a while since I've done the whole linux side of things but I do remember many distribution having what I'll call package repositories where you got your software from even before the App Store.

[Morari]

Most people's desktops don't look too much worse than that. You generally see a dozen junk shortcuts just from stuff they installed (or worse yet, came pre-installed). It's fairly rare that you find an absolute mess though. Given that Windows Search has only really just become usable in the last one or two versions, I think you'll find most people still prefer some sort of hierarchical way to sort through things.

I don't think MS will be very successful with an app store, but I think they'd like to be. You're right that there would be too big of a push from developers for it to converge anytime in the near future. Still, that's obviously what everyone is working toward, MS included.

Most of your larger Linux distros have had package managers and general repositories for a while now. Of course, they started out as mechanisms for OS and software updates. They've since moved to presenting just about everything you can think of. It's not necessarily a bad way of doing things, but only because the option exists to completely circumnavigate it if desired.

Don't get me wrong. I think that the interface does look fine for a mobile device. I don't see why it should be the focus of the OS though, and seemingly the default interface for all installs. It seems far too limited to even offer the most casual of desktop and laptop users what they need.

[NWR_insanolord]

OSX has the workflow and clutter just right.

Agreed. I feel like Lion did a really good job of implementing elements of iOS while retaining the power and flexibility of a desktop OS. It seems like Apple gets that, while they could stand to learn from each other, people are looking for different things from the different platforms.

[oohhboy]

I haven't upgraded to Lion yet, but will be doing so by end of year after they kill off the biggest bugs that are with any big releases so I can't comment too much on how they have tweaked the GUI. Pretty much upgrading for OpenGL 3.1+.

I uses Spaces a lot and have finder in space "2" with 4 finder windows opened at all times to places I go to a lot with the most used applications on the dock. The system does induce a little UI inconsistences as some applications don't obey spaces properly or spaces doesn't enforce it's policies better Eg. Steam and pop up dialogue boxes.

Because how Mac applications are packaged it allows me to have big lists that don't disappear if I miss click and I don't have to dig to find an EXE like on windows. I should use spotlight more, but it is a little too effective at times and yet doen't provide enough info or options as to how to open something.

[NWR_insanolord]

I started using Spaces recently but gave up on it because of how it works with multiple monitors. I don't need Spaces for the Finder, though, because I have TotalFinder, which is amazing (Chrome-style tabs in the Finder, among other things).

My biggest problem with Lion is that Expose (now Mission Control) no longer shows windows that are minimized. That screws up my whole workflow. Hopefully that gets fixed in an update. Launchpad is awesome once you've tweaked it correctly (including using third-party stuff that lets you hide apps from it without deleting them). I also use LaunchBar a lot of the time.

[Ceric]

On my Mac I don't think I barely use any of the Lion Feature and I noticed since updating my Mac has had a harder time resuming.  Things like taking a sec or two to give me mouse control.  Never did that before and its a current system.

[ThePerm]

new vesta photo

[MaryJane]

http://news.yahoo.com/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-175427367.html

[oohhboy]

It's about time the human brain got used in such a productive way as CPUs in cloud computing considering how powerful a single human brain is compared to any computer on earth. It certainly a better use than what it is being done currently with things like gold framing and captacha breaking.

[BlackNMild2k1]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/scientists-youtube-videos-mind/story?id=14573442
UC Berkeley Scientists 'See' Movies in the Mind

California scientists have found a way to see through another person's eyes.

Researchers from UC Berkeley were able to reconstruct YouTube videos from viewers' brain activity -- a feat that might one day offer a glimpse into our dreams, memories and even fantasies.

"This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery," said Jack Gallant, professor of psychology and coauthor of a study published today in Current Biology. "We are opening a window into the movies in our minds."

Gallant's coauthors acted as study subjects, watching YouTube videos inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine for several hours at a time. The team then used the brain imaging data to develop a computer model that matched features of the videos -- like colors, shapes and movements -- with patterns of brain activity.

"Once we had this model built, we could read brain activity for that subject and run it backwards through the model to try to uncover what the viewer saw," said Gallant.
[...]
The researchers say the technology could one day be used to broadcast imagery -- the scenes that play out inside our minds independent from vision.

"If you can decode movies people saw, you might be able to decode things in the brain that are movie-like but have no real-world analog, like dreams," Gallant said.

tl;dr - they reconstruct a imagery from your brain to see what you saw.


They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, they also say that the eyes never lie.
Pretty soon, they will be telling showing everything you see.

No more murder mysteries or confusing crime suspect sketches.
No more wondering "what the **** are you talking about!?" or "WTF were you thinking!?"
No more having to listen as as you fumble around trying to tell a story you can't seem to recall all the details too, or the lies you made up about what happened last night after the bar.
Also no more wondering WTF happened last night after the bar and how did you end up at some strangers house with thong on your head, blood on the wall and a dead hooker in the pool.

Soon they'll be able to just plug you up to a machine and just play back all the events, including those sick thoughts you had that about that certain someone/thing, right there on the screen for you to watch all over again.

[MegaByte]

Soon they'll be able to just plug you up to a machine and just play back all the events, including those sick thoughts you had that about that certain someone/thing, right there on the screen for you to watch all over again.

It only works if there's brain activity, so first they'd have to find a way to make you think about the events. (That is assuming that they can get a good enough signal in the first place -- active visual images are much easier than other signals).