The other thing is that many of us on
/. may not quite grasp how normal people use computers, and how much simpler something like live tiles could be. How many computers do you see that have a desktop full of icons, people who can't manage simple things like bookmarks etc.
I see what you're saying, but I think Windows 8/Metro is a failure in this regard, mainly because Microsoft didn't go "whole hog" with this new design ethos. If you think of an iPad, it really does reduce complexity for the end user, by getting rid of so many of the things that a normal desktop computer does. This is somewhat annoying if you're trying to do something more complicated, but it does indeed simplify the computing experience for many people.
But in Windows 8, it seems that you have all the usual complexity of the conventional desktop, plus this new Metro thing. So now your average user not only has to manage all the files on the hard-drive, and all the icons on their desktop, and all the windows in the usual desktop/window interface... they additionally have to figure out and manage live tiles. Worse of all, they now have two competing metaphors: desktop windows and live tiles, which sometimes work together, sometimes duplicate functionality, and sometimes are totally distinct ("I remember being able to make this work... but was it a Metro app or a regular desktop app I did it in?").
One of the most basic principles in UI design is consistency. Being consistent lets users develop muscle memory, simplifies their mental model for the computer, and lets them predict the behavior of new, unfamiliar software. Being a slave to consistency can be bad (and stifle innovation), but conversely if you break consistency you need to have a really good reason: the gain in productivity or power must be sufficient to offset the user confusion. (This is at least one reason that we stick with so many arbitrary conventions in our computers: they may not be the best conventions but by being consistent people can at least learn them.)
Windows 8/Metro breaks consistency in a major way. Not just in breaking with tradition (which can be justified if the new interface is sufficiently better), but by having internal inconsistency between the two competing UI metaphors. By not being committing to one or the other, MS is making both of them more confusing.
You may argue that novice users will just stick to the simplicity of Metro, and never be bothered by the complexity of the traditional desktop (which will be available for power users that need it)... but I am unconvinced to say the least. Legacy software will jolt the user back into the desktop. Even novice users have probably used a conventional desktop and will try to get back into it. Metro in general does not appear to reproduce all the functionality of the conventional desktop. So users will now have to flip between the two different modes all the time. In fact some have also argued the opposite: that novice users will stick to the desktop and ignore Metro (or just use it as a fancy app launcher). This still adds needless complexity. Either way, this is a UI disaster.
It's been said so many times that it's almost pointless to say it again: Metro looks like a very nice UI solution for mobile and tablets. But whoever thought it was the future of desktop computing needs to have their head examined.
Lasers with cylindrically symmetric polarization states are predominantly based on whispering-gallery modes, characterized by high angular momentum and dominated by azimuthal emission. Here, a zero-angular-momentum laser with purely radial emission is demonstrated. An axially invariant, cylindrical photonic-bandgap fibre cavity8 filled with a microfluidic gain medium plug is axially pumped, resulting in a unique radiating field pattern characterized by cylindrical symmetry and a fixed polarization pointed in the azimuthal direction. Encircling the fibre core is an array of electrically contacted and independently addressable liquid-crystal microchannels embedded in the fibre cladding. These channels modulate the polarized wavefront emanating from the fibre core, leading to a laser with a dynamically controlled intensity distribution spanning the full azimuthal angular range. This new capability, implemented monolithically within a single fibre, presents opportunities ranging from flexible multidirectional displays to minimally invasive directed light delivery systems for medical applications.
In answer to your question, no this isn't a hologram, although in some sense it achieves a similar goal. Regular screens control the emission of light as a function of position. Holograms control not just the intensity of the emanating light but also the phase; this phase information carries all the extra information about the light field passing through a given plane. This new device controls the intensity and angular spread of the light coming from each pixel, which is also thereby controlling the full shape of the light-field being emitted from the plane of the screen.
With both a hologram and this directional-emission concept, you're controlling the angular spread of the light coming from each point, are thus fully specifying the light-field, and thus creating 'proper 3D' that is physically-realistic and fully convincing. (Assuming you have enough angular resolution in your output to create the small differences the eye is looking for, of course.)
As for why they are using a laser as the source light, it's mostly because they want detailed polarization control. (Coupling lasers into fiber-optics is well-established technology for telecommunications.) By controlling the exact mode of the laser-light propagation through the fiber, they can control the polarization of the light that shines out of the fiber, and thereby use conventional tricks to modulate that light. In particular, in an LCD screen, small fields are used to re-orient liquid-crystal molecules, which then either extinguish or transmit the light (based on whether the orientation of the LC molecule is aligned with the polarization of the light).
Overall it's an ingenious trick: have a light fiber emit light with controlled polarization. Then have a series of LC pixels on the outside of the fiber, whose orientation can now not just modulate the intensity of emission as a function of position along the fiber, but also as a function of angle for each position along the fiber. The end result is that you control the light field emanating from the device, and so can (in principle) reconstruct whatever full-3D image you want.
Of course the prototype in the article only has four LC channels along the fiber. Enough to create a different image on the front vs. the back of the screen. Not nearly enough to create realistic 3D. Also they are only controlling the angle in one direction (around the fiber axis), and not the other (the tilt angle with respect to the fiber axis). But scaling up of the concept (where the fiber has thousands of LC polarizers for various angles) should allow for some really amazing display technology.
Is there a word for where both eyes' 'beams' are pointing to?
That's usually called convergence. It's one of at least 5 ways that humans infer distances and reconstruct the third dimension from what they see:
1. Focal depth: based on how much the eye's lens has to focus
2. Convergence: based on the slight differences in pointing of the two eyes
3. Stereoscopy: based on the slight differences between the left and right image
4. Parallax: the different displacements/motions of objects at different distances (e.g. when you move your head)
5. Visual inference: reconstructing using cues like occlusion, lighting, shadows, etc.
As long as all 5 of those don't agree, the image won't look 'truly 3D': it will seem wrong at in many cases can cause headaches or nausea (your brain is getting conflicting information for which there is no physically-correct solution). The reason that current 3D systems fail is that they don't match all 5. A regular 2D movie (or a photograph, etc.) gives you #5 and that's it. This works actually remarkably well. Glasses-based 3D systems try to trick you by giving each eye a slightly different image, which adds #3, but since 1,2 and 4 are still wrong, the overall effect feels weird: your eyes still have to point at, and focus on, the movie screen. (It's even worse for 3D-TV since you are focusing on something relatively close to you.)
The reason this happens is precisely because a movie/TV screen has spatial resolution (each pixel is different) but no angular resolution (the image on the screen is the same regardless of where your head/eyes are positioned). If you could add back in the angular information (with enough resolution), then you could create an arbitrary light field, that was indistinguishable from a physically-realistic light field. If done right in terms of angular resolution and computing a physically-correct light field, then this would give you 1,2, 3, and 4. (And 5 also, if what's being projected is a realistic scene with proper shadowing and so forth.) If the light field is properly created, each eye will get a slightly different image (since each eye is at a slightly different angle with respect to the screen); these images will change as you move your head around; and your eyes will in fact NOT focus or converge on the location of the screen: they will focus and converge on the virtual image being created by the light field emanating from the screen. (This is similar to a hologram, which can be a two-dimensional sheet and yet reconstruct the light field that would come from a three-dimensional object, and can create virtual images that are not in the plane of the sheet.)
The prototype being demonstrated in this article is not good enough to do that, mind you: they don't have enough angular resolution to trick your eyes. However that's where this technology is headed, and if it's done at high enough resolution, we will finally get proper 3D: where we're not just tricking your eyes, but where we're actually projecting the correct light field towards the viewer.
The presence of entropy in incoherent electromagnetic radiation permits semiconductor light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to emit more optical power than they consume in electrical power, with the remainder drawn from lattice heat [1,2].
Basically, the device is converting high-entropy thermal energy into even higher entropy incoherent electromagnetic radiation (light output). So, the second law of thermodynamics is not violated. Essentially, this device is acting as a way to connect thermal degrees of freedom to E&M degrees of freedom. The system, wanting to increase entropy as much as possible, tries to spread energy through all these degrees of freedom, which means creating some photons at the expense of some of the heat in the material.
It's a neat bit of physics, and will probably have implications for device efficiency and other applications.
Policy makers
... knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the file-sharing site Napster emerged, and that direct employment in the industry had fallen by more than half since then, to less than 10,000.
These statements are not backed up. Given the industry's history of exaggerating their claims, I put the onus on them to prove that these numbers are in any way correct.
Consider, for example, the claim that SOPA and PIPA were “censorship,” a loaded and inflammatory term designed to evoke images of crackdowns on pro-democracy Web sites by China or Iran.
Yet the author's use of "theft" and "piracy" are totally neutral, without any intent to evoke particular emotions in the readership?
When the police close down a store fencing stolen goods, it isn’t censorship, but when those stolen goods are fenced online, it is?
This is being purposefully obtuse. The claims of 'censorship' were about collatoral damage: that the laws would have a chilling effect and would be open to abuse. No one was directly equating "shutting down online counterfitting sites" with censorship. (Although, of course, the difference between shutting down a physical store and an online presence is indeed that the Internet is all about communication/data-transfer, and curtailing communication is essentially censorship.)
They also argued misleadingly that the bills would have required Web sites to “monitor” what their users upload, conveniently ignoring provisions like the “No Duty to Monitor” section.
This is an interesting claim. But if the author is sure that the "No Duty to Monitor" section protects conveyors of content, then why not spell that argument out in detail? Why not quote from the bill, and explain how this protection works? That is the very crux of the disagreement, it would seem, yet the author just mentions it in passing.
Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don’t recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact.
This is perhaps the only valid point in the entire piece. It is true that Wikipedia and Google (in very different ways) strive for some measure of neutral transmission of information. I can see how one could argue that using their position as trusted sources of information to spread their own viewpoint is an abuse. However:
1. This is begging the question, by assuming that what Wikipedia and Google were reporting was incorrect. But that is precisely what the debate is about: is it true that SOPA/PIPA would lead to collatoral censorship? If the claim is true (and as far as I can tell, it is), then Wikipedia spreading that information was just another manifestation of them spreading truthful statements.
2. These entities do have a right to let their opinion be known.
3. The opinion piece provides no reason why these companies would be misinforming the populace. What is it they hope to get out of it? Their stated reason is simple: that they wanted to stop the legislation because they couldn't continue operating under the legislation. The author provides no evidence, not even spurious reasoning in fact, for any other motivation. So, one could accuse them of being mistaken, but to accuse them of pushing an ideology is wrongheaded.
“old media” draws a line between “news” and “editorial.”
This is laughable. Mainstream media has a well-documented history of injecting bias into their reporting (everything from their selection of what to cover, to how events are described, to thinly-veiled editorials/opinions masquerading as 'balanced reporting').
The violation of neutrality is a patent hypocrisy: these companies have long argued that Internet service providers (telecommunications and cable companies) had to be regulated under the doctrine of “net neutrality”
...
This is a red herring of the highest order. The debate about net neutrality is about a very specific kind of neutrality.
And how many of those e-mails were from the same people who attacked the Web sites of the Department of Justice, the Motion Picture Association of America, my organization and others as retribution for the seizure of Megaupload, an international digital piracy operation? Indeed, it’s hackers like the group Anonymous that engage in real censorship when they stifle the speech of those with whom they disagree.
I see. Equating the massive outpouring of opinion with a minority of people who engage in illegal hacking (I'm surprised he didn't pull out the "terrorist" card). He can't fathom that the public actually believes what they are saying. He is certain that they are either misled or criminals (possibly both).
Perhaps this is naïve, but I’d like to believe that the companies that opposed SOPA and PIPA will now feel some responsibility to help come up with constructive alternatives.
... The diversionary bill that they drafted, the OPEN Act, would do little to stop the illegal behavior and would not establish a workable framework, standards or remedies.
So in one sentence he bemoans that the opposition is not coming up with any alternatives, and two sentences later mentions offhand that the opposition has, indeed, suggested an alternative. But he doesn't like that alternative. Moreover he calls that alternative 'diversionary'. As we can see, he is certainly above using "loaded and inflammatory terms" to make his point.
We all share the goal of a safe and legal Internet. We need reason, not rhetoric, in discussing how to achieve it.
The irony of course is that the original legislation was being pushed through without any public discourse. They wanted it to happen without the input of a myriad of stakeholders (like, the public). Only now that the entire process has been laid bare do they call for reasoned discussion. Again, his entire essay is incredulous that the public has the audacity to disagree with his plan. He is annoyed not so much with what Google and Wikipedia's opinions are, but that they brought this debate to the people... and that in an open, reasoned debate, his extremist plans cannot survive for long.
"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!" -- Alan Perlis