[CentOS] Power-outage

Sun Jul 3 12:21:31 UTC 2011

At Sun, 3 Jul 2011 04:30:37 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> On Sunday 03 July 2011 00:51:29 Robert Heller wrote:
> > > > There is (in the SciFi world) the idea that someday
> > > > 'desktops' in the current / conventional sense may completely vanish
> > > > from the universe, taken over progressably by laptops, tablets, smart
> > > > phones, wearable computers (motherboard == shirt, monitor == shades,
> > > > power supply == hat with embedded solar cells, virtual mouse/keyboard
> > > > via motion sensors in your shirt sleves/gloves, etc.),
> > > 
> > > I could in principle imagine all that coming in the future, but the
> > > "monitor == shades" thing is just only Fi with no Sci in it. A human eye
> > > cannot focus properly on any object which is closer to the eye than 10-15
> > > cm (depending on the eye quality), so there is absolutely no way one can
> > > use shades or contact lenses or something similar as a monitor,
> > > regardless of technological levels of any human or alien races (James
> > > Bond notwithstanding). Unless of course one surgically adapts the eye
> > > lense itself, in which case the person would not be able to see anything
> > > else... ;-)
> > 
> > Hmmm... There were a CS prof. and some students at UMass when I was
> > working there playing with a computer in a backpack with a 1" monitor
> > suspended from a head mount in front of one eye.  Not anything like
> > 10-15 cm.  If 10-15 cm is the minimum distance, what about telescope
> > eyepieces, camera viewfinders (including the little video ones on
> > camcorders), or binoculars? *I* know I can see images in the video
> > viewfinder of my Sony Hi8 camcorder just fine, with my right up close
> > (the old camcorder I have does NOT have a 3" swing out monitor). It is
> > all about the optics.
> 
> I wouldn't know about that CS prof. at UMass. Have any info that can point me 
> to him? Other examples you mention all have to do with lenses that twist the 
> trajectory of light to make distant or small things visible. When using 
> telescopes, binoculars, camera viewfinders, microscopes, and other stuff like 
> that, you are actually looking *through* a (transparent) device to see 
> something else outside, you're never looking *at* a device, or something that 
> is inside it.

I don't remember who was doing the experiements.

It would likely be a 1" camcorder viewfinder 'monitor', that is designed
to be right up against one's eye.

> 
> In contrast to that, actually drawing a picture which is 1-2cm away from the 
> eye is a completely different game. Just take a piece of paper, draw something 
> on it and put it 2 cm in front of your eye. The drawing will get blurred. And 
> it's not because you used a thick pen, but because the eye lens cannot focus 
> on such a short distance.
> 
> Now, you might consider putting some convenient lenses between the paper and 
> the eye, to fix that problem. I don't have time do actually do the calculation 
> of the properties of such a lens, but it's an interesting problem in geometric 
> optics. You would want a convex lens that moves the focal point of the eye 
> from 15 cm to 2 cm. The trick is to find a transparent material which would 
> have a refraction index high enough that it can do what you want, while still 
> be thin enough to fit between the monitor and the eye (ie. it needs to be 
> thinner than 2 cm). I don't know if ordinary glass or any other material would 
> do that or not. But it could be an interesting exercise for a student of 
> geometric optics. :-)
> 
> The bigger issue is the fact that, even if you manage to find an appropriate 
> lens to move the focal point to 2 cm, it is going to distort everything else 
> you see behind it. In principle you could devote one eye for the monitor-only, 
> making the whole apparatus non-transparent, and use the other eye for the 
> outside world. That would, however, destroy the 3D vision of both the outside 
> world and eventual monitor 3D picture (because you can wear it only on one 
> eye).
> 
> Actually, now that I think more and more about it, I am not so sure it is not 
> doable. However, it is far from being trivial, and it certainly cannot be 
> something that can be as thin as ordinary shades. It has to be bulky and heavy 
> (due to the optics inside) and is bound to impair your vision of the real 
> world.
> 
> If I get some free time, I might even try to calculate the properties of such 
> a system of lenses, but I'm skeptic that the cool "monitor-shades" will ever 
> be possible. ;-)

OTOH, I would expect that people in the 1890's would consider the Apollo
Moon landings as 'impossible'...  So, given enough advances in optics and
monitor techology: LCD screens that can switch to complete
transparency or to varying levels of transparency, and things like
programmable lenses / optical systems, it becomes concievable.

> 
> But now we are getting quite OT here... ;-)
> 
> Best, :-)
> Marko
> 
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>                                                                                                            

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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