Comment Re:Carpet (Score 1) 95
You know what, they install the tin ceiling stuff in almost every cheesy new bar around here.
Comment Re:Why? (Score 0) 359
Yeah.
I think huge android phones are a manifestation of a collective iphone inferiority complex.
Comment Re:Screen size (Score 1) 359
Yeah, well I don't carry my phone around in a purse.
Comment Here and There (Score 1) 351
Smartphones are just tools, but they are designed to give us access to media. Media is wonderful and empowering, but when it's trivial and we spend most of our free time accessing it (watching TV, reading magazines or whatever), we're conditioned into thinking that what's important is not Here, but There. That's a drag on focused, disciplined use of time. And I believe it ultimately degrades the sense of self of the user. Unless they're dumb!
Have you noticed that most good group conversations deteriorate once a dumb/assertive person gets the idea to force everyone into watching an internet video? Then of course, the next most dumb/assertive person makes everyone watch another video.... At least ads before videos are putting a slight kibosh on this.
Comment Re:Magazine flipping (Score 1) 267
I always thought this was because my mother's Japanese...
Comment Re:Media vs tech media (Score 1) 364
Always felt like other fast food chains make unhealthy food their "thing," meanwhile, McDonalds gets stuck putting pictures of people doing healthy lifestyle things on all their bags.
Newt Gingrich's Amazon Book Reviews 275
lee1 writes "Newt Gingrich has written 156 book reviews on Amazon, at one point becoming ranked in the site's top 500 list. Most of the books are cheesy political thrillers, but
the newly announced presidential candidate is also trying to learn about quantum physics, and shows good taste, 'strongly recommending' Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter." Gingrich is an early joiner; I'd like to see the books on the shelves of the other likely presidential candidates, too.
Comment Re:I prefer origins to be mysterious (Score 1) 242
What prejudice. Or self-hate, or whatever.
Hope these tools of yours help you sort the aggressors fast enough.
Does your partner make you hang out with too many dumb folks?
Are 625 Pixels Enough To Identify Sex? 143
mikejuk writes "A Spanish research team have patented a video camera and algorithm that can tell the difference between males and females based on just a 25x25 pixel image. This means that there is enough information in such low resolution images to do the job! They also demonstrate that an old AI method, linear discriminant analysis, is as good and sometimes better than more trendy methods such as Support Vector Machines..."
Microsoft's Kinect SDK Can Track and Listen 85
mikejuk writes "Microsoft has given more information on the Kinect SDK to be released later in the year. It will include the body tracking software that is used by the Xbox version of the Kinect, allowing it to track up to two people at the same time and stay locked on to them even if they leave and re-enter the frame. In addition, they promise to allow the microphone array to be used with the PC's speech recognition API. So, not only will future Kinect projects be able to track you — they can listen to what you say."
60% of AOL's Profits Come From Misinformed Customers 301
satuon writes "Ken Auletta's big New Yorker piece on AOL (subscription only) this week revealed an interesting detail about the company's inner workings. According to Auletta, 80% of AOL's profits come from subscribers, and 75% of those subscribers are paying for something they don't actually need. According to Auletta: "The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers, many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don't realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail. 'The dirty little secret,' a former AOL executive says, 'is that seventy-five percent of the people who subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it.'"
Comment "The Way Things Work" (Score 1) 312
Remember that great "The Way Things Work" book with all the nice illustrations and cute wooly mammoths?
Live-action TV series.
CIA Launches WTF To Investigate Wikileaks 402
krou writes "In an effort to investigate the impact of the leaked diplomatic cables, the CIA have launched the Wikileaks Task Force, commonly referred to at CIA headquarters as 'WTF.' 'The Washington Post said the panel was being led by the CIA's counter-intelligence centre, although it has drawn in two dozen members from departments across the agency.' Although the agency has not seen much of its own information leaked in the cables, some revelations (such as spying at the UN) originated from direct requests by the CIA. The Guardian notes that, 'WTF is more commonly associated with the Facebook and Twitter profiles of teenagers than secret agency committees. Given that its expanded version is usually an expression of extreme disbelief, perhaps the term is apt for the CIA's investigation.'"
The Sensible Body Scan Alternative 354
An anonymous reader sends in a CNN article that looks at airport security from more reasonable point of view, suggesting that looking for every last micro-gram of potentially explosive material is a waste of time, since very small quantities of explosives are unlikely to significantly damage a plane. The author also recommends incorporating parts of the Israeli method of securing airplanes — look for the bomber, not the tools. Quoting:
"Clearly everything should be done to prevent explosives getting on board an aircraft in quantities sufficient to cause structural failure and bring the plane down. But is it worth chasing lesser quantities that would result in zero or minimal damage? The enhanced pat-down that some find so offensive is designed to search for these small amounts. It often ends with a swab being taken to test for explosive residues. Technology does have a role to play, but imaging is not the solution. Operator fatigue sets in after short periods of time staring at computer images. That's why there are reports that contraband items have been smuggled through X-ray units used to scan carry-on bags. The aim should be to detect high explosive in quantities that are sufficient to cause significant damage. We don't need a machine that takes pictures of the human body. It makes more sense to develop a detector that clearly discriminates between high explosives and human tissue or water."
Laser Camera Can See Around Corners 97
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at MIT have developed a laser camera that can 'see' around corners and take pictures of a scene not in its direct line of sight. The camera system fires extremely short bursts of light that can reflect off one object, such as the open door of a room, and then off a second object inside the room before reflecting back to the first object and being captured by the camera, after which algorithms can use the information to reconstruct the hidden scene exploiting the fact that it is possible to capture light at extremely short time scales, about one quadrillionth of a second. By continuously gathering light and computing the time and distance that each pixel has traveled, the camera creates a '3D time-image' of the scene it can't directly see. 'It's like having X-ray vision without the X-rays,' says Professor Ramesh Raskar. 'We're going around the problem rather than going through it.'"
