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Communications

CMU Video Conference System Gets 3D From Cheap Webcams 94

Posted by timothy from the little-bit-disorienting dept.
Hesham writes "Carnegie Mellon University's HCI Institute just released details on their "why-didn't-I-think-of-that-style" 3D video conferencing application. Considering how stale development has been in this field, this research seems like a nice solid step towards immersive telepresence. I was really disappointed with the "state-of-the-art" systems demoed at CES this year — they are all still just a flat, square, video stream. Hardly anything new. What is really cool about this project, is that researchers avoided building custom hardware no one is going to ever buy, and explored what could be done with just the generic webcams everyone already has. The result is a software-only solution, meaning all the big players (AIM, Skype, MSN, etc.) can release this as a simple software update. 'Enable 3D' checkbox anyone? YouTube video here. Behind the scenes, it relies on a clever illusory trick (motion parallax) and head-tracking (a la Johnny Lee's Wiimote stuff — same lab, HCII). It was just presented at IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia in December."
Red Hat Software

Red Hat Set To Surpass Sun In Market Capitalization 221

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that's-a-milestone dept.
mytrip writes "In what may come to be seen as a deeply symbolic moment in the history of operating systems, Red Hat is on the verge of surpassing Sun Microsystems' market capitalization for the first time. Sun, perhaps unfairly, represents a fading Unix market. Red Hat, for its part, represents the rising Linux market. Given enough time for its open-source strategy to play out, Sun's market capitalization will likely recover and outpace Red Hat's."

Comment Re:Where the moneys at yo! (Score 2, Informative) 203

by mkaushik (#26512791) Attached to: One In 100 Carry Mutation For Heart Disease
Unfortunately for you, Indians aren't exactly flocking to the US for treatment. It's actually the other way round, since quality medical care is available for a fraction of the US price here (for those above the poverty line), which has spawned a whole "medical tourism" industry. The doctors here are as good as anywhere else in the world, and make very good money. Most successful doctors I have known have been very compassionate people. Good luck to you, kid.
The Internet

China Makes Arrests To Stop Internet Porn 204

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-you've-got-a-lot-of-jails dept.
thefickler writes "The Chinese Government is expanding a crackdown on Internet pornography. Xinhua news agency, which is owned by the government and can safely be used for reporting in China, says the campaign to scrub the country's Internet of 'vulgar' content has so far resulted in 29 criminal cases. Police have ordered the removal of 46,000 pornographic and other 'harmful' items from websites. The latest crackdown comes after official warnings of rising social unrest as the economy slows. It's no coincidence that this year is the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square, or, to use the acceptable nomenclature, 'the June 4th incident.'"

Comment Re:Kill!!! (Score 1) 855

by mkaushik (#26271033) Attached to: Tales From the Support Crypt
That's not surprising. It happens with regularity in my company. QA often reports errors by taking snapshots of the error screen/kernel panic with a reasonably high megapixel camera, since the errors are often screen corruption and kernel panics. IMHO it's a perfectly legit thing to do, taking camera shots, they just need to have enough details so that us devs don't go blind trying to spot the details.
Businesses

Amazon.com Reporting This Holiday Season Their "Best Ever" 314

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the at-least-someone-doesn't-need-a-bailout dept.
In a refreshing break from all the doom and gloom, Amazon.com is calling this holiday season their best ever. Reporting a 44 percent rise in the number of items sold, they are refusing to provide actual dollar amounts, so it is still a very subjective measurement. "Amazon customers ordered more than 6.3 million items on Dec. 15, compared with roughly 5.4 million on its peak day last year, the company said. It shipped more than 5.6 million products on its best day, a 44 percent rise over 2007, when it shipped about 3.9 million on its busiest day. The company did not provide dollar figures and wouldn't say whether the average value of orders had changed, and the jumps it reported Friday are in line with increases Amazon has seen since it started releasing the figures in 2002."
Networking

Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest 213

Posted by CmdrTaco from the guess-who-this-includes dept.
dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)
Censorship

The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn 933

Posted by timothy from the in-a-perfect-world-the-topic-would-not-arise dept.
BenFenner writes "Two out of the three Virginia judges involved with Dwight Whorley's case say cartoon images depicting sex acts with children are considered child pornography in the United States. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer noted the PROTECT Act of 2003, clearly states that 'it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.'"
Space

Simulations May Explain Loss of Beagle 2 Mars Probe 98

Posted by timothy from the gremlins-are-everywhere dept.
chrb writes "Researchers at Queensland University have used computer simulations to calculate that the loss of the US$80 million British Beagle 2 Mars probe was due to a bad choice of spin rate during atmospheric entry, resulting in the craft burning up within seconds. The chosen spin rate was calculated by using a bridging function to estimate the transitional forces between the upper and lower atmosphere, while the new research relies on simulation models. Beagle 2 team leader Professor Colin Pillinger has responded saying that the figures are far from conclusive, while another chief Beagle engineer has said 'We still think we got it right.'"

Comment The jOS OS from MIT open courseware (Score 1) 112

by mkaushik (#26108749) Attached to: Cornell University FPGA Class Projects for 2008
My school (Texas) has a course where were build up this OS, step by step. Right from the bootloader to it's full multitasking glory. By far the most useful/fun course I have ever taken in my life. Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-828Fall-2006/Assignments/index.htm

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