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Comment Re:I work in he rental industry (Score 1) 685

by torqer (#28425757) Attached to: Blu-ray Adoption Soft, More Still Own HD DVD

Normal Viewing Distance is really the essential part.

To fully notice the detail 1080p you need to sit approx 7 feet away from a 50 inch TV.
If you bought one of those 32inch TVs... Try 4 feet away. You'll only start to the benefits of 720p at 9 feet.

If you watch your TV from across a decent sized room, you need an exceptionally large screen to really soak in the benefits.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/
Image

Broke Counties Turn Failing Roads To Gravel 717

Posted by samzenpus from the let-civilization-collapse-initiative dept.
To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - FreedroidRPG 0.10.2 release 1

Submitted by
Arthur Huillet
Arthur Huillet writes: "Hello,

version 0.10.2 of FreedroidRPG was just released.

FreedroidRPG is an isometric 3D role playing game inspired from Diablo and Fallout.
(http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/info.php)

This new version, mostly unchanged from the -rc4, focuses on making the development for the
game easier, exported some hardcoded data into files, made the map
editor a bit more usable and other major and minor tweaks.

The source code and a win32 binary package are available at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=54521&package_id=58238&release_id=517900

That all being said, here is what we expect to deliver in the next version of FreedroidRPG:

- Magic is going to make a comeback, after a total redesign aimed at making it more original and
funnier
- New maps
- More dialog translations
- Small improvements on the interface

Updates will be announced on our website at http://www.freedroid.org/.

Contributors for dialog translations, mapping and sound effects are welcome. We are also looking
for testers, especially for platforms such as Mac OS, Linux/PPC, *BSD, etc.
You can contact us on #freedroid on irc.freenode.net, or by mail to freedroid-discussion AT
lists.sourceforge.net."
Communications

Submission + - Why do people tolerate false advertising? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
DA-MAN
DA-MAN writes: "Why is it that we, in the US, tolerate deliberate false advertising? ISP's advertise unlimited use or don't advertise limits, yet they get away with it. Mobile carriers claim to give unlimited mobile to mobile, never stating that they really mean mobile to mobile within the same network. Why is it that we allow companies to redefine "unlimited" and so forth?"
Space

Submission + - Making the sky searchable

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Computer scientists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have teamed up with astronomers at New York University on an ambitious project. You can send them a picture of the sky above your head and their special software will identify the stars that are in the image. In other words, their computer program will make night sky searchable. The team is organizing and mixing images coming from astronomical databases with images coming from 'all kinds of cameras, amateur telescopes, large ground-based telescopes, and space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope.' This specialized search engine is still in beta-version, but is available to both professional and amateur astronomers. Read more for additional details and pictures of the Lagoon Nebula before and after processing."
Wii

Submission + - Wii Opera SDK Detects Motion on All 4 Wii Remotes (hullbreachonline.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Wii Opera SDK at HullBreachOnline.com has just been updated in the past week to make use of the opera.wiiremote class of the Wii's Internet Channel, unlocking Z roll and positioning information from all four Wii Remotes for developers of JavaScript-based games and applications. This augments existing SDK classes for button detection and SuperFX Chip like 3D graphics. Previously the WiiCade API was the only big player, but it seems to have some competition now..."
Software

Would You Install Pirated Software at Work? 848

Posted by Cliff from the questionable-PHB-ethics dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I am an IT professional, and due to budget constraints, I have been told to install multiple copies of MS Office, despite offering to install OpenOffice, and other OpenSource Office products. Even though most of the uses are for people using Excel like a database, or formatting of text in cells, other programs are not tolerated. I have been over ruled by our controller, to my disagreement. I would never turn them in, but I am in tough place by knowing doing something illegal. I want to keep my job, but disagree with some of the decision making on this issue. Other than drafting a letter to the owners of the company on how I disagree with the policy, what else can I do?"
Media

Submission + - TV Station posts public employee salaries online

Submitted by ncstockguy
ncstockguy writes: The CBS affiliate in Raleigh, NC has generated some controversy by posting names and salaries of local public employees online. After complaints from a large number of public school teachers, and a news story on a competing station, WRAL removed the names of the employees and now just has positions and pay posted online. No question public employee pay is public record, but the question remains, just how easy should it be for casual snoops to look up an individual's pay? http://www.wral.com/news/public_records/?show_all= 1 http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle &id=5267279
Censorship

Submission + - Digg.com: Site Is 'Aligned With the Users'

Submitted by
Strayline
Strayline writes: "http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131520/article.h tml Digg users fought back as the company began removing posts that contained a software key needed to crack the encryption used to limit copying of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The company was pressured by a lawsuit to remove these posts from it site. However user revolt made that impossible and Digg was forced to allow the posts to stay and the story of the removal become the top story with over 35,000 Diggs."
Music

Submission + - RIAA Backs Down Again in Chicago

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA seems to have a problem making things stick in the Windy City. It has once again backed down in BMG v. Thao, after suing a misidentified defendant. Same thing occurred last October in Elektra v. Wilke. In the Thao case, the RIAA based its case on information that the cable modem used to partake in file sharing was registered to Mr. Thao. However, it turned out that Mr. Thao was not even a subscriber (pdf) of the ISP (pdf) at the time of the alleged file-sharing, and therefore did not have possession of the suspect cable modem at that time."
Space

Submission + - Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies at 84

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "The original Mercury 7 astronauts are now down to 2, with the passing of Wally Schirra. The 5th American to fly into space and the third to orbit the Earth, Schirra joined NASA in April 1959. He was the only Mercury 7 veteran to fly all three of the pioneering NASA space series (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo). He died of natural causes, according to his family; he had been suffering from cancer but it was not immediately clear if this was a contributing factor in his death."
Slashback

Submission + - More on the Vista speech security "flaw"

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: MS blogger Long Zheng posts a funny response to recent speech recognition Vista security hole: "Last week, the media went schizophrenic over the Windows Vista speech recognition 'loophole' which allowed anyone with a microphone to have full access over your computer. Granted, you must also be partially-deaf, turned your speaker volume to full, carefully place your microphone next to the speakers, turn on speech recognition and train your speech profile as if you were someone else..."
The Internet

Submission + - Beyond Mashups: The Future of Photo Mapping

Submitted by Dr_Jones
Dr_Jones writes: Since the release of Google Maps, Mashups have become increasingly popular. Web sites like Flickr and Panoramio allow users to associate photos to a point on a map. However, both of these fail to show in which direction each photo was taken, limiting their real-world application. A new Web-based system called Mapwing provides a solution to this problem by enabling users to specify both the location and directional view of an image. Also, users have the option of placing their images on a custom drawn map instead of the traditional Google Map. The result is a birds eye view alongside a first-person walkthrough of a location. Here are several interesting examples to explore on the site: Apple's Campus, Rockefeller Center, and A Beach in France.

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365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year

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