I'm in no way a dashboard hater, but reports are great because:
* I can see them everywhere I can access my email. This is not always the case when a dashboard runs off an internal server.
* Getting an email in the morning is a reminder to check the data. If I have to remember to go to a dashboard I'll forget if I'm busy and could miss something important.
* Reports in my email are easily searchable without fiddling with date ranges in a console - assuming adequate history even exists since the latest time someone thought it would be a great idea to rebuild the dashboard.

Dashboards are great for sharing a realtime view but they aren't a replacement for reports. If you think they are, you probably seriously misunderstand your users.

It's more complicated than that.

Polygon-based engines support (and modern games heavily depend upon) things like:
* Dynamic lightling and shadows
* Deformable environments
* Transparency
* Reflections
* Fast collision detection
* AI route planning

Now go back and look at that demo video and tell us where you see those things.

Also, polygon based engines are still pretty efficient because of:
* Texture re-use
* Bump mapping to improve realism
* Shaders to implement things like motion blur, ambient lighting, etc.
* LOD maps
* Spatial partitioning

Laser mapping is cool because it snapshots a static environment at a moment in time. It would take a lot of effort to produce a polygon model ground-up with the characteristics you'd want for high performance in a modern game. But there appear to be numerous benefits over what has been demonstrated here so far. Perhaps a better approach (for games, at least) would be to work on a project that helps generate or enhance a polygon-based model from the mapping.

I've seen demos of what I believe to be this technology before, but what it seems to lack is any kind of interactivity with the environment/objects in the environment. From what I can tell in this latest video they've added an FPS handgun overlay and some poorly animated ferns.

The point is: Cool, you can render a nice point cloud. Can you actually do interesting things with it / what we want in most games or virtual environments, or can you simply render a nice point cloud?

As an Android fan, let me just say that these problems do not just stop with encryption. Unless you root your phone, you can't back it up properly because Google doesn't let you have access to your own files on your own f'ing device. Apparently nobody sees a problem in the fact that users are forced to make the decisions to either run stock or be able to access all their files. I'm sure it's to reduce piracy or something, but it's a nightmare. Unless your apps keep their data in an accessible folder or you let them keep all your settings in the cloud (if they even support that), just upgrading your handset to this years Nexus is going to mean data loss.

I get that it makes the security stronger, but Android badly needs some kind of super-user mode that makes the entire filesystem accessible to selected apps.

*unreasonable. Fatfinger moment..

Abridged version:

Regardless of how the government acquires the information, is the government performing unreasonable searches against the people? One might argue that inspecting every persons communications is both and reasonable and cannot possibly qualify for probable cause.

How hard is it to run an independent circuit that scrapes your OS and process executable memory and compute a verified hash? Do these systems run any kind of meaningful IDS at all?

Let's hope that the logic to brick is in some piece of code that can be subverted via a custom OS build and not something close to the radio receiver.

Also: I will laugh really hard as soon as the blackhats release a tool to bypass security and auto-brick, and then someone heads to the nearest mall on a Saturday with a high-power radio.

Thanks, AC!

For anyone else interested, I found this video on PatchMatch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

While those results look impressive, in some of the demos where objects are seamlessly moved around, how are they filling in the original background (or what looks like it)? The video largely explains how the model is textured, lit, environment mapped, rendered with shadow projection with calculated perspective and depth of field, but I didn't hear much about re-filling the background. I assume they're cloning or intelligently filling texture ala photoshop, or perhaps in all cases where they showed something being animated it was a new clone of an existing object into a new area of the photo?

if (session.timeelapsed() > 1800 || rand() % 3 == 0)
        newsfeed.setmode(TOP_STORIES);

Let's also not forget that back in the days of MS-DOS there wasn't a consistent audio API and if the game developer didn't support your card, integrated or otherwise, you were SOL. The only (buggy) standard was SoundBlaster Emulation, unless you had the $ for a Gravis Ultrasound.

To the original question, yes, discrete cards are still worth it if you have decent headphones and want a decent dac/amp to power them. If you're half deaf from years of loud music or your headphones/earbuds/speakers cost less than $100 you probably don't care.

As a pedestrian in CA, LOL!

Cars almost always charge me while the walk light is on so they can get around the corner a few seconds faster. The cases where they don't are a rarity. I have been struck by a car doing this while the walk light was still on (not even counting down yet). Despite the fact that this happens nearly every time I cross the street I have never, ever seen anyone being pulled over for it, even when there have been police vehicles sitting in plain view at the other junction on the intersection.

This surprises me, because the city could print money doing this. Obviously they don't care. Oh, but jaywalking in the wake of someone getting hit and garnering publicity, that you will get a ticket for.

a. Gas isn't too cheap in the US. If anything, it looks like commodities investors alone drive the price independent of supply/demand.
b. The cost should go on registration. As we keep getting cars that are more and more efficient (and even run on electricity), we'll charging road users very unevenly. If this was an emissions tax that might be okay, but I think it isn't (?).

How awesome for you.

Some people believe that privacy is a right and work to ensure that as many people of possible have means of protecting that right. I say thank you to those people.