Comment Re:Watt not unit of energy (Score 1) 74
How many kilojoules per public elementary school is that?
Comment Re:Never apply DRM to someone else's work (Score 1) 392
Yeah, newer macs will kick in HDCP if you look at them the wrong way. About a year and a half ago, we were running a generative visual app (Jitter) on a mini feeding an HDMI capture card on a PC (gen'ing alpha masks for a Watchout system). We could see boot-up through the capture card, but as soon as the quickTime component initialized, the output was borked.
lesson learned: stick with analog
Comment Where's the Z axis?? (Score 2) 298
..Or Y, depending on your UCS orientation
64 speakers and they're by and large constrained to one plane?
I do electroacosutic design for a company that does real '3D' sound installations using an equally spaced 3D array of speakers. The effect is unreal!
I mean, these guys are Dolby, so I'm sure its a 'sound' design (sorry, sorry), but I'm just curious as to why there's not a high and low ring (or at least an upper and lower L/C/R). There's crazy spatilization tricks you can do with low double-digit millisecond delay times, maybe if they're taking those sorts of approaches.
I wonder if the composer is has to address each channel, or if they're given a subset of channels and math does the rest.
I know our up/down perception isn't as keen as the other two dimensions, but still.. 64 speakers? Curious to learn more...
Comment Re:Tragic... (Score 5, Funny) 469
Eyah, been there. 5 weeks of traveling as a single male passenger on one way tickets, booked by a 3rd party.
I might as well have been wearing a "Death to Infidels" T-shirt.
Comment Re:Repurpose the telephone cabling (Score 2) 300
second that, I've gotten away with using CAT3 in a pinch, but testing the longest runs is a good place to start. Hell, it might not even be the end of the world if it negotiates @ 10Mbps. Presumably there's local power @ the WAP location?
How many rooms? (or 'keys' as they say in the hospitality business)
Comment Hamster Power (Score 1) 436
That's burning hamsters to turn water into steam which spins a turbine, right? Idunno, I'd think other animals may yield higher BTU/hr...
Comment Re:I wonder what would happen... (Score 1) 386
Thank You! I've always thought this was such a simple problem: If you claim I owe you more money then it costs to have you 'taken care of' AND you're a scum-sucking bottom feeder, well... seems like maybe you want to rethink your strategy...
Kidding aside, I'm not preaching violence as a solution but I am surprised that through all these witch hunts, no one has managed to piss off 'the wrong person'. Maybe I've just watched 'Fight Club' one too many times.
Comment Re:Tampering! (Score 1) 262
As someone who has deployed an almost identical product from primesense 18 months ago in a commercial application, I can say the hardware + SDK cost us about 40 times as much. MUCH more expensive indeed...
Comment Re:No, Wait... (Score 1) 764
Its a simple math problem: Before you claim I owe you 1.5m dollars, it would be wise to consider I could just have you killed for significantly less. I'm a firm believer that not nearly enough of these people are set on fire every year.
Denver Airport Overrun by Car-Eating Rabbits 278
It turns out the soy-based wire covering on cars built after 2002 is irresistible to rodents. Nobody knows this better than those unlucky enough to park at DIA's Pikes Peak lot. The rabbits surrounding the area have been using the lot as an all-you-can-eat wiring buffet. Looks like it's time to break out The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
Winnie-the-Pooh Parodied In Wookie-the-Chew 58
pickens writes "Erik Hayden writes in the Atlantic that children will see endearing portraits of Chewbacca rendered in the style of "Winnie-the-Pooh" in the book of drawings "Wookie the Chew," a tribute to the combined genius of George Lucas, A.A.Milne and E.H.Sheppard, by artist James Hance released on September 1st. Samples from the book are available at Hance's web site. Hance bases his right to parody Winnie-the-Pooh on Fair Use as parody under which certain uses of copyrighted works, which would otherwise be considered infringing, are permissible. Interestingly enough, the rights to the original Winnie-the-Pooh were the subject of an 18-year feud in which Walt Disney corporation fought off a challenge to its ownership of the rights ending in 2009 when a judge in Los Angeles struck out a claim against Disney lodged by the family of Stephen Slesinger, a comic book pioneer who bought the copyright to Pooh in 1930 from the bear's British creator, A.A. Milne. Stories of Pooh's adventures were originally created by Milne in the 1920s, based on a toy bear owned by the author's son, Christopher Robin."
Submission + - Top 10 worst Microsoft products of all time (pcauthority.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: Every company has its hits and misses. Microsoft, however, seems to have a tendency to miss a lot more often than other companies. Perhaps it's because the company has been so big for so long, or perhaps it's because people are always so eager to point out the faults of the Redmond giant. But no matter what the reason, Microsoft's list of flops is long and legendary. PC Authority has taken a look at some of the worst Microsoft products of all time, including DOS 4, which was released in 1988 and soon became known as one of the all-time worst versions of the operating system. In 1989 Microsoft rolled out the 4.01 update, thus providing an early case for the concept of waiting a year on any Microsoft software update. The story also notes an interesting pattern — the quality of Microsoft's new operating systems seems to jump with every second release.
Submission + - The World's First Open-Source Car
head_dunce writes: "The world's first open source car was was introduced at AutoRAI in Amsterdam. The car's web site will soon allow you to download the entire vehicle's genetic makeup (specifications, technical drawings, etc.) Although this isn't the only open source car project, this one looks like it may have enough of a community behind it to work. — The first thing I'm changing is the user interface, it's ugly..."
Submission + - Google "airbrushes" Katrina history
An anonymous reader writes: Google using pre-Katrina satellite pictures of New Orleans. Not clear when it switched from images with storm damage. House panel calls change an "injustice" to storm's victims. Google says it switched to images with improved detail.
Submission + - 48% of Americans reject Evolution
An anonymous reader writes: There's an interesting if insane survey at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17879317/site/newsweek / — Given a straightforward question if evolution was "well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community," 48% of Americans said "no." Furthermore, 34% of college graduates said they accept the Biblical story of creation as fact.
