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Movies

Motus Lets Users 'Film' Within Any 3D Environment 89

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-need-a-zoe dept.
Zothecula writes "In the creation of the film Avatar, director James Cameron invented a system called Simul-cam. It allowed him to see the video output of the cameras, in real time, but with the human actors digitally altered to look like the alien creatures whom they were playing. The system also negated the need for a huge amount of animation – every performance was captured in all its blue-skinned, pointy-eared majesty as it happened, so it didn't need to be created from scratch on a computer. Now, researchers from the University of Abertay Dundee have built on the techniques pioneered by Simul-cam to create a new system that lets users act as their own cameraperson within existing 3D environments."
Hardware Hacking

Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car 90

Posted by Soulskill from the eagerly-awaiting-his-xwing-project dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you've owned any of Sony's PlayStation consoles then there's a good chance you've also played one of the Wipeout games. It's a high-speed racing game that helped make the PSOne popular, and it's now been recreated using a remote control car. The project is the idea of Malte Jehmlich. He decided to create a track out of cardboard reminiscent of the Wipeout tracks. He then hooked up a wireless camera to a remote control car, and modified the controller to be an arcade cabinet with a wheel and forward/reverse selector."

Submission + - Privacy watchdog probes Google's Wi-Fi data set.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In what appears to be a move that copies the actions in Germany, the Australian government has also announced an investigation into Google's use of data collected from open wifi access points. Normally when people access open wifi access points without explicit authorisation, we call them hackers. But because it is Google, it is ok? I think not. Whoever made the decision to allow this to be done, at Google, should be fired.
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/privacy-watchdog-probes-googles-wifi-data-harvest-20100519-vckv.html#comments
Science

Submission + - ‘Spider’ molecules behave like nanorob (futurity.org)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: Researchers have programmed an autonomous molecular “robot” made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track. The work is a step toward developing molecular-scale medical devices that can reposition or even rebuild themselves to accomplish different tasks.
Three of the legs are made of enzymatic DNA, which is DNA that binds to and cuts a particular sequence of DNA. The spider also is outfitted with a “start strand”—the fourth leg—that tethers the spider to the start site (one particular oligonucleotide on the DNA origami track). “After the robot is released from its start site by a trigger strand, it follows the track by binding to and then cutting the DNA strands extending off of the staple strands on the molecular track,”
Apple

Submission + - Just how open is Adobe? (flickr.com)

Submitted by
yosun
yosun writes: "Adobe has recently launched several campaigns, on the web and in-print, that turns "HTML5 (Flash-alternative) vs Flash" into "Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice". Politics appears the game, but what about the tech? Given that both Adobe and Apple founders likely had their original letter massively edited by an editor to be understandable by the general public — and, the unfortunate fact that most tech writers aren't developers — few seem to understand that at the root of this mess, it really is about Flash being a resource-hog with security risks...

While Adobe is criticizing Apple for being otherwise, has anyone paused to ask: Just how open is Adobe?



— my take —

Before Adobe bought Macromedia, there was a choice between using Adobe and Macromedia (although most graphics designers probably used a mix of the two). After several failed attempts at creating their own Flash software (it was Macromedia who made Flash an open standard — not Adobe) and a stable in-browser viewer for pdf, Adobe acquired Macromedia. Designers rejoiced at this move — for the hope that compatibility among their favorite Adobe and Macromedia software might be achieved with the next CS suite. Instead, it took Adobe over three years to figure out how to properly import a .psd to Flash, and even now with CS5, seamless compatibility among Adobe products is still "somewhere out there." Adobe has had a long history of haphazard release dates, faulty software, and pseudo-IDE's that don't deliver to their hype. Even with Flash being a so-called "open standard," many third party developers have suffered with Adobe's fickle releases. Whereas Apple has released WebKit — the source, in full — Adobe hasn't done that with Flash, and they aren't exactly doing stellar work in fixing all that's wrong with Flash.

And, they're really sidestepping the point — it isn't about the open web or Apple's rejection of Flash — it is about Adobe being unable to create a better Flash. Instead of sending out the battalion from PR, why can't Adobe just go back to the drawing board and fix Flash?"
Apache

Submission + - Apache support for Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) (osnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FreeBSD developer Robert Watson has announced an Apache GCD MPM that uses Apple's Grand Central Dispatch concurrent programming framework, and cites 1/4 the number of lines of code for threaded MPMs to accomplish the same goals. Currently, the MPM is being distributed on Mac OS X Forge, and runs on FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Apache developer Paul Querna has proposed merging it to the Apache trunk. There are also ongoing efforts to port libdispatch to Solaris and Linux, so hopefully it will work there soon as well!
Open Source

Getting Started Contributing Back To Open Source 99

Posted by kdawson from the foot-in-the-door dept.
markfreeman writes "The one burning need I have felt over the last year was to get involved with open source as a contributor. I have wanted to help with documentation, advocacy, and most of all, with programming. Here's the story of how I got started, thanks to openhatch.org (which calls itself 'an open source involvement engine') and how you can too."
Education

Texas Schools Board Rewriting US History 1238

Posted by kdawson from the nation-chosen-by-god dept.
suraj.sun picked up a Guardian (UK) piece on the Texas school board and their quest to remake US education in a pro-American, Christian, free enterprise mode. We've been keeping an eye on this story for some time, as it will have an impact far beyond Texas. From the Guardian: "The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favor of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy. ... Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting right-wing views on religion, economics, and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement, and the horrors of slavery. ... Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the 'significant contributions' of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the Civil War. ... Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favor of examining scientific advances through military technology."

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