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Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 53

Look for Acoustic Pulse Recognition. It's pretty well exactly what you just said.
It uses a series of microphones, usually four of them on a glass pane, to locate contact.

I would personally love such a setup for a glass desk top or keyboard tray, with the letters and buttons lightly etched into the glass. I'm sure creating imperfections in the glass would require a more rigorous calibration, but I believe it would be well worth the trouble.

I can also imagine using more than four microphones would allow for vastly more detailed input, but I really have no clue.

Comment Throw it all out the window!v (Score 1) 725

I vote we remove the calender all together.

Screw it.

I only buy calenders to have a sexy girl cover the empty space on the wall.

While we are at it, we can turn our 12 and 24 hour rotary dials into a partitioned dial with a light portion and a dark portion.
The light part would say, 'I'm awake,' and the dark would say, 'I'm sleeping,' and both portions would be adjustable to suit one's lifestyle.
This could easily be adapted into a watch that simply changes color via an LCD display, or some sort of over-complicated shutter system.

I also vote the government issue us free 18 inch ( or larger ) digital picture frames to fill the new free space on the wall with cycling pictures of beautiful women.

----

On a different note, why not be creative?

A *year* would consist of five months and have nothing to do with orbit. The length of the month would scale in such a fashion that the length of the previous month, multiplied by two, subtract half the original length would give the length in days of the month to follow. This would essentially solve the problem of aging past 30.
X*2-(0.5*X)
The first year would be 403 days if you started with a 31 day month. Reasonable. The following year would have 3043 days, and the year after that you'd be over half way through your life.

This system would also make it much easier to draw time-lines for those idiotic school projects.

Comment Re:Progress (Score 5, Insightful) 299

"I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years"
"Fukushima Daiichi?"

I wouldn't call that an accident. One must keep in mind that it was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. What else would you expect?

If it were an error due to an operator or faulty equipment, then that would be a different story.

Comment Simple. (Score 1) 398

So.. They spend all this money on such a thing, and then what?
Auto darkening welding helmet anybody?

I have one and I can stare at the sun for hours, then walk inside and see just fine.
It's not a horribly expensive solution to getting blinded.

The company that develops these will probably get into the business selling welding helmets shortly to ramp up their sales. ;)

Comment Saskatchewan! (Score 1) 344

Why save sunlight when it's only light out for 8 hours a day? ;)

Whether there's DST or not, I'd be in the same boat I'm in now,
My digital alarm clock is 98 minutes ahead, which forces me to do math every time I look at it because I'm too lazy to set it.

It's great for when your waking up and your concept of time is severely warped... or when that night time insanity sets in.

Comment Forevah (Score 1) 254

At my current state of ignorance, I rarely open my phone. I ignore most every text messages and rarely ever make calls... So the phone is basically sitting dormant most of the time. If I don't open my phone to play tetris, my battery will last upwards of two weeks.

During regular use, ( If you can call it that ) battery life drops to about 7 days.

Good ol Sanyo.

I also *had* an iPhone, until I dropped it. Once. The call quality was horrible and the battery does not last as long as it should, being a *phone*. It's quite useless when it dies and your somewhere remote...

Comment Re:Legally blind != Totally blind (Score 1) 302

Precisely. I was about to make the same point, but I found yours. ;)

Stolen off the internet: ( I'll probably be in court next week for this! ) :P
"In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. ... Approximately *ten percent* of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. "

So, as you said, by no means does 'Legally Blind' make him totally blind.

Comment Fire solves all problems. (Score 1) 242

Most secure?

Burn it. End of story.
Nobody is likely to be extracting your precious data off a melted glob of plastic covered in carbon.

As an alternative, for those who are ambitions... Shred it, shred it again, microwave the shreds, then burn the microwaved shreds as well as the microwave. ( if it has not already caught fire )

It's a trifle cheaper to just burn it. @_@

Google

Submission + - Google+1 - Combining Friends With Your Searches (blogspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google released their newest social-network feature recently, calling it ‘Google +1’. And although 50% of my posts have to do with Google (yeah I am somewhat obsessive), I think this is one of their neatest ideas yet. G+1 is built into Googles new profile pages, and is a simple way to say “This is a website worth checking out, but not worth tweeting”. It is a little button next to a Google search result, that says +1 (duh). When you click the button it adds an update to the +1 page on your Google profile; so that all of your Google pals can see what you've been searching (Click HERE to see my recent +1s).

But what really is making this +1 feature look promising is its ability to weed out the useless search results. You know, searching ‘RoboTechEd’ and getting your favorite blog instead of some random TV show. Then, when you +1 it, Google will start to catch on that RoboTechEd is an amazing blog, and bump it higher on the search results list. Getting you the results that you are actually looking for!

To sign up for G+1 go HERE, it is still in development stages, but won’t affect your performance (so there’s no reason not to). Also, check the video below for more info, and make sure to +1 RoboTechEd on Google! And Tweet this post so your friends can, and their friends can too! (a guy can dream cant he?)

Submission + - Revamp Your Website Without Losing The Top Ranking (articleforfree.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Are you willing to change the website design? Of course you’d go for professional Web designers, but the point of discussion is not about choosing expert designers. Rather, the key issue is how you would go for slow and steady change of website by incorporating advanced website design technologies in the manner where your website rankings are not hampered.

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