saw stuff like this years ago. cant find the exact tech demo that i originally saw that used 3 mics for triangulation, but this video is pretty close. even mocked up a rough version (low precision, slow response time, but pretty damn good for an afternoon worth of work and very little experience with arduino) tied to a projector in my shop. customers had a blast with it, thought it was the coolest thing in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxDHiwheK8w&feature=related

hey, dont give out my wife's email address!

if i had mod points, i would mod you up. i couldnt have said it better myself. i spent some time working for a company that sold educational supplies and was part of the product development group. i was amazed when i first started at how much hardware was available to teachers, but how little software there was. and most teachers didnt have a clue how to effectively use what they had. we spent more time helping teachers develop processes and effective ways to use the technology then we did developing software. it really was sad, i would go into a classroom and ask the teacher what they used their whiteboard for, or how they used technology in teaching and usually it amounted to showing power point. occasionally a teacher would show us something a little interactive (usually a science teacher), but most of it was very basic. worse yet, my boss had these grand ideas of turning the classroom into an "educational arcade" and thought that we needed to produce nothing but games. so it was an uphill battle from multiple sides. it wasn't until we developed some interactive textbooks and showed a few teachers how to use them that we got any decent results. really, the more we studied the situation, the more we found that the average teacher needs nothing more than a projector for some powerpoint, and (for the slightly more advanced ones) a "blackboard" style homework/assignment tracking system.

I think you all missed the point of what i was saying - I understand and appreciate function over form. I get that it was designed for a purpose. What I'm saying is that it's ugly. Not that it isn't capable of it's role, or that it's a bad design, just that it's ugly. It may be the best damn helicopter for the job, and if it is, then I give my full support (for what that's worth). But I will still stand by my opinion that it is and ugly aircraft. I think some of you took what I said way to seriously, it was nothing more than an opinion and a bit of humor. If I had wanted to talk about the merits of the design I would have commented on on the inherent stability of the twin rotor configuration or asked a question about the flight handling characteristics since it has no tail rotor. That being said, I still say it would have been way cooler if they had modified a 222 - disclaimer: this was not a serious statement intended to incite debate, it was nothing more than an attempt at humor.

I get the whole function over form thing, and I appreciate it most of the time. Heck, I was in the military, so I completely understand that function comes first. But that is one seriously stupid looking helicopter. Maybe other people like it, and if you do, that's fine. But I think it looks like it was designed by herp and derp. Couldn't they have modified a Bell 222 or something cool looking?

you talking about china or isreal?

Good move on Apple's part- buy the developer and retain the patents for anything new and novel coming out of there, but continue to outsource the fabrication. It's everything that was good about vertical integration, minus the bad (costs of retooling, slow response times). Couple this with locked in deals with manufacturers and Apple is setting itself up for an even stronger market domination. Say what you want about them (evil, controlling, walled-garden, doo-doo heads), they're not stupid over there. And keep in mind, the company is now run by the guy who was in charge of the supply chain. We're gonna be hearing alot more stories like this in the near future. Love them or hate them, Apple is running their business very very right.

Couple of reasons from the office I work at - end of year deadlines means code gets rushed in Oct/Nov in order for testing and review before Christmas. Also, those of us who haven't taken all of our vacation time yet are forced to take time off, disrupting projects. Last minute client changes (to the projects due at the end of the year) add to the pile. And, the stress of the holidays plays a part as well (mostly because we're asocial geeks who are dreading the onslaught of family get-togethers and forced social situations). Usually by December, we've got our projects off for review and testing so there isn't much code being written, and the code that is being written is in response to problems and is a chance to take rushed, bad code and make it a little bit less bad. That's my little piece of anecdotal evidence.

he wrote vista? that explains a lot

but those aircraft have quite a bit more power than a Super Hornet. As someone who has worked on a carrier and operated catapults, I can tell you from experience that Hornets and Super Hornets couldn't get off the deck unassisted. They (especially the Hornets) are rather under-powered. A flat deck provides the versatility of aircraft the Navy requires, as well as helicopter landing space, and general aircraft parking space.

I've worked for a number of tech companies that dont actually delete anything, the simply mark the record "deleted" in the database. It's a pretty common practice that didn't really ever get talked about until it came to light that Facebook did it. Let's face it, once something is out there, it never ever really goes away, whether it be on Facebook or somewhere else,

I agree whole heartedly with you, but I have to comment on one point- "Otherwise, make them stick to the enumerated powers and made them side with freedom over lobbyist bribes" - freedom doesnt pay anywhere near as well as lobbyist bribes. Our politicians dont care one bit about freedom, liberty, the constitution, or the people. They care about money. If freedom paid well, we'd be the free-est damn place on Earth.

Let's think about how business works - if there are 10 companies doing a particular thing, at any given time, 1 or more will decide that they want to do more of the particular thing. They will then use leverage/bribery/corporate espionage/collusion/etc to acquire 1 or more of the others. Over time, this will continue until the original 10 are consolidated to the lowest number possible to avoid anti-trust/monopoly actions. And, during all of this time, they will continue to produce whatever thing that the general public will most readily consume. This usually entails things of medium to low quality (high quality is expensive and, in the case of tangible products, has a low replacement rate), dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator and mass marketed with loud, brightly colored advertising. This has been the way of things for many years, this will be the way of things for many years to come. There are a few different models that have managed to squeak by briefly, but theyre rare and often not much better.

Agreed. Frameworks are nice, but I'm finding them to be very very very overused. Take a minute and really look at your project. Does it actually need a framework? Does the use of a framework save enough time in development to justify the additional overhead? If so, is that because you (or the people working on it) have been taught frameworks as opposed to learning actual programming (laugh if you want, I've met far to many people who know a bunch of frameworks, but couldn't write the most basic raw code if their lives depended on it), or because it actually streamlines the development process? The majority of the projects I've worked on haven't actually benefited in any way from the use of a framework when they've been properly evaluated. Not saying yours is the same, but make sure you take a good, long, objective look at it before you decide on something. My $.02, take it or leave it.

From a small, but vocal, group. And it's starting to lose steam. We do ok about getting riled up, but our politicians know full well that the vast majority won't get off the couch, and the few that do will settle down and fall back in line soon enough.