Comment Shocking! (Score 1) 115
In other shock news today the American military-industrial complex suggested that the world become more paranoid and adversarial.
Comment Straight, white, rich men. (Score 1) 591
I can't help but wonder why it's always straight, white, rich men who always proclaim the end of privacy? The total lack of empathy that comes with being abjectly devoid of anything approaching discrimination or prejudice is a wonder to behold.
Comment Re:For Reference... (Score 1) 120
I call bullshit.
I've been recently been wiring my drumkit for recording and have been finding that actions that I consciously perform -- flams in particular -- are timed in the 2-10ms range. Hell, 150ms is rolling through four fingers on a surface less than twice a second. Pretty much everyone can do better than that.
Sure, the OP's figures above might apply to single-shot actions, as opposed to repeated or sequential actions, but 150ms is still a damn long time.
Comment Re:What's zip+4 anyway? (Score 1) 185
Let me google that for you. Or repost the link from a couple of posts back.
Comment Zip+4 uniquely identifies 1E+09 entities. (Score 2, Interesting) 185
Does the use of Zip+4 strike anyone as a little odd? After all, it allows for 1E+09 entities, and the population of the US is only around 3E+08. Sounds like a serial number to me.
Comment Re:Brilliant! (Score 1) 275
Oh? Please show working.
Comment Re:Brilliant! (Score 4, Informative) 275
what's the point of giving uber-hard math, where kids just drop off and don't give a shit anymore, and doesn't stop them from getting their diploma in the end anyway? I went to maybe 3 math classes in my last year, and still got my diploma with flying colours. It's not about making it easier, it's about making it useful.
Perhaps some of the point is, for once in the cess-pool that is the modern, utility and mediocrity obsessed tertiary education system, to attempt to provide broad-ranging bases of abstract knowledge to the students who actually want to learn, and are capable of doing so. That way we'll at least get some people who can work at the coal face of knowledge creation as opposed to just another batch of clueless, money-grabbing code monkeys?
The sort of useful you're talking about is concerned with places where all the interesting, hard problems have already been solved. Sounds dull as dishwater if you've got a brain in your head.
Comment The inevitable... (Score 1) 252
Up next, dogs and cats living together.
Comment Strangely, I'm finding Writer to be just fine. (Score 1) 467
I wrote a novel during Nanowrimo this year, and I've been using OpenOffice Writer to format the text into a nice looking book layout. I've previously been a Word 2003 user for about five years, and I have to say that I really don't find anything problematic with the transition.
I've got Writer on an Eee 1005HA-V with 2GB of RAM and it seems to load acceptibly quickly, and whilst the interface is a little different to Word 2003, there's nothing particularly missing or broken that I've encountered as yet: some features are actually better (multipage zoom out, for instance). Doing nice looking book layout is about the same level of hassle that it is in Word, and it seems to perform around about as fast for the task. When I run Writer on my quad-core desktop it screams along doubleplusfine.
On the basis of my experience, I'm really left kinda skeptical at the level of bad experience other people report with Writer. I previously tried OO version 2.x and discovered it sucked rather radically, but version 3+ seems a perfectly useable tool. Perhaps when I get to writing a technical document or textbook in Writer, I'll bump into problems, but I just don't see it for now.
I messed around with versions of Word past 2003 a few times in various workplaces, but none of them ever provided any functionality I really needed, and just shuffled the other stuff around in the interface to irritating effect.
Given these thoughts, I think Microsoft should certainly be worried: I'll probably never install Word again.
Comment Re:Save Our Asteroids (Score 1) 110
"I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die."
Wow! Nice stealth misogyny, dude!
Sensor To Monitor TV Watchers Demoed At Cable Labs 302
An anonymous reader writes "Cable operators at the semi-annual CableLab's Innovation Showcase have informally voted as best new product a gizmo that can determine how many people are watching a TV. Developed by Israeli company PrimeSense, the product lets digital devices see a 3-D view of the world (the images look like something from thermal imaging). In other words, that cable set-top box will know whether three people are sitting on the sofa watching TV and how many are adults vs. children. Do we really need cable and/or video service operators knowing this? It all happens via a chip that resides in a camera that plugs into the set-top box."
How They Built the Software of Apollo 11 220
LinuxScribe tips a piece up at Linux.com with inside details on the design and construction of the Apollo 11 code. There are some analogies to open source development but they are slim. MIT drafted the code — to run on the Apollo Guidance Computer, a device with less grunt than an IBM XT — it had 2K of memory and a 1-MHz clock speed. It was an amazing machine for its time. NASA engineers tested, polished, simulated, and refined the code. "The software was programmed on IBM punch cards. They had 80-columns and were 'assembled' to instruction binary on mainframes... and it took hours. ... During the mission, most of the software code couldn't be changed because it was hard-coded into the hardware, like ROM today... But during pre-launch design simulations, problems that came up in the code could sometimes be finessed by... computer engineers using a small amount of erasable memory that was available for the programs. The software used a low-level assembly language and was controlled using pairs or segments of numbers entered into a square-shaped, numeric-only keyboard called a Display and Keyboard Unit... The two-digit codes stood for 'nouns' or 'verbs,' and were used to enter commands or data, such as spacecraft docking angles or time spans for operations." Reader Smark adds, "The Google Code Blog announced today that the Virtual AGC and AGS project has transcribed the Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module code used during the Apollo 11 moon landing. The code is viewable at the VirtualAGC Google Code Page."
Comment Custom firmware project? (Score 1) 263
In a lot of the above comments, the primary source of dissatisfaction seems to be the firmware. Given that Amazon is doing firmware updates over the air, writing custom firmware should be possible without even having to crack the device. Anyone have any data in this regard? What does the Amazon EULA have to say?
Tactical Camera
137
An anonymous reader writes "What do you get when you mount a Nikon D200 with a standard rifle stock? Why a Tactical Camera of course! One that no
reporter would be caught with in a war zone or covering any armed action anywhere. What started out as a tongue
in cheek project for April Fools wound up being quite the successful demonstration of concept. It features a fully functional
trigger; it has controls for operating the shutter and auto focus; and for the patient shots, it has a mounted bipod. Carry sling optional."
UK Government To Monitor All Internet Use 446
nk497 writes "The UK government has further detailed plans to track all communications — mobile phone calls, text messages, email and browser sessions — in the fight against terrorism, pedophiles and organized crime. The government said it's not looking to see what you're saying, just to whom and when and how. Contrary to previous plans to keep it all in a massive database, it will now let ISPs and telecoms firms store the data themselves, and access it when it feels it needs it." And to clarify this,
Barence writes "The UK Government has dropped plans to create a massive database of all internet communications, following stern criticism from privacy advocates. Instead the Government wants ISPs and mobile phone companies to retain details of mobile phone calls, emails and internet sites visited. As with the original scheme, the actual content of the phone calls and messages won't be recorded, just the dates, duration and location/IP address of messages sent. The security services would then have to apply to the ISP or telecoms company to have the data released. The new proposals would also require ISPs to retain details of communications that originated in other countries but passed over the UK's network, such as instant messages."
