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AMD

Submission + - Intel settles NY antitrust case (247wallst.com)

Submitted by clustermonkey
clustermonkey writes: Intel Corporation and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009. Intel did not have to admit any violation of law (if there ever was any) nor did it have to admit or deny that the allegations in the complaint are true. Most importantly, the settlement does not require any changes to how the company does business. The settlement includes a $6.5 million payment that is “intended only to cover some of the costs incurred by the New York Attorney General in the litigation.” Here's the full settlement, and Intel's official press release.
Social Networks

"David After Dentist" Made $150k For Family 234

Posted by samzenpus from the is-this-real-life? dept.
It turns out recording your drugged child pays pretty well. 7-year-old David DeVore became an overnight sensation when his father posted a video of his ramblings after dental surgery. To date that video has made the DeVore family around $150,000. Most of the money came from YouTube, but the family has made $50k from licensing and merchandise. From the article: "The one seemingly minor decision to make the video available all over the Internet set off a whirlwind of changes for the DeVore family. Within just four days, 'David After Dentist' received 3 million views on YouTube and the younger David quickly became an Internet celebrity. His father quit his job in residential real estate (did we mention they live in Florida?), and the family started selling T-shirts featuring cartoon drawings of their son post-dental surgery."
Hardware

Submission + - Lightsabers on sale? (wickedlasers.com)

Submitted by clustermonkey
clustermonkey writes: For only $200 you can own a handheld Class IV portable laser device that looks and operates remarkably like a lightsaber, capable of setting skin and clothing on fire and causing instant blindness. Sounds improbable? dangerous? Nah, let the kiddies play, the manufacturer posted this warning so everything will be fine:
WARNING: Extremely dangerous is an understatement to 1W of laser power. At close range, this Class 4 beam will cause immediate and irreversable retinal damage. Use with extreme caution and use only when wearing proper safety goggles with an O.D. of 3+ is required and 4.4+ for longer exposures. Customers will be required to completely read and agree to our Class 4 Laser Hazard Acknowledgment Form.
Ok, I admit I want one despite the danger. While using it in the manner depicted on Star Wars would be insane, I can think of a number of applications where something like this would be fun and useful.
Robotics

Submission + - PR2 Robot Now Challenges Humans At Pool (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: The whiz kids at Willow Garage have worked another robotic wonder. This time the Silicon Valley startup taught a PR2 robot to play billiards – in just one week! Using open source operating system ROS the team was able to teach the robot how to identify the pool table, locate a shot, and make it. Watch the PR2 sink shot after shot in the video.

Comment Re:interestingly, themselves sometimes touted (Score 3, Insightful) 341

by clustermonkey (#32164324) Attached to: Methane-Trapping Ice May Have Triggered Gulf Spill

Yeah, 'cause artificially limiting the use of available energy sources while not providing any viable alternatives won't deepen the energy crisis.

We need innovative people to come up with viable alternatives, not endlessly complain about the impacts of available options. If someone actually comes up with a feasible, scalable alternative to fossil fuels, the switch to using that idea would just take care of itself due to market forces. The ugly truth is - there's currently no real alternative to switch to and complaining without providing viable alternatives won't change that.
Image

Google Street View Shoots the Same Woman 43 Times 106

Posted by samzenpus from the get-your-face-out-there dept.
Geoffrey.landis writes "Terry Southgate discovered that his wife Wendy appears on the Google Street View of his neighborhood not once or twice but a whopping 43 times. From the article: 'It seems as if the Street View car simply followed the same route as Wendy and Trixie. However, Wendy was a little suspicious that the car was doing something on the "tricksie" side. Several of the Street View shots show Wendy looking with some concern towards the car that was, well, to put it politely, crawling along the curb. "I didn't know what it was doing. It was just driving round very, very slowly," Wendy told the Sun.' The next best thing to being a movie star — a Street View star!"

Comment Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it (Score 1) 2044

by clustermonkey (#31543762) Attached to: Health Care Reform

In case of 100% private health care, everybody (even insurance companies!) earns money when someone is sick. In the case of government run health care the government loses money if people are sick.

So where exactly do you think the "government" money goes? Er, to the doctors (and possibly insurers) of course - the ones the government pays to treat the sick people. And where does the government get "it's" money? That's right, the government HAS NO MONEY. It's all the taxpayer's money, paid by the taxpayers (not to be confused with the group consisting of all American citizens). So the doctors still make a profit (via the government), and the people still pay that profit (via taxes), and the government sits in the middle taking money out of the system to fund the shuttling of money around. Adding another party as a paid middleman, and disguising the true cost of healthcare through taxes doesn't (can't) make it any cheaper.
Graphics

Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83

Posted by timothy from the nice-of-them dept.
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."

Comment Try Task Coach (Score 1) 428

by clustermonkey (#30465168) Attached to: What Does Everyone Use For Task/Project Tracking?

"Task Coach is a simple open source todo manager to manage personal tasks and todo lists. It grew out of Frank's frustration that well-known task managers, such as those provided with Outlook or Lotus Notes, do not provide facilities for composite tasks. Often, tasks and other things todo consist of several activities. Task Coach is designed to deal with composite tasks."

http://www.taskcoach.org/

It's open source (GPL v3), runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows, is desktop-based (not web-based), and comes in a variety of different languages . It even has some useful features for your situation, like the ability to track the amount of time spent on any task or subtask. I've used it for a while and found it to be easy to use and very helpful.

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