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Comment Re:The problem: (Score 1) 377

by SpeedBump0619 (#45642911) Attached to: Study: People Are Biased Against Creative Thinking

Also...It sometimes help to remember that half of us have below average intelligence.

I'm not sure what this statistical tautology has to do with anything.

The average of 101, 101, 101, and 97 is 100, but 3/4 of the sample is above the average. Also, since it's an extremely large sample size and there's a relatively large number of people who are exactly average intelligence, the number of people below (and above) the average will be less than 50%.
AT&T

The Next Big Fiber Showdown: Austin 230

Posted by timothy from the att-dsl-sure-leaves-me-unimpressed dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google might have big plans to wire America with high-speed broadband, but at least one carrier isn't willing to let Google Fiber have a free run: AT&T has announced that it will deploy a '100 percent fiber' network in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds of up to 1GB per second. That location is auspicious, given how Google's already decided to make Austin the next city to receive Google Fiber. Whereas Google plans on connecting Austin households to its network in mid-2014, however, AT&T promises to start deploying its own high-speed solution in December. But there's a few significant catches. First, AT&T's service will initially roll out to 'tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin' (according to a press release), which is a mere fraction of the city's 842,592 residents; second, AT&T has offered no roadmap for expanding beyond that initial base; and third, despite promises that the service will roll out in December, the carrier has yet to choose the initial neighborhoods for its expansion. Could this be a case of a carrier freaking out about a new company's potential to disrupt its longtime business?"

Comment Re:Don't mess with the eyes (Score 1) 111

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QrnwoO1-8A&list=TLtms-Tz7YPQk

Given this demo from two years ago using a single hacked Kinect I have to believe that the technology is only going to improve. As long as the camera isn't occluded the 3D point data can be used to map sections of the 2D image onto a mesh created from the 3D point cloud. Then the camera can be virtually re-positioned and the scene rendered. Most of this is pretty easy using commodity hardware rendering engines.
Mars

Patching Software on Another Planet 96

Posted by Soulskill from the no-do-overs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sixteen years ago, the Mars Pathfinder lander touched down on Mars and began collecting about the atmosphere and geology of the Red Planet. Its original mission was planned to last somewhere between a week and a month, but it only took a few days for software problems to crop up. The engineers responsible for the system were forced to diagnose the problem and issue a patch for a device that was millions of miles away. From the article: 'The Pathfinder's applications were scheduled by the VxWorks RTOS. Since VxWorks provides pre-emptive priority scheduling of threads, tasks were executed as threads with priorities determined by their relative urgency. The meteorological data gathering task ran as an infrequent, low priority thread, and used the information bus synchronized with mutual exclusion locks (mutexes). Other higher priority threads took precedence when necessary, including a very high priority bus management task, which also accessed the bus with mutexes. Unfortunately in this case, a long-running communications task, having higher priority than the meteorological task, but lower than the bus management task, prevented it from running. Soon, a watchdog timer noticed that the bus management task had not been executed for some time, concluded that something had gone wrong, and ordered a total system reset.'"
Displays

Google Glass Specs Hit the Web 198

Posted by timothy from the for-your-fashion-needs dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google has issued the specifications for its spectacles. The search-engine giant's Google Glass, an augmented-reality headset that allows wearers to view information on a tiny screen embedded in one of the lenses, features a camera capable of snapping 5-megapixel photos and 720p video. That aforementioned screen, in the words of Google's just-released specs sheet, "is the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away." Google Glass is compatible with any Bluetooth-capable phone. Its MyGlass app, which enables SMS messaging and GPS, requires a companion device running Android 4.0.3 (the "Ice Cream Sandwich" build) or higher. Google claims the battery will provide a "full day of typical use," although the company warned in the specs sheet that certain functions—most notably video recording and Hangouts—could drain the battery faster. Despite those neat features, Google Glass also raises some thorny questions about surveillance culture, and whether people really want whole crowds recording every moment of our collective lives. But those are the sort of conundrums that will only become more clear when Google Glass is actually released sometime later this year."

Comment Re:My theory (Score 1) 412

by SpeedBump0619 (#43372941) Attached to: How Would an Astronaut Falling Into a Black Hole Die?

Does it have to be an invisible pink unicorn?

If it's invisible it can't be pink.

I would buy Pink or Invisible Unicorns though, as long as their hooves are crunchy!

Actually I believe both invisible and pink is a logical necessity: If it's at the event horizon light wouldn't be able to escape. Also, I can't imagine a way a unicorn would kill an astronaut that wouldn't involve blood-shed. I'd have to imagine that the unicorn would be covered in a fine mist of blood. So, indeed: Killed by an invisible pink unicorn.

Comment Re:The text of the judgment. . . (Score 1) 648

by SpeedBump0619 (#43214513) Attached to: Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine

Not surprisingly. Don't make the mistake of seeing the conservatives as being against the people, and the liberals being for the people. It's all over the board.

Exactly. It's totally foolish to think the liberals are for the people. No one is for the people. Once you realize that at least you'll start to understand politics in the US.

Comment Re:6-3? (Score 1) 648

by SpeedBump0619 (#43214121) Attached to: Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine

6-3? What did the 3 think? This is mind boggling. And kind of frightening.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who asked this question. I think the concurring opinion by Kagan and Alito does a marvelous job of summing up the idiocy that is the dissent and refuting it in a mere 3.5 pages.

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