Comment Re:Bring on the Android Pi (Score 1) 178
This behavior by the phone makers has had perplexed me for some time now.
Can't they see how bad they're making the phones when they pile on all these crappy mods?
Submission + - US CTO wants you to see your energy use online (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "The idea sounds simple enough: you can go to your utility's Web site, click a green button and you get information about your household energy use. Develop the technology that makes such a green button possible, is what US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra told attendees of this week's GridWeek conference and then posted on the White House Science and Technology blog."
World's Northernmost Town Gets Nightlights 144
Velcroman1 writes "On October 26, 2,000 Norwegians watched the sun set. The next time they'll see it rise? Sometime in February. Extended nighttime is an annual occurrence for the residents of Longyearbyen, Norway — Earth's northernmost town. Located at 78 degrees north latitude in the Arctic circle, Longyearbyen experiences a phenomenon called Polar Night, in which the town remains in perpetual darkness for four months each winter. To lighten up the seemingly endless night, Philips has started an experiment called 'Wake Up the Town.' And anyone who's complained about the brief daylight hours in winter will want to know how it works."
Duke Nukem 3D On Unreal Engine 3 118
Julefrokost writes "While we're waiting patiently on Forever, there's some real news in the Duke Nukem realm. Ars Technica has a story about a fan-made Duke 3D project on Unreal Engine 3. There's an awesome demo video up on YouTube. Created by hardcore fan Frederick 'fresch' Schreiber, we can hopefully expect to see an upgraded Duke 3D in the near future."
The article also notes, "Gearbox ultimately decided to support the project, and gave Schreiber a personal, non-commercial license to Duke Nukem 3D. He can't sell the work or profit from it directly, but he can use the characters and design of the game without fear of being shut down."
Comment Re:Not again! (Score 1) 253
I had a 1200XL, and after updating the ROM, a 256K RAM upgrade, and the video output circuitry, it was every bit as good as the 800XL.
I actually took an XF551 drive modified to use a 3.5" floppy drive mech, and hacked the controller board and drive inside the 1200XL case. The floppy drive was accessible on the right side of the computer via a nice square slot I cut out of the case.
It was pretty darn cool at the time. SpartaDOS was very similar to MS-DOS in terms of a command oriented disk operating system, and I made the leap from my Atari to PC's pretty easily.
I can't believe someone came up with a SD reader hack for them. I'm amazed some people are still hacking them!
Comment Re:If they are still not dimmable they still suck (Score 1) 553
See this article on how dimmers work.
http://www.icanhome.com/downloads/iLIGHT%20Binder-HowDimmers.pdf
You'd need a circuit that detects the average power supplied, as opposed to looking at the voltage level of the rectified peak output. I haven't done EE in like 12 years, so maybe this is simple to do. *shrug*
It sounds like a cool project.
Comment Captain Ahab (Score 2, Insightful) 290
Seriously, does this not seem like Darl McBride is so obsessed with going after "the great white whale" that it's all he can think about, to the exclusion of everything else?
Where and when does it all end?
