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Comment Re:so how fast is fast..? (Score 2) 117

A more useful metric, IMO, is how reliable the suspend/wakeup cycles are. For example, a particular Fedora 16 box I ran would suspend/resume with 100% reliability. That is, it would suspend every time you asked it to, and wake up every time you asked it to. Another Fedora 20 machine has 100% sleep and 0% wake. ie it goes to sleep and NEVER WAKES UP without a hard power cycle. Another machine had 100% sleep and about 75% wake, which is again utterly useless.

Science

Nat Geo Writer: Science Is Running Out of "Great" Things To Discover 292

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "John Horgan writes in National Geographic that scientists have become victims of their own success and that 'further research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incremental, diminishing returns.' The latest evidence is a 'Correspondence' published in the journal Nature that points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work. The trend is strongest in physics. Prior to 1940, only 11 percent of physics prizes were awarded for work more than 20 years old but since 1985, the percentage has risen to 60 percent. If these trends continue, the Nature authors note, by the end of this century no one will live long enough to win a Nobel Prize, which cannot be awarded posthumously and suggest that the Nobel time lag 'seems to confirm the common feeling of an increasing time needed to achieve new discoveries in basic natural sciences—a somewhat worrisome trend.' One explanation for the time lag might be the nature of scientific discoveries in general—as we learn more it takes more time for new discoveries to prove themselves.

Researchers recently announced that observations of gravitational waves provide evidence of inflation, a dramatic theory of cosmic creation. But there are so many different versions of 'inflation' theory that it can 'predict' practically any observation, meaning that it doesn't really predict anything at all. String theory suffers from the same problem. As for multiverse theories, all those hypothetical universes out there are unobservable by definition so it's hard to imagine a better reason to think we may be running out of new things to discover than the fascination of physicists with these highly speculative ideas. According to Keith Simonton of the University of California, 'the core disciplines have accumulated not so much anomalies as mere loose ends that will be tidied up one way or another.'"

Comment Re:Was it really Tesla's problem? (Score 1) 152

Like another poster here, I also disagree about the carelessness aspect. In my misspent youth I have crashed a motor vehicle through a wall and hit several large rocks in the middle of the road, and the only damage, other than to my ego, was a few dents in the bonnet and undercarriage respectively. There were no fires nor engine failures.

Designers must, MUST, design for conditions well above what they would consider the boundaries of reasonable use.

Comment Re:A likely story (Score 1) 178

Radio failure is no longer an acceptable reason for simply falling out of the sky.

Even consumer-grade copters now have enough sensors and smarts to ascend to a safe altitude and return "home" if the transmitting signal is lost or garbled. Of course that doesn't prevent them from running into obstacles along the way (tree branches, power lines, etc) but barring catastrophic power failure they should never just drop like that.

Comment Re:Because Hollywood. (Score 1) 544

I was going to comment on "giving people what they expect" being at the forefront of the problem with movies and TV today but thought better of it so I'll just add this:

A couple more benefits of HFR:
The ability to have action occur while the camera is panning/tilting, since the viewer will be able to track what is happening rather than seeing a blurry mess.
Better sense of actual motion and reality, a positive for many cinema goers. The introduction of sound and colour also incrementally contributed to this.

Comment Re:Because Hollywood. (Score 1) 544

I get that you're being defensive and if I were in your position I might too, but the point he was making is that LOTS of people notice those generic sounds added in to inappropriate situations. And, get this, those sounds were not what they were expecting. See the summary heading for an example.

You can only go dismissing people who point out problems with your work as pedants for so long before you must start noticing there actually is a problem.

This goes double for any show purporting to be somehow connected to reality (60 minutes for example).

Comment Re:Lies (Score 1) 544

That must be a terrific job. I'm sure you're very good at it. That said:

I'd definitely add tire skids and suspension sounds over bumps...

As someone who watches movies and television, please stop it. It's downright embarrassing seeing a car gently pull up to a stop, accompanied by a sudden jarring screeching of tyres. It sticks out nearly as much as the Wilhelm scream.

Thanks.

Comment Fresnel lens (Score 1, Interesting) 496

Not that it's necessarily the best for every single application, but I find a 15cm square fresnel lens stuck to my rear windscreen gives a much better picture than any camera system I have ever used:

The dynamic range is practically the same as through the glass, so no squinting at nearly-black screens in summer time or having eyes burned out at night.
The picture is on the actual windscreen, so I don't need to take my eyes off the "road" when reversing, or the rearview mirror to see what's behind me.
The focus is significantly far that I don't have to wait a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to a dashboard-mounted screen. Not a problem for me yet, but human lenses do harden with age.

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