How sad to be inoculated like this, locked inside your own brain, unable to accept that maybe your side might be the ones who are evil from time to time. It's an evidence-proof worldview, and it's depressingly popular.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the Rift and the Glyph compare. They both seem to be converging from different sides to be very similar, but with the delivery tech being quite different. I'm excited about the form factor of the Glyph and the emphasis on audio. The video doesn't have the resolution of the Rift yet, but it sounds like it is still very good.

It would be really interesting to see innovations from both put together. I really like the idea of using micro-mirror arrays to create the virtual image, and I really like that the Glyph can be used without corrective lenses.

If the two companies could have merged and joined the best of both, that would have been really excellent.

A "smart" board is just a touch sensitive surface that is recognized by the computer as pretty much a standard mouse. It plugs in through USB. The only thing "smart" about it is that there are a few extra sensors on the board that identify which color "marker" you're using (simple IR sensors in the holders) and a calibration button.

It's no smarter than the touch surface on your tablet or phone.

It's pretty much the worst investment a school can make, but the alternatives somewhat require a resident nerd willing to put in the effort to assembly them. I'm checking the price on Alibaba for a 48" x 96" infrared overlay. If I can get it for $300 a less I'll buy it and see how it goes with my own set up at my house.

Frankly, a $100 document camera and a simple whiteboard are perfectly sufficient for 90% of what a "smart"board is used for.

Absolutely true. Canids and felids in particular hunt more for sport than for food. Wolves have been observed having all sorts of fun killing an entire flock of sheep. Foxes hunt and kill mice and birds without eating 'em. And I used to have a cat who did nothing but hunt gophers all day long; within 3 years he'd completely exterminated them in my neighborhood.

Incidentally my neighbor runs a twice-weekly foxhunt, tho the usual quarry is coyotes (mostly chasing, they usually don't shoot 'em). The local coyotes have gotten so into being chased by dogs that they come down to the kennel the night before a hunt and get the dogs all riled up and ready to go.

all of this media that has already ruined the next Star Wars movie.

The only thing that has ruined a Star Wars movie is George Lucas.

http://redlettermedia.com/plin... - the best ever deconstructions of Star Wars that are more entertaining than those movies ever were.

Watch and learn, Grasshopper.

For a shorter version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

--
BMO

Female dogs that have never had pups will often kill puppies. Presumably fewer of someone else's offspring means more resources when you have your own.

[This is a consistent enough behavior that I warn clients in no uncertain terms to never ever leave the new puppy alone with the adult dog, most especially the spayed female adult dog.]

Dogs, cats, chickens, horses, various fish, some insects...

Hmm. Maybe it's just a living organism thing.

Another scheme by the labels is to sign up promising bands who are seen as competitors... and now that they're locked into a contract, they're never let produce an album. So basically they're eliminated as potential competition for the money-acts.

See also

Researching the "Rape Culture" of America
by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/facul...

The whole "needles in the eyeball" are just a stepping stone to something truly amazing.

Indeed. I was severely nearsighted all my life, after the cataract surgery I no longer need corrective lenses at all, not even reading glasses and I'm 62. My vision in that eye went from 20/400 to 20/16. Truly a miracle.

BTW, my retina surgeon said that my retinal detachment was a result of being so nearsighted; a nearsighted eyeball isn't perfectly round like a normally sighted person's eyes.

My grandmother isn't going to want to buy a PC and configure Linux herself. She'll just get an Apple. Once enough users move to Apple, we'll all have to learn Objective C and our workstations will be a bunch of ipads.

I constantly wonder how they became this way.

Someday, you will get a project with physically (or at least, mathematically) impossible requirements. You will, rightly, point this out. You will end up needing to doing it anyway.

This won't happen just once. Over the course of your career, you will literally lose count of the number of such requests.

You therefore have two choices - Stop caring, or have an aneurysm from frustration and rage.

Note, however, that you don't need to lose your love of coding. You just need to learn to accept, with a calm and detached indifference, that your paycheck requires you to write defective-by-design code. If it helps, you can make little games out of it - As one of my personal favorites, I write the code to function correctly and then, as the last step before showing something to the user, I throw it all away and replace the results with the requested garbage.

I'm fine with the chip; that protects me, the bank, and the retailer. I am NOT fine with the PIN. My signature can't be stolen; if someone steals my card, the signature on the sales slip proves it's not me. But if someone steals your PIN they have your every penny.

It happened to me with a debit card. I welcome the chip, but of they add a PIN I'll cancel all my cards and go back to cash and checks, even though they're nowhere as convenient.

I hadn't had any of the accounts I'd used, either, and wasn't sure which one it was. Still got the account back, give 'em a try.

I had cataract surgery on that eye two years before the retina came loose. I did know a couple of guys who had vitrectomies followed by cataract surgery, but the needles don't go through the lens, they go in through the whites (photos at wikipedia). I suspect that a vitrectomy involves steroids; steroid eyedrops for an eye infection caused my cataract.

It wasn't worth the effort, I just cut and pasted from the manuscript. It's bad enough posting journals, I take a bit more care with them.