alittlebitdifferent - Slashdot User

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @12:27PM from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.

longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."

Submission + - AUSTEXT - Australia's information provider for nat

Submitted by

alittlebitdifferent

on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @11:03PM

alittlebitdifferent writes: "Austext is the Australian teletext service based in Brisbane, Queensland.
It carries news, finance information, weather, lottery results, a TV guide and other information. The service is viewable on any television, computer or other device with teletext functionality and the ability to access and view Channel Seven, Prime or Southern Cross. Seven first began test Teletext services in 1977 with useful information being transmitted in 1982 in Brisbane and Sydney.

The Seven Network plans to shut down the Austext service today. They claim the technology has come to the end of its useful service life and is not commercially viable to replace. For us technologists in Australia it is a sad day given the memories the service brought us. Closed captioning services also provided via teletext, will continue."

Submission + - SDXC arrives. Send sympathy cards to HDD vendors (pretec.com)

Submitted by

alittlebitdifferent

on Wednesday March 11, 2009 @08:30PM

alittlebitdifferent writes: "With a potential storage capacity of 2TB and possible transfer rates of 300mbs, SDXC cards will change the face of storage yet again. Pretec, an established company based in Taiwan known for memory firsts, has racked up another by demonstrating the first SDXC card (32GB / 50mbs read/write) in March this year. There are no consumer devices supporting SDXC as yet but this was also seen for the launch of SDHC cards (upper limit of 32GB / 6mbs guaranteed read/write).

SDXC devices are likely to follow middle to late 2009 with the bulk estimated to occur in 2010. SDXC devices will be backwards compatible, however older readers that may have been enabled for SDHC via a firmware upgrade won't be as lucky this time. SDXC, whilst backwards compatible is allegedly chipset dependent. It is likely the first SDXC supporting device will be a HD camcorder and whichever way you look at it 2009 will be extremely exciting for embedded device storage. Potential Energy power savings in devices that currently use HDD's will be interesting to watch. I can't wait for SDXC netbooks."

Comment Things iPhone should have had (Score 1) 1619

by alittlebitdifferent on Thursday January 11, 2007 @09:02AM (#17554996) Attached to: iPhone, Apple TV Headline MacWorld Keynote

I know it's version 1 and not even out of click wrap but as a Mac Fanboy who wants to drop his Winblows Mobile 5 where are the following:

A sim management application to copy your details from your old phone into Apple's contacts framework
Vibrating Ring (A must for meetings)
An alarm clock function.
Ability to open/view keynote, powerpoint or word attachments from the email
A screen that can be seen under direct sunlight
SD Card slot for future expansion
A camera on the front for future VoiceCall expansion later down the track

..and extras like those found on my current XDA Atom:
Voice recognition calling.
FM radio so you can listen to live events in non Wifi zones (In Australia this occurs more regularly)
The little silver circle next to the camera on the back that allows you to aim it correctly when taking photos of yourself (sad..but useful)
Stereo speakers to provide decent sound if you wish to use an MP3 alarm.

Finally - I think they believe they feel they have made the right choice using a touchscreen keypad but I have found like many..that you loose that tactile feel. Even the latest O2 Stealth has learnt this lesson and provided keys behind as a slide in addition to a touchscreen keypad...

Without keys you can't dial without looking at the device at this makes one handed operation fairly difficult.

I recommend Apple place a number pad as a slide behind in their next model or work out a way they can exercise the polymers in the touchscreen to provide temporary shape...well I can dream can't I?

...Not sure what I'll do for syncing lotus notes now that Intellisync is now owned by Nokia...*sigh*

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