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Comment Re:Now they really know you're coming... (Score 1) 333

by SnoopJeDi (#25790127) Attached to: Grenade-Style Wireless Camera For Combat

While there might be a few isolated cases where it could be useful, I'm not sure what they are.

That's generally how R&D goes. How many railgun rifles are soldiers (or boats or whatever) equipped with, versus the amount of money spent playing with them?

For any given idea, SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE has an interest/use in/for it.

If it was a privatized company, nobody would care. Companies (coughgooglecough) develop with free reins all the time, to allow their employees to explore new ideas. But when you're talking about gov't funds...it's a whole different ballgame, I suppose.

Comment Re:It's been a good run (Score 1) 222

by SnoopJeDi (#25737129) Attached to: Mars Rover "Spirit" In Danger

While I agree...

Sometimes, the difference between good work and great work is satisfaction or lack thereof.

I imagine the guys at NASA haven't been thinking "well gosh, we sure got lucky with it lasting that long." It's probably something along the lines of "OK, but how much further could we go?"
Games

DirectX Architect — Consoles as We Know Them Are Gone 434

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the something-about-a-nomad dept.
ThinSkin writes "DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in an exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs, insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles, and explains how the convergence of the GPU and the CPU is the next big thing in gaming. Alex continues in part two with more thoughts on retail and 3D games, and discusses in detail why he feels 'Vista blows' and what's to become of DirectX 10."
Moon

NASA to Demonstrate Moon Rover 98

Posted by CmdrTaco from the 0-to-60-in-never dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA will this week demonstrate its lunar robot rover equipped with a drill designed to find water and oxygen-rich soil on the moon. NASA said the engineering challenge of building such as drilling system was daunting because a robot rover designed for prospecting within lunar craters has to operate in continual darkness at extremely cold temperatures with little power. The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.The project is just one demonstration of the collaboration NASA is utilizing to bring together its next moon shot. For example, Carnegie Mellon was responsible for the robot's design and testing, and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology built the drilling system. NASA's Glenn Research Center contributed the rover's power management system. NASA's Ames Research Center built a system that navigates the rover in the dark. The Canadian Space Agency funded a Neptec camera that builds three-dimensional images of terrain using laser light, NASA said."
Graphics

Submission + - Photoshopping about to get harder to detect

Submitted by
Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: "We all know by now that you can't trust magazine covers and advertisements for skin-care products. The power of Photoshop is startling when you see it in action, and realize how much the representations of reality we see all around us are distorted and "improved" according to whatever the current standards of blemish-free beauty are. While we learn how to detect the tell-tale smudges, spots of flat color, inconsistencies in lighting, and pixilated artifacts left behind by digital manipulation, Dr. Ariel Shamir has developed a technique called Seam Carving that will make detection of Photoshopping much more difficult in the near future. As shown in this video, it's astonishing and almost disturbing how easy and fast it is to distort distances or remove objects entirely with this new tool."
Censorship

Submission + - Demonoid Taken Down

Submitted by Dedtired
Dedtired writes: Not satisfied with blocking Canadian traffic, the CRIA has gone to Demonoid's hosting company and demanded that it be pulled.

From the site:
The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.
Google

Submission + - AIM is now available via GMail/GoogleTalk

Submitted by
cmeans
cmeans writes: "Ever since myjabber.org started redirecting to google.com (early November), I wondered if this was a hint that Google was finally going to start supporting other transports via it's Jabber / XMPP based IM service. AIM is now an option under GMail's Settings/Chat. I've not yet been able to log into my AIM account, but this is at least a start. Hopefully, MSN and Yahoo! transports won't be far behind."
NASA

New NASA System to Keep Lightning Off The Launchpad 31

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shockingly-good-ideas dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA is building a new system to protect people and equipment on the shuttle launchpad from lightning strikes. "The new structure called a catenary wire system, will be the largest on the space compound and will feature large cables strung between three 594-foot-tall steel and fiberglass towers. Each tower is topped with a fiberglass mast and a series of catenary wires and down conductors designed to divert lightning away from the rocket and service structure. This configuration helps keep the vehicle isolated from dangerous lightning currents, NASA said."
Microsoft

Journal Journal: Ballmer foils bank robbery.

Journal by ozmanjusri
A bank robbery in Salt Lake City was foiled Friday when an unidentified man, believed to be Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, threw a chair from a second-story balcony, striking the would-be bandit.

The unidentified person grabbed a chair and hurled it off the balcony, striking the suspect in the back and knocking him to the ground, while yelling "I'll f****g kill bank robbers. I've done it before and I'll do it again!".
Social Networks

Submission + - Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
privatemusings
privatemusings writes: "'Wikipedians' are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over all over the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing. The Register have this fantastic write up — read it here first."
Announcements

Submission + - Wikipedia to be licensed under Creative Commons

Submitted by sla291
sla291 writes: Jimmy Wales made a very exciting announcement (video & transcript) yesterday night at a Wikipedia party in San Francisco : Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the FSF just agreed to make the current Wikipedia license (the GFDL) compatible with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). As Jimbo puts it, "This is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia".
User Journal

Journal Journal: Native Win32 on OSX? 3

Journal by ozmanjusri
Coders working on Wine for Mac have found that the Mac loader has gained its own undocumented ability to load and understand Windows Portable Executable (PE) files
Perl

Submission + - BBC creates 'Perl on Rails' 2

Submitted by Bogtha
Bogtha writes: Long-time users of Perl for their public websites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails' that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their websites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well.

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