Comment Re:Defilade (Score 4, Funny) 782
Who's surprised the word for "something to hide behind" is french?
/ducks
/ducks
Thoughts On the State of Web Development 253
rmoskal recommends his blog post up at Most Media on finding the right level of abstraction, Grails, and SOFEA. "[Three years ago] I was very excited about Apache Wicket as the way to develop line of business applications with a domain model, CRUD [create-read-update-delete] screens for maintaining the model, and in the most interesting cases, doing something else useful besides. I still like Wicket. It has, as its website says, a small conceptual surface area.' It reminds me of Python in that 'You try something it usually just works.' In many respects, though, Wicket seems to be at the wrong level of abstraction for the for the sorts of line-of-business applications described above. If your team is spending any time at all writing code to produce listing, filtering, and sorting behavior, not to mention creating CRUD screens and the back-end logic for these operations, they are probably working at the wrong level of abstraction. ... Recently I did a small project using Grails and was quite pleased. Grails uses groovy, a dynamic language compatible with Java, and is based on the proven technologies that I know and love well: Spring, Hibernate, SiteMesh, Maven, etc. ... I get all the power of the Java ecosystem without the fustiness and lack of expressivity of the core language (no more getters and setters, ever!)."
Comment Re:The solution is simple: (Score 1) 105
My local pub has a setup like this. I imagine it was fairly expensive to setup as it's 6-7 projectors, each with their own slave computer controlled by a server running a bit of software called watchout,( by dataton). It doesn't use cameras to calibrate, it was done manually (or so I'm told), but since the projectors have been installed for at least 5-6 years the time spent calibrating them isn't such a big deal. And the software allows for making minor adjustments (via sliders) in case you bump one of them.
Anyway this is the bar: http://www.horsebazaar.com.au/
The effect is quite cool, it's one long video wall that wraps around the pub. Shame they don't have any decent photos of it.
Submission + - Game company abandons employees, takes IP. (tsumea.com)
snicho99 writes: A US owned gaming company has fled Australia, leaving unpaid employees and a massive tax bill. Apparently many staff have been working unpaid for months to allow their game to ship and hopefully the company to recover. Interzone's Perth (Western Australia) office was created with the assistance of a state government grant.
Last week Interzone's (American) CEO entered the building at night and removed all the servers and IP so that Interzone could continue production at a new company they have opened in Ireland. The staff cought him on camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYyr_lX98Bw .
More background here:
http://kranzky.rockethands.com/2010/02/13/interzone-the-downward-spiral/
Last week Interzone's (American) CEO entered the building at night and removed all the servers and IP so that Interzone could continue production at a new company they have opened in Ireland. The staff cought him on camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYyr_lX98Bw .
More background here:
http://kranzky.rockethands.com/2010/02/13/interzone-the-downward-spiral/
Comment Re:Bad idea. (Score 2, Informative) 636
Mod parent up. Here in Australia we already have this legislation and it's *completely* pointless. Same deal, some ninny in parliament with no real understanding of the technology involved wrote some *bs* legislation:
http://www.freetv.com.au/Content_Common/pg-Loudness-in-Advertisements.seo
The problem is coming up with an "objective" comparison of the loudness between two bits of programming. As the parent says it's more a question of compression and dynamic range than actual volume. (by compression I mean audio compression, not data compression). If you run a peak search on even the most mild mannered jane austen bbc tv program, you'll get the same reading as you do an a sham-wow commercial. It's just that the sham-wow tvc dude is trying to cram so much information in the 30 seconds that he'll run everything at -3db. Where as in the Jane Austen thing will only reach that point once or twice in 10 minute section.
But an even bigger problem is that the people making the ads have no idea what they're actually going to be screening with. How are you going to match the apparent loudness of your ad with the tv program, if you've got no idea what that program is anyway? It's retarded.
Consequently in Australia we have a vaguely written set of "guidelines" and a requirement that any tvc submitted to a network be "OP48" compliant and say as such on the slate. The result, everyone writes OP48 compliant on their slate and that's about it....
Peter Molyneux On Developmental Experimentation 55
Gamasutra reports on a talk given at GDC by Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and designer of games such as Black & White and Fable. Molyneux discussed some of the experimentation that went into the development of their various games. Quoting:
"After his overview of the process, Molyneux demonstrated a number of actual experiments. He began by showing an early version of Fable II's dog, which he himself designed and which ended up factoring heavily into the full game. 'This is probably one of the most valuable experiments we ever did,' he said. Using the original Fable engine, the team asked itself, 'Why don't we think how the dog can actually move and be a companion to the player?' They decided to focus on exploring what a dog would do, rather than try to slot a canine into existing typical video game companion tasks. This led to the mechanic of the dog running out in front of the player, rather than beside or behind the player as most game AI companions are positioned, which had a huge impact on the dog's role."
Comment Re:Lacie - No Incrimental Backup? Seriously? (Score 1) 101
Hrmm.. Yes I want to buy a 1TB drive because I'm about to capture 3 hours of HD footage for a project I'm working on. In fact I want to buy several. Most of the files going on to a disk like that are going to be tens of gigabytes, write once, read many. Incremental backup is so far from my mind it doesn't even register. Besides, the operating system supplies those tools anyway.(rsync rdiff - or even just "time machine").
To be honest in almost every other post production or graphic design studio that I've been in in the last 3 years has used laCie drives almost exclusively. I don't know why (maybe because they're pretty?), but if it's their target market then it seems they can get away without offering incremental backup software, just fine. And charge a premium for it. Note: this is not an endorsement of laCie products - just an observation.
my 2c.
Comment facebook... (Score 1) 262
NO2ID has launched a Facebook group to challenge this threat to data protection.
Oh.... the ironing!
Submission + - Jet Pack Runs for Hours on Water
Ponca City, We love you writes: "Jet packs have been around for half a century, but there's always been one problem: they run out of rocket fuel very quickly. Now a German company has taken the standard jetpack design, run a fat yellow hose out the back, and connected it to a small unmanned boat which houses an engine, pump and fuel tank that sends pressurized water back up the hose, where it's shot out by two nozzles just behind the wearer's shoulders. Called the JetLev-Flyer, the design can purportedly reach a height of 50 feet, a speed of 45 mph and a range of 300 kilometers based on four hours of flying time. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle and future designs may achieve higher altitudes and top speeds, extended range and even travel below the water's surface. The American manufacturers claim it is "amazingly easy to learn and operate" and they're taking orders now at $130,000 each."
Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan 403
Mike writes "One of three finalists in this year's Evolo Skyscraper Competition, Eric Vergne's Dystopian Farm project envisions a future New York City interspersed with elegantly spiraling skyscraper farms. The biomorphic structures harness cutting-edge technology to provide the city with its own self-sustaining food source while dynamically altering the fabric of city life."
Comment Re:For what it's worth my soon to be sent letter.. (Score 1) 339
Furthermore, the technical, financial and freedom of expression (as upheld through our constitution) issues are well documented and those in themselves should be more than enough to kill any further life in this poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan.
Constitution fail. There is no such protection under the Australian Constitution. We have no bill of rights. This is not the Almighty US of A. Are you sure you're a politician? If so, that's a bit scary... though not surprising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitution#Protection_of_rights
Comment Re:Minor pet peeve (Score 5, Informative) 125
There's also the sense of body position, whose name escapes me, but that's not an external sense.
Proprioception
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception
Comment Makes me think of a story... (Score 3, Interesting) 173
A little off topic perhaps... but it make's me think of a story a friend told me once:
Hungry Jacks (Australian version of Burger King) once had a promotion going where if you asked for "Two for One" they gave you two Whoppers (a kind of inedible burger) for the price of one. The only catch was that someone at the marketing company forgot to assign an end date to the promo on all the advertising material. Consequently even now - many years later, Hungry Jacks' still has to honor the "Two for One" deal.
Me and a friend called BS on his story, and he was quite insistent that it was real. We were just on our way from one bar to another at the time (a little inebriated perhaps) so we went into a Hungry Jacks store to test his theory. He ordered a Whopper as a "Two for One", and sure enough they gave it to him!
Mind you by the time he got to the front of the queue he had 16 drunk football (australian rules) players chanting "Two for one" so perhaps they just gave it to him to make us leave....
But if it was *genuine* makes you think that maybe us australians are pretty serious about keeping companies honest about their marketing.
Russian Town Puts Giant Smiley On Google Maps
280
Toramir writes "Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea of an entire town working hard to get its 15 minutes of fame. The article has a screenshot of Google Maps and images taken directly at the event."
Submission + - Polaroid closes it's plant: no more instant film (boston.com)
snicho99 writes: "The end of an era, curse these new-fangled digital cameras.
From the Boston Globe Website:
From the Boston Globe Website:
Any body else as feeling suddenly as nostalgic as I am? I didn't use polaroid film much — but I liked knowing it was around: if I wanted it."Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts company that gave the world instant film photography, is shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning the technology that made the company famous.
