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Comment: Re:I prefer mine to be insanely great trackballs (Score 1) 79

by timothy (#39116655) Attached to: I prefer my input devices to be as _______ as possible.

Nice site -- thanks for that link.

I used to like the bigger ones best; I still prefer them to the tiny variety, but am now pretty bigoted, and believe the best size is kind in this one ;) But, as you say, the flexibility is nice. For some things in the world, I figure there are roughed-in equivalents that could work fine, but I don't know of any replacement / experiment-worthy balls smooth enough at that (smaller size), so I do wish I had that swappable flexibility.

timothy

Comment: I prefer mine to be insanely great trackballs (Score 1) 79

by timothy (#39116037) Attached to: I prefer my input devices to be as _______ as possible.

Logitech (MouseMan? MarbleMouse? I should know, but it's slipping my mind right now ...)

My current one says P/N 810-000767; that seems very specific; if you are un-lazier than me, you can quickly google. I bought the first of mine sometime in .... I think 1998 or 1999. My current one has 4 buttons, while the first had only two, but the same basic design has been going now for at least that long. (I'm on the 2d one, because the first one died after about 6 years of neglect and rough living Maybe that means I should be due for another catastrophe.)

PROS:
- Cheap -- around $25 in big-box stores, when they have them in stock (why are some of the others that feel grainy and clunky $100 or more? Why are junky mice available in such superficial profusion? Why is Hitler? Who is Spain?)
- zippy (quick spin of the fingers -- this *doesn't* feel grainy and clunky)
- spinny (that is, nice inertia, a surprising quality given the small ball)
- smooth (even current, optical trackballs mostly feel sluggish to me compared to this one)
- easy to clean (optical, so you just occasionally swipe out some detritus; that's a few seconds every few weeks, tops)
- symmetrical (nice for practical reason, as well as aesthetics)
- Very nice looking, IMO
- USB (OK, now that's just default; when I got the first one, a lot of input devices were serial or PS/2, though)
- Works when you're next to any big flattish surface, I am propped up on a bed right now.

CONS / ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:
- the ball can get lost; it's in there only tenuously, and with the help of almighty gravity. If it falls out in the wrong place, you'll wish you had a mouse along. I kept the ball from the first one, but always forget to take it with me when I travel. Don't see any way out of this one, though.
- wish the inertia was even better -- I think what I want is an infinitely thin layer of a nearly infinitely dense material, the platonic ideal of a trackball.
- awkwardly big -- annoying for travel. (It fits nicely in one of the outside pockets of one of my usual carry-on bags, though)
- USB. But I said that was a pro! True: I wish had a removable USB cord, and a wireless option.
- I wish it had a base oriented to *attaching* places, rather than only on a desk or table. Works when you're next to any big flattish surface, Yes, as above, but since the base doesn't need to move, should come w/ a velcro footprint and some matching velcro sticker counterparts for the bottom. Or magnets. Gecko tape. Whatever :)
- No scrollwheel. It's only taken me a dozen or so years, but I concede now that scrollwheels have some utility. I would like this trackball to have one, just behind the ball -- there's what seems like a great spot for one.

And always remember: laptop trackpads suck.

timothy

Idle

LED-Embedded Full-Body Snowboarding Suit ->

Submitted by fangmcgee
fangmcgee writes "Gliding down the slopes of southeastern France at breakneck speed, William Hughes makes for an arresting sight. The effect is more than a little haunting: It’s nighttime, for one, and the Artec snowboarder is clad head to toe in an LED-studded snowsuit. Hughes is the star and subject of a video by fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton, who spent three nights in the Rhône-Alpes on a skidoo, at temperatures of -13 degrees Fahrenheit, to obtain the footage."
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Security

DHS Budget Includes No New Airport Body Scanners->

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center has been examining the White House's proposed budget for Department of Homeland Security for 2013, and they point out that it doesn't include any money for additional airport body scanners for TSA. Did the recent scandal involving TSA workers targeting women for scans make the White House realize that TSA is a national embarrassment? Does the executive branch finally understand the questionable safety and effectiveness of these devices? Or does DHS just think it has enough scanners once TSA installs the 250 new scanners in this year's budget?"
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Science

NoSQL 2.0: Expanded Interface, Higher Performance-> 2

Submitted by rescrv
rescrv writes "A new key-value store from Cornell University is set to begin a new era of NoSQL storage. The system, called HyperDex, enables efficient searches over the stored values, while retaining the traditional get/put interface of a key-value store. HyperDex provides significant performance advantages over Cassandra and MongoDB for both traditional key-value operations, and for search."
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Open Source

Canonical puts Ubuntu on Android smartphones-> 1

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes "Canonical has revealed Ubuntu running on a smartphone — but the open source developer hasn't squashed the full desktop onto a tiny screen. Instead, the Ubuntu for Android system runs both OSes side by side, picking which to surface depending on the form factor. When a device — in the demo, it was a Motorola Atrix — is being used as a smartphone, it uses Android. When it's docked into a laptop or desktop setup, the full version of Ubuntu is used. Files, apps and other functionality such as voice calls and texting are shared between the two — for example, if a text message is sent to the phone when it's docked, the SMS pops up in Ubuntu, while calls can be received or made from the desktop."
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Medicine

Aging Eyes Blamed for Seniors' Health Woes

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among them memory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression looking at such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle. Now Laurie Tarkan writes that as eyes age, less and less sunlight gets through the lens to reach key cells in the retina that regulate the body’s circadian rhythm, its internal clock that rallies the body to tackle the day’s demands in the morning and slows it down at night, allowing the body to rest and repair. “Evolution has built this beautiful timekeeping mechanism, but the clock is not absolutely perfect and needs to be nudged every day,” says Dr. David Berson, whose lab at Brown University studies how the eye communicates with the brain. Dr. Patricia Turner, an ophthalmologist who with her husband, Dr. Martin Mainster has written extensively about the effects of the aging eye on health, estimate that by age 45, the photoreceptors of the average adult receive just 50 percent of the light needed to fully stimulate the circadian system, by age 55, it dips to 37 percent, and by age 75, to a mere 17 percent and recommend that people should make an effort to expose themselves to bright sunlight or bright indoor lighting when they cannot get outdoors and have installed skylights and extra fluorescent lights in their own offices to help offset the aging of their own eyes. “In modern society, most of the time we live in a controlled environment under artificial lights, which are 1,000 to 10,000 times dimmer than sunlight and the wrong part of the spectrum,” says Turner. “We believe the effect is huge and that it’s just beginning to be recognized as a problem.""
Space

Electric Rockets Are Set to Transform Space Flight->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The spectacle of a booster rocket lifting off a launch pad atop a mass of brilliant flames and billowing smoke is an iconic image of the Space Age. Such powerful chemical rockets are needed to break the bonds of Earth’s gravity and send spacecraft into orbit. But once a vehicle has progressed beyond low-earth orbit (LEO) chemical rockets are not necessarily the best way to get around outer space. That’s because chemical propulsion systems require such large quantities of fuel to generate high speeds, there is little room for payload.

As a result rocket scientists are increasingly turning to electric rockets, which accelerate propellants out the back end using solar-powered electromagnetic fields rather than chemical reactions. The electric rockets use so much less propellant that the entire spacecraft can be much more compact, which enables them to scale down the original launch boosters."
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Hardware

Qualcomm's Krait SoC hands-on, benchmarked->

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Qualcomm has released its first 28nm SoC based on the new Krait core, the dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8960. From the story: 'The quick summary: the 8960 is really fast. It fits into phones. It enables smooth, high-def gaming and media, and it significantly boosts Android Web browsing speed. And it's coming soon to a phone or tablet near you; we're likely to see it first in phones released at Mobile World Congress next week such as the Asus Padfone.' PC Mag has a full set of benchmarks and hands-on impressions."
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I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.