Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Ignore this article completely (Score 1) 228

It's not your living space that was the problem. But the idea that you should avoid as much responsibility for MAKING burning man happen as possible.

Every year there is a larger percentage of virgins than the previous year ... and that's awesome! More people coming and learning about the culture and having an amazing experience is fabulous. But because so many virgins are coming it is more important than ever that they be involved and participating.

The city doesn't just magically happen and appear for spectators to come and enjoy it. It comes from the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears of the people who go to burning man to share something.

I think its a good idea for virgins to make some things easier on themselves since your first year is a huge culture shock. But if you're not participating you're missing the whole point and really just ending up being parasitic.

Comment Ignore this article completely (Score 2) 228

If you actually have any interest in Burning Man other than to say "I went" you should disregard pretty much everything this guys says.

Burning Man is an experience ... not a place you visit. The city is built by the people who go ... INCLUDING YOU. So go with something that you want to share with everyone else! Show people how awesome you are and teach people about things they didn't know.

You will get out of burning man exactly what you put into it. And if you do what this guy suggests, you sadly won't get much.

One more note ... the people who go are a VERY diverse group. My camp included a neuroscientist, an astronomer, an author, a person who works at the White House, several business owners, an opera singer, an android developer, and people from Russia, Brasil, Japan, Mexico, and the US.

The gifts I made to give away were necklaces that I hand carved and polished out of a piece of stromatolite (3.5 billion year old fossilized algae) I bought.

Piracy

Submission + - Report Finds Most Piracy Driven by High Prices (ssrc.org) 1

langelgjm writes: The Social Science Research Council, an independent, non-profit organization, today released a major report on music, film and software piracy in developing economies. The product of three years of work, the authors conclude that piracy is primarily driven by excessively high prices and that anti-piracy education and enforcement efforts have failed. Still, chief editor Joe Karaganis believes that businesses can survive in these high piracy environments.

The report is free to readers in low-income countries, but behind a paywall for certain high-income countries, although the SSRC notes that "For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look."

Education

Submission + - Schools consider searching pupils' smartphones (pcpro.co.uk) 1

An anonymous reader writes: What right to privacy do school pupils have on their mobile phones? Education officials are considering ways to clamp down on cyber-bullying and classroom disruption by allowing teachers to search and delete content from student handsets if it is deemed unsuitable. However, questions remain whether such a move would give teachers too much power and infringe on student rights.

Comment Bionic DRM (Score 1) 256

We're so sorry that we created such an awful DRM system without telling you what we were doing ... to fix that problem and regain the trust of our customers we will now tell you exactly how badly our DRM system will screw over legitimate users. But at least we know that no one can find any way to crack the airtight PS3 security lockdown.

And next time we come out with a game we'll make sure to have a completely non-invasive DRM scheme that simply involves implanting a CAPCOM chip in your frontal lobe so that you can be our very own little Bionic DRM Commander.

Comment Re:Another problem with 3D (Score 1) 436

I think you misunderstand my point. When a 2D filmmaker focuses on one image element it is easy for the audience to follow and thus the filmmaker can tell their story.

However with a 3D environment one needs to search for the focus point that the filmmaker is presenting to you. All of the other points are out of focus, but the point they want you to focus on will be out of focus as well unless you find it.

So when that trick is used it makes the entire 3D experience difficult for many people and simply impossible for others.

An alternative to focus which might work better for a 3D environment would be a contrast change so that the element the filmmaker wants to highlight is much brighter/darker than the rest of the scene. The viewer's eyes will naturally move towards that element and focus appropriately.

Comment Another problem with 3D (Score 2) 436

Is that in the past movies have used tricks like focusing in a particular screen element in order to get you to pay attention to it. With 3D movies you should be allowed to focus on any element you want, yet film-makers (including for Avatar) have persisted in using 2D film tricks like this.

The only solution would be to film with a very wide field of view so that your focus point is essentially infinity.

This could also mediate the focus problem mentioned in the article ... but movie theaters would need to change the seating so that there were no seats anywhere near the screen.

Movies

3D Cinema Doesn't Work and Never Will 436

circletimessquare writes "Walter Murch, one of the most technically knowledgeable film editors and sound designers in the film industry today, argues, via Rogert Ebert's journal in the Chicago Sun-Times, that 3D cinema can't work, ever. Not just today's technology, but even theoretically. Nothing but true holographic images will do. The crux of his argument is simple: 600 million years of evolution has designed eyes that focus and converge in parallel, at the same distance. Look far away at a mountain, and your eyes focus and converge far away, at the same distance. Look closely at a book, and your eyes focus and converge close, at the same distance. But the problem is that 3D cinema technology asks our eyes to converge at one distance, and focus at another, in order for the illusion to work, and this becomes very taxing, if not downright debilitating, and even, for the eyes of the very young, potentially developmentally dangerous. Other problems (but these may be fixable) include the dimness of the image, and the fact that the image tends to 'gather in,' even on Imax screens, ruining the immersive experience."
Graphics

Nvidia Unveils New Mid-Range GeForce Graphics Card 158

crookedvulture writes "Nvidia has uncorked another mid-range graphics card, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Every tech site on the web seems to have coverage of this new $250 offering, and The Tech Report's review will tell you all you need to know about the various flavors available, including how their performance compares to cards from 2-3 years ago. Interestingly, the review concludes that pretty much any modern mid-range graphics card offers smooth frame rates while playing the latest games at the common desktop resolution of 1920x1080. You may want to pay closer attention to power consumption and noise levels when selecting a new card."

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Working...