Comment Poor websites (Score 1) 156
You'd have thought they learned their lesson when dealing with Bobby Tables, aka "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;
Comment Leave out the politicians... (Score 1) 1
...and talk about what QNX in cars can do for Blackberry, or provide a link to someone who already has, and you'll have an article worth going from gray to green.
Comment I assume he means... (Score 1) 1
...lethal for the pilots.
It's pretty much a given that it's going to be lethal for the birds.
Comment Re:38-year-old technology, at least (Score 1) 155
Light Beam Communications, copyright 1975, Forrest Mims, ISBN 978-0672211478 Howard W. Sams
I was wondering when someone would bring him up, although I think his chief claim to fame in that area was using Light-Emitting Diodes as detectors of light, rather than just as emitters of it.
Comment Re:Si-fi (Score 1) 155
That's just for malware, which arguably is the most reliable software made these days.
Congratulations, you just wrote your new sig file.
Comment Re:needs a science editor (Score 1) 155
Yep, it's quite the opposite. If it was limited to working in complete darkness, one could save a little bit of money by getting rid of IR-pass filters that those devices need.
If it's going to use "visible" light, wouldn't it need IR and UV blocking filters?
Although since using light in a completely dark room kind of does away with the whole "completely dark" thing, I may have misunderstood where you were going with that.
Comment Re:does it work through walls? (Score 1) 155
IR doesn't always need to be direct line-of-sight. Most peoples' experience with IR is from TV remotes which generally do have to be aimed, but I've got a couple of devices whose remotes are powerful enough that pointing them just about anywhere in the room will control the device. It is possible to use refraction if the setup is designed for it.
And if you have a white or light-colored ceiling or wall, you can use reflection as well.
We have an overhead light fixture in the same room as the main television, and it has a flat white diffuser under its 4 incandescent bulb sockets, and I can carom a remote beam off of that quite easily if I'm standing in the right spot.
Comment Re:does it work through walls? (Score 1) 155
So how is it different than infrared, which has been in use for quite some time?
It's not, it's different from infrared.
But mostly just in carrier frequency.
Comment Re:does it work through walls? (Score 1) 155
Only if you use laser LEDs that are powerful enough to burn through them.
Unfortunately lasers that powerful have to be cooled by a continuous saline solution stream.
Although I hear some research has been done in that area that involves mounting them on large, constantly moving ocean creatures.
Comment Re:does it work through walls? (Score 0) 155
But how do you get the sharks to hold still long enough to get a signal across???
Comment Re:Dupe (Score 1) 114
Yes, aside from the impressive 'reflexes' of the system and the speed with which it operates there really isn't much impressive about this. It isn't a win if it is cheating.
Comment Re:So get up early and send your boss email. (Score 1) 462
To be fair, not all places have flex time. Most do these days though, especially if you clear it with your boss first.
Journal Journal: Screen Capture in KDE
Ran across an article by Carla Schroder today on making screencasts on linux using Kdenlive and Audacity. I didn't know Kdenlive could do capture. Shoot - last time I used it a couple years ago it was pretty unstable when I tried to use it to edit videos I'd made with RecordMyDesktop. So I didn't have it installed on my current system. Fixed that pretty quickly and on the se
Comment I wish I could find his DOB... (Score 1) 1
...considering that his being commissioned in '90 puts him around the right age to have been born just as the original series was going off the air.
If two co-incidences are related, is that co-incidental?
Comment They really, really want you to upgrade (Score 1) 5
I suspect they want to move people away from Windows 8 to 8.1 even faster than they wanted to get people away past Vista and onto 7.
Why the nag banner? Because they're Microsoft, that's why.
I'm currently running OSX 10.8.5 Mountain Lion on my iMac. Even thought the upgrade to Mavericks (10.9) is free, I'm holding back until I'm certain that the various reported problems with Mavericks and various Adobe Creative Cloud applications have been ironed out. Thankfully, the only banner I see regarding Mavericks appears in the Updates area of the Mac App Store.
