Lewah - Slashdot User

Why Bad 3D, Not 3D Glasses, Gives You Headaches 255

Posted by Soulskill on Monday August 02, 2010 @02:24PM from the subset-equal-to-set dept.

Barence writes "The most common complaint about 3D is that the glasses give you a headache, but that's not actually true, according to the man who teaches the pros how to make better 3D. Speaking at the BBC in London, Buzz Hays, chief instructor for the Sony 3D Technology Center in Culver City, California, explained: 'It's not the technology's fault, it's really the content that can cause these problems. It's easy to make 3D but it's hard to make it good — and by "good" I mean taking care to make sure that this isn't going to cause eyestrain.' He went on to detail some of the mistakes made by inexperienced 3D film makers, from poor composition of shots, through uncomfortable convergence settings, to overuse of on-set monitors without viewing their content on a big screen. But the biggest admission Buzz made was that not even the 'experts' know all the tricks yet, which is why 3D should only get better from here. In the same seminar, Buzz also explained why 3D glasses are here to stay — at least for the next few years."

First Membrane Controlled By Light Developed 33

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 01, 2010 @02:54PM from the my-eyelid-aside dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "A new membrane developed at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics blocks gas from flowing through it when one color of light is shined on its surface, and permits gas to flow through when another color of light is used. It is the first time that scientists have developed a membrane that can be controlled in this way by light."

Could Open Source Render Facebook the Next AOL? 293

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 29, 2010 @09:18AM from the can't-happen-fast-enough dept.

joabj writes "Now that Facebook has amassed more than 500 million users, a growing number of open source social networking developers are wondering if Facebook's photo sharing, status updates and other features wouldn't work better as Internet-wide standardized services. At the OSCON conference last week, the head of Identi.ca, an open source Twitter-like microblogging service, likened today's social networking services to the enormously proprietary online services of the early 1990s, like AOL or Prodigy. He suggested that just like SMTP and Sendmail standardized what were previously propriety e-mail services, so too could open source social networking stacks, like OStatus, render walled garden services like Facebook obsolete."

ATM Hack Gives Cash On Demand 193

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @07:57AM from the one-card-bandit dept.

angry tapir writes "Windows CE-based ATMs can easily be made to dole out cash, according to security researcher Barnaby Jack. Exploiting bugs in two different ATMs at Black Hat, the researcher from IOActive was able to get them to spit out money on demand and record sensitive data from the cards of people who used them. Jack believes a large number of ATMs have remote management tools that can be accessed over a telephone. After experimenting with two machines he purchased, Jack developed a way of bypassing the remote authentication system and installing a homemade rootkit, named Scrooge."

DefCon Ninja Badges Let Hackers Do Battle 77

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @04:12PM from the that-is-some-nice-schwag dept.

eecue writes "The folks at DefCon, the world's largest hacker convention [previously on Slashdot], have been making awesome badges for years. Last year along with the convention badge, a group of hackers known as the Ninjas created an electronic badge for their exclusive party. This year the Ninjas have taken the whole electronic badge thing to the next level with an interactive, wireless, encrypted ninja battle video game badge. I convinced the Ninjas to give Wired.com an exclusive sneak peek, and let me tell you, this thing is awesome."

Our Video Game Heritage Is Rotting Away 492

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @02:44PM from the thermodynamics-at-work dept.

eldavojohn writes "There's been a movement to preserve virtual worlds but MIT's Tech Review paints a dire picture of our video game memories rotting away in the attic of history. From the article: 'Entire libraries face extinction the moment the last remaining working console of its kind — a Neo Geo, Atari 2600 or something more obscure, like the Fairchild Channel F — bites the dust.' Published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, a new paper highlights this problem and explains how emulators fall short to truly preserve our video game heritage. The paper also breaks down popular SNES emulators to illustrate the growing problem with emulators and their varying quality. Do you remember any video consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey that are forever lost to the ages?"

Submission + - What is the best software for authors? 2

Submitted by toxonix on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @01:28PM

toxonix writes: Authors have very specific needs when it comes to text editing and formatting. MS Word has been the default program for working with formatted text, but it has its limitations and pitfalls. I think Open Office Writer is ideal for any writer, and some writers and editors are using it exclusively. I've suggested writers learn to use Vim+plugins and some simple scripting for text manipulation, but Vim and Emacs may be too involved for those who have an affinity for mice and GUIs. Version control and safe keeping of manuscripts is also something I've seen writers do poorly. So, what software is available to writers that works the way writers want?

Submission + - What do we do about violators of CC licenses? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @12:13PM

An anonymous reader writes: In the past, I've seen my pictures used by big commercial companies despite the Creative Commons license that clearly limits them to non-commercial use. I just let it slide because a friend who's a lawyer says that all I can do is sue. They've ignored emails and comments. Today, I saw two other examples that show that this is pretty rampant. These big commercial corporations are some of the tech savvy publications around but they just grabbed the image. One, BoingBoing, even reprinted the "non-commercial" clause warning others to stay away. But they've got their ads from Cheerios, HP and Mazda running along side. Does anyone care that we've gone to all this trouble to create new, more flexible licenses? Does it even matter when very smart people just flip the bird to the license? Is the only alternative to sue? I wouldn't mind asking for $150k and settling for $1 for each copy made, but that seems a bit crazy. I hate to type out DMCA notices but their attitude is that only uncool people complain about this and I should be happy about the publicity. Then they can be happy about not sharing their ad revenue artists or photographers. What can I do?

Submission + - Our Video Game Heritage Is Rotting Away (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @12:09PM

eldavojohn writes: "There's been a movement to preserve virtual worlds but MIT's Tech Review paints a dire picture for our video game memories rotting away in the attic of history. From the article, "Entire libraries face extinction the moment the last remaining working console of its kind--a Neo Geo, Atari 2600 or something more obscure, like the Fairchild Channel F --bites the dust." Published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, a new paper highlights this problem and explains how emulators fall short to truly preserve our video game heritage. The paper strives for 'common strategies for digital preservation and preserving interactive art' and raises concerns about our culture and memories of our treasured past: video games. The very lengthy paper has a robust and compelling story about special controllers, legal copyright and even Sega's Dreamcast servers being turned off forever resulting in forgotten network protocols and server software to enjoy certain titles. The paper also breaks down popular SNES emulators to illustrate the growing problem with emulators and their varying quality. Do you remember any video consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey that are forever lost to the ages?"

Submission + - User-mining: Start at the gym, end up at a bar? (simplyryan.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @11:55AM

An anonymous reader writes: Instead of sitting at my desk, I spent all day “Hacking with Cloudera on CDH3 at the Cloudera Hackathon understanding people’s location-based activities using Yelp, Foursquare, and Twitter. By analyzing the data algorithmically, I got strikingly similar results to those shown on Going.com, which are based on user-generated and hand-moderated content. I was able to retrieve more data regarding users’ whereabouts each day, even hour. Here are my results...

Submission + - Robot soldiers team up for DoD competition (army.mil) 2

Submitted by jstrom on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @11:49AM

jstrom writes: Six finalists have been announced for the final round of the Multi Autonomous Ground-Robotic International Challenge (MAGIC 2010). The contest, which is sponsored by the American and Australian defense departments, aims to quickly boost the autonomous capabilities of robots deployed on the battlefield. Each team is asked to field a robot collective to autonomously map large-scale urban environment and neutralize IED-like props, while tracking and differentiating between non-combatants and enemy soldiers. The finalists, composed of three US teams in addition to teams from Japan, Turkey and Australia, will compete for US $1.6M in prize money at an undisclosed location in Australia this November. Team Michigan has posted videos (torrent) of their system in operation and animations of the algorithms they are developing. The other US finalists include the University of Pennsylvania and Robotics Research.

Submission + - UK Courts rule Nintendo DS SD Card readers illegal (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by CheShACat on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:55AM

CheShACat writes: The UK law court has today ruled that SD Card readers for Nintendo DS are illegal, finding 2 vendors guilty of selling "Game copiers". The ruling by Justice Floyd is quoted as saying "The economic effect on Nintendo of the trade in these devices is substantial as each accused device can store and play copies of many Nintendo DS games [...] The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence."

No word in the article as to what law in particular they were found to have broken, nor of the penalty the vendors are facing, but this looks like bad news for all kinds of hardware mod, on any platform, that would enable homebrew users to bypass vendor locks.

Submission + - NASA identifies Top Ten space junk missions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:54AM

coondoggie writes: While the recent US National Space Policy has given NASA new impetus to help solve the space debris problem, the space agency has defined the top 10 reasons so much junk is out there in the first place.

Submission + - Stieg Larsson is First Author to Sell 1M eBooks

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:47AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The Guardian reports that the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has become the first author to sell more than one million ebooks on Amazon. The Swedish noir thrillers features Lisbeth Salander, an asocial and extremely intelligent hacker and researcher, specialized in investigations of persons, and investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist. "Larsson's books have captivated millions of readers around the world and ignited a voracious interest in the lives of its main characters Lisbeth Salander and Michael Blomqvist," says Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content. "It's been exciting to have been a part of introducing so many people to these great books." Quercus has sold 3.3m copies of Larsson's books in the UK, and estimates that worldwide sales of the three novels are somewhere between 35-40m copies, "but they are literally selling too fast to count", adds Millar."

Submission + - Data Storage Capacity Mostly Wasted In Data Center (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:45AM

Lucas123 writes: Even after the introduction of technologies such as thin provisioning, capacity reclamation and storage monitoring and reporting software, 60% to 70% of data capacity remains unused in data centers due to over provisioning for applications and misconfiguring data storage systems. While the price of storage resource management software can be high, the cost of wasted storage is even higher with 100TB equalling $1 million when human resources, floor space and electricity is figured in. "It's a bit of a paradox. Users don't seem to be willing to spend the money to see what they have," said Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research.

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