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Math

Submission + - TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C stands for Color! (arstechnica.com)

skade88 writes: Do you remember those large TI-8X line of calculators with a BW display from when you were growing up and learning all about math? Yeah well, you can still get them because TI has yet to update or change their line of TI-8X calculators from their 96x64 display, processors designed in the 1980s with just a few kilobytes of user accessible memory. They still cost in the $100.00 to $150.00 range.

Even XKCD made a great comic on this issue... a while ago.

That is all about to change now that the TI-8X line of calculators is 22 years old. Their new TI-84+C-Silver edition will come with a 320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM. I am going to dust off my graphics programming skills from 1994 and see what fun stuff I can make on this puppy!

Ars has a good preview of the device along with speculation on why it took so so so very long for TI to finally bring calculators up to a level of technology that could have been delivered a decade ago.

Comment Re:I'd like to see more of this (Score 5, Funny) 139

Oooh, Oooh how about 3 strikes. The media companies love it so much; what if they got 3 strikes? If they issue 3 DMCA take down requests that get overturned as failing to consider fair use, they loose the right to issue take down requests.

I predict that a fraction of a second after such a law took affect most companies' bots would issue bad requests. A few months later the courts would rule that 3 of them were in valid, and all of big name rights owners would loose the right to issue take down notices. Then the word becomes a better place and I can watch the Curiosity landing!

Comment Age Already Matters (Score 1) 397

We (the USA) already restrict certain things based on age. You can't vote until you are 18. You can't drive until you are 16. You can't drink until you are 21. You can't serve in the military until you are 17?. You can't work full time until you are 18. I don't think that anyone is going to propose letting a 5 year old, vote, drink alcohol, drive or work full 40 house a week killing people in the military. If we can restrict all of these things based on age why not restrict sales of games. Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to. Just like parents can (or should be able to) let their children operate a vehicle on private property. Children are not first class citizens. They shouldn't be first class citizens. Restricting sales of violent games, alcohol, pornography, or tobacco should be alright.

Comment Re:Not in use? (Score 1) 324

Can I be the first to implement it?

"Hey boss look at this cool new feature that I added, it saves the customer money!"
"Well John, that a nice feature. I guess that I am employing to many of you if you have time to implement un-requested features that don't help us. Enjoy the unemployment line..."

Comment Ask yourself ths (Score 1) 1307

OP, You sound some what security conscious so I would ask you the question: Would you let the IT guy plug a small server into your home network. Would you let IT guy plug the server into your home network if he gives you a regular user account on the machine? Would you let IT guy plug the server into your home network if he gives you a root account on the machine? If you are actually security conscious I assume that you would answer no to all 3 questions. A better solution would be: why not plug your little server into your home network and punch open the hole in your own firewall. You would have full control, and would never have to give IT guy an account. In the mean time you can keep pushing them to set up the service on an official hospital machine.

Comment Re:Sorry, no "dirty tricks" campaign here... (Score 1) 1060

Why do leading US politicians advocate cold blooded murder by government troops?

Because he is effectively a terrorist. In all of the reports that I have read I have yet to hear revelations about the US killing babies and doing horrible things. If those were the kinds of things being reported this case would be very different. Instead diplomatic cables claiming the the Prince of England is an ass have been released. That only serves to hurt the US's relationship with other nations, and generally hurt its international standing. If these same documents had been released by Osama Bin Laden we would say it is yet another terrorist attack. Instead they have been released by a person who in the past has done good things in the name of public disclosure of information. I fail to see the value in this latest release and as a result I am right in line with whichever US politicians are advocating cold blooded murder.

Submission + - Netflix deal expands instant watch catalog (sfgate.com) 1

SloppyElvis writes: Netflix Inc. has announced a deal, reportedly worth $1 billion, to bulk up its increasingly popular Internet streaming service with Hollywood blockbusters such as "Star Trek," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "The Godfather."

"What's exciting here is it really reaffirms that the Internet is a serious delivery channel," said analyst Colin Dixon, a senior partner for the research firm the Diffusion Group. Netflix has really been the catalyzing force on the market and it has illustrated very graphically that consumers are very comfortable consuming quality content directly from the Internet and in some respects, it's their preferred medium."

Read more: here

Comment Re:Copyright laws. (Score 1) 436

In some (not all) cases the content owner is deprived of a sale. That sale would likely have put money into the pocket of the content owner. In that case the content owner has been stolen from. Don't get me wrong; I don't for a moment believe that EVERY download is a lost sale. If a person downloads something that they would have otherwise ended up buying, then the content owner has been deprived of a sale and has been stolen from. The flip side is that if after downloading content a person ends up purchasing the content because of the 'preview' they have added a sale. While I don't have any proof I believe that the former far exceeds the later.
Space

Submission + - FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams (universetoday.com)

thomst writes: Space.com is just now getting around to reporting a story that Spaceref.com reported on January 5 (and Universe Today reported on the 6th) about papers presented at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on a new model explaining the beam emissions from pulsars as products of superluminal currents within the spinning neutron stars' atmospheres. (The actual papers are here, here, and, especially here — all from Cornell University's arXiv.org open archive of half a million or so "eprints" in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics.)

According to the authors' model, the current generated is, itself, faster than light, although the particles that compose it never individually exceed the universal speed limit, thereby preventing Einsteinian post-mortem rotation. The new model is a general explanation of the phenomenon of pulsar beam emissions that explains emissions at all observed frequencies (and different pulsars emit everything from radio waves to x-rays), which no previous model has done.

AMD

Submission + - Ostendo Demos 3X43-inch Surround Vision With AMD (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: "Ostendo is primarily a technology-based development company with a focus on design though they productized their CRVD Curved Display technology, initially as proof of concept vehicle. Today they also manufacturer the panels for general sale and other applications in the simulation, training, broadcast, medical and financial markets to name just a few. In the upper press briefing rooms of AMD's spread at CES, Ostendo had married not one but three of their CRVD Curved Displays up with a proverbial bad-ass gaming system built in a Thermaltake Level 10 case. Employing AMD Eyefinity technology with a Radeon HD 5870 graphics card pushing the pixels, the effect was very "immersive" in the words of Ostendo Director of Marketing, Erhan Ercan. Watching the demo, we'd have to agree."

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