Wait, how is this different than the failure that was vendors.slashdot.org back in 2006/2007?

Surely I'm not the only one who remembers when they invited Intel, AMD, Microsoft, and I forget who else to participate in tech discussions, and it turned into a total flop? I can't find the original Slashdot story talking about it (pulled down?), but I think it was somewhere around here.

Wow, that's the first time I've heard of anything a gesture-based (i.e. Minority Report) interface would be good for. Allowing a surgeon to manipulate an image display without touching anything is just cool.

As to the costs of joining the program (moving to Seattle, 6% cut, etc), it might be worth it if you get to have face-to-face contact with the engineers and developers of the Kinect SDK. Having the engineering team right there listening to comments, complaints, and suggestions to improve and modify the SDK would be very helpful.

It's also interesting to read his open letter to Coyne that is posted along with the video.

He may be wrong, deluded, full of himself, or just lying, but I have a strong sense that the reporting of this whole event was very badly skewed against Haught. At least now, with the presentations and video made available, we can see how it really played out.

Well, at least it's not all bad!

From T (useless) FA:

OMFG! A conspiracy unmasked! User settings aren't deleted!

So, because IE doesn't delete your settings it isn't being removed? By this same stupid logic we can determine that almost no modern software is ever actually removed.

I'm quite astounded with the depth of these morons' investigation.

FTFY ;)

Hello, I'd like to introduce you to the False Premise.

Besides, people who are replacing their real computer with whatever the current "hot seller" is are not the primary customer of computer component retailers.

Assuming they don't do anything stupid to themselves, NewEgg is going to be just fine.

I'll see your NCIS and raise you a CSI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uoM5kfZIQ0

The hacking thing was dumb and hurt to watch. CSI broke my brain.

A "legitimate server" has a dedicated IP address which won't be immediately under suspicion by other servers just because of its address. That's all I meant. If you want to run a server from home, I'd suggest getting commercial service that comes with a static IP address.

Again, get business-class Internet service and you can create your own "high priest".

And I get it that 0.03% of users are like you and want to run a mailserver at home. Unfortunately, 60% of users have spam-spewing malware infesting their machine and blocking port 25 on all the big ISP networks is a huge step forward to reduce botnet/zombie spam.

Does Verizon not have an SMTP gateway you can use? I know when on a Comcast connection I can simply open up smtp.comcast.net and it will relay mail for me. A quick look shows they probably do, though you might have to do smarthost and authentication. Pretty easy.

Besides, any competent spam filter will increase the spam rating for mail sent directly from a network like Verizon and Comcast anyway. You're better off using a legitimate server (Verizon, Gmail, your hosting provider, whatever) to send those messages.

As others mentioned, there are plenty of places you can go that still offer a pristine view of the night sky. Light pollution drops off pretty rapidly as you get away from the source.

This summer we had a mini family reunion at my uncle's cabin in southwest Montana. Possibly the best part for me was getting away from the city and seeing the night sky the way it is truly meant to be seen. The sheer number of stars and their brightness is mind-boggling and yet so easily lost and forgotten in even a smaller city. When you see the stars, planets, and galaxies (including our own) laid out above you it is so easy to understand why ancient humans gave so much thought and concern over the heavens. It's impossible to look at that and not start thinking about all kinds of possibilities (and start feeling very small).

One thing I found surprising was the astounding number of satellites visible from the ground. They move across the sky at a pretty fast clip and there are so many. At one point I could see 5 in the sky at the same time, all moving different directions. Very neat.

Plain wrong. C# is a platform-agnostic language with a standards-defined specification. The CLR and CIL specifications are also 100% platform independent.

What is tied to Windows is Microsoft's implementation of their CLR and CIL compiler. This is what Mono implements for other platforms.

Ah, that makes sense. So, I suppose you might blind the camera day and night by putting high intensity IR LEDs around your license plate?

Unfortunately, I imagine driving anywhere off-campus with either of these in place is probably against the law.

But in the earlier article about the interface they go on to say:

If Microsoft truly leaves PC users in the dark to this extent then the year Windows 8 is released really will be the Year of the Linux desktop -- and Microsoft will have handed it to them on a silver platter.

I know that I personally will give up on Windows and move to whatever desktop environment lets me work with a full size computer effectively. I do NOT want to deal with dumbass touch interfaces on a PC, whether that's Windows 8, iOS, or frakking Unity.

That was my thought as well when they first presented the system, and claims of "simultaneous identification of up to 8 plates per second" were tossed around.

At first there really did seem to be a problem with either the database backend doing the lookups or the cameras themselves. You could be fully stopped at the gate and it would be 6-12 seconds before the gate would open. They seemed to fix that after a month or two. Not soon after is when they started mounting the cameras I as I mentioned, and one of these is facing a 4-lane 35 MPH road, so it must be working pretty well.

The other problem is the way they have the cameras mounted. Because this was fitted onto an existing structure the camera can only see your plate once your car is only about feet away from the gate. This means you're forced to come to almost a full stop (or just slow way down) to give the gate time to come up.

Since you said you've worked on these systems, can I ask you a question? From looking at the cameras and knowing they work when it's dark, I assume they use infrared light to function. Does that sound right? If that's the case, wouldn't you be able to block them by putting an IR filter over your license plate? Such a filter should be transparent to normal light, so I can't imagine it's (very) illegal in most places.

Thanks.