BJSimpson - Slashdot User

Submission + - Inside Ford's 3D Printing Center Where More Than 20K Parts Are Made Each Year (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Wednesday June 04, 2014 @03:14PM

Lucas123 writes: Ford has been using 3D printing for rapid prototyping since the mid-1980s, but in recent years it has ramped up its efforts adding new machines and materials. A tour of the facility revealed shows four different methods of 3D printing being used to prototype parts. For example, Ford uses Nylon 11 and laser sintering to make parts that can be retrofitted to working vehicles and tested over thousands of miles. The center also binder jet printing to form molds for metal prototypes by laying down layers of sand that are then epoxied together. Just one of its five 3D prototyping centers churns out more than 20,000 parts a year. Today, Ford could not meet new vehicle deadlines without 3D printing.

Google Glass User Fights Speeding Ticket, Saying She's Defending the Future 464

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 16, 2014 @11:03PM from the fight-the-power dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "A California software developer dubbed an explorer by Google and a scofflaw by the California Highway Patrol appeared in court to fight over the purpose and usage of wearable electronics. Cecilia Abadie denies she was doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone when she was pulled over by the CHP Oct. 29 of last year, but proudly admits wearing her early edition of Google's Google Glass augmented-reality goggles. She just doesn't agree with the CHP's contention that Google Glass is a television. Abadie, who works at virtual-reality sports software developer Full Swing Golf and was one of the first 'explorers' chosen by Google as early testers of Google Glass before they were released, wears the goggles for as long as 12 hours per day, using them both as a way to pull email, driving directions and other information into her view and to push pictures, Tweets, updates and other information out to professional and social networks in a process she describes as 'living in transparency.' The California Highway Patrol, unfortunately for Abadie, considered wearing Google Glass to be the same as watching television while driving. One of the two citations Abadie was given was for speeding; the other was for 'driving with a monitor visible in violation of California Vehicle Code 27602.' Fighting that perception in court is 'a big responsibility for me and also for the judge who is going to interpret a very old law compared with how fast technology is changing,' Abadie told the Associated Press for a Jan. 16 story." A court commissioner in San Diego dismissed the Google Glass ticket, saying he could find no evidence that the device was in use while Abadie was driving.

Roku Finally Gets a 2D Menu System 80

Posted by samzenpus on Friday March 29, 2013 @04:06AM from the new-look dept.

DeviceGuru writes "Many of us have griped for years about Roku's retro one-dimensional user interface. Finally, in conjunction with the release of the new Roku 3 model, the Linux-based media streaming player is getting a two-dimensional facelift, making it quicker and easier to access favorite channels and find new ones. Current Roku users, who will now begin suffering from UI-envy, will be glad to learn that Roku plans to push out a firmware update next month to many earlier models, including the Roku LT, Roku HD (model 2500R), Roku 2 HD, Roku 2 XD, Roku 2 XS, and Roku Streaming Stick. A short demo of the new 2D Roku menu system is available in this YouTube video."

Oracle: Proud, Self-Reliant, Increasingly Isolated 119

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 30, 2011 @03:58PM from the sitting-in-the-corner-for-a-timeout dept.

jfruhlinger writes "One of Oracle's stated purposes when it bought Sun more than two years ago was to create full-stack appliances: SPARC servers running Solaris or Oracle Linux and Oracle's suite of app servers and of course its omnipresent database. Its new T4 processor is a reaffirmation of that strategy. But has the company painted itself into a corner? While it's cautiously embraced the cloud, its cloud services don't work with Windows or other companies' offerings, which kills much of their potential value; meanwhile, they've managed to alienate open source developers and big swaths of the Java community. It seems that Oracle's inability to play well with others is locking them out of the multipolar future."

Code Review of Doom For the iPhone 161

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday February 04, 2010 @07:42AM from the old-dogs-new-tricks dept.

Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform. "Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."

Submission + - RIAA Wins Worst Company In America 2007

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:25PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "After 15 punishing rounds of combat involving 32 of America's most hated companies, 100,000 voters have spoken: More hated than Halliburton, more despised than Walmart, the RIAA has defeated all-comers to become the Worst Company in America 2007. http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/worst-company- in-america/"

Bookmark The Colbert Report Petition (petitiononline.com)

by __aakxwc9036 on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:06PM

Comment Re:no, not everyone has service (Score 1) 196

by BJSimpson on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @12:17PM (#2654111) Attached to: Excite@Home & Comcast/AT&T Reach Agreement

I live in central PA and was formerly an ATT@home subscriber. It looks like we will be out "until the end of the month". Apparently we were "left out of the transition plan" because of a pending sale of our local ATT Broadband service to Adelphia (and said deal is currently in limbo). A spokesman has said that ATT will be sending us all disks for free WorldNet access (oh boy).

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