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Comment Re:Common technology in large HVAC systems (Score 1) 228

by Cyclopedian (#38957863) Attached to: Honeywell Vs Nest: When the Establishment Sues Silicon Valley

Large buildings already have control systems that do this, and Honeywell manufactures many of them.

The "Nest" device may well be mostly hype. (What is "far-field motion detection", anyway?) There's only so much you can do with input from one location and nothing but on/off control over heating and cooling.

Compare the EcoBee, which does the same job, and probably better. EcoBee can handle remote sensors for outdoor air temperature. It measures humidity, which "Next" doesn't claim to do. It can be set up to control fans and dampers. (One of the biggest wins in HVAC management is figuring out how much air to take from outside and how much to recirculate.)

Nest is a status symbol, not a HVAC management system. It looks cool. It creates the illusion that it's doing something "green". It probably helps a little.

Look at the EcoBee, and without reading any instructions or manual, attempt to change the temperature lower or higher. Do those "menu" type buttons do that job? Or is it a touch screen? Those are not immediately obvious, and most of the population would say the same thing.

Nest is an attempt at making the interface in such a way that the usage is obvious to most of the population without looking it up in a manual. Right now, that costs extra, but maybe not for long.

Comment Speech Recognition implications (Score 1) 221

by Cyclopedian (#33863326) Attached to: High-Tech Microphone Picks Voices From a Crowd

This could be a boon for speech recognition systems, especially for use in areas with lots of environmental noise, or even just a little.

Maybe even the effort in clearing out the environmental noise will lead to the ability to clean out the "noise" (accents, minor physical fluctuations) from a person's speech- perhaps to such a point that the complexity of the software speech recognition problem is reduced.

Comment Re:I've got the cure (Score 1) 456

by ArticulateArne (#31689112) Attached to: Gonorrhea As the Next Superbug

I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. Religions perceive sex as a necessary evil, to be used for procreation only. Actually, most religions go even further and condone the concept of love (and by extension sex) only if it subject to some kind of religious regulation mechanism, because anything else gnaws away at the oppressive stranglehold religion has over everyday life. In order to exist, religion needs to have a monopoly on everything fulfilling and meaningful.

Huh? Apparently you haven't read the biblical Song of Solomon. To quote from Chapter 7 (NIV translation):

1 How beautiful your sandaled feet,
              O prince's daughter!
              Your graceful legs are like jewels,
              the work of a craftsman's hands.

  2 Your navel is a rounded goblet
              that never lacks blended wine.
              Your waist is a mound of wheat
              encircled by lilies.

  3 Your breasts are like two fawns,
              twins of a gazelle.

  4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
              Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
              by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
              Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
              looking toward Damascus.

  5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
              Your hair is like royal tapestry;
              the king is held captive by its tresses.

  6 How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
              O love, with your delights!

  7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
              and your breasts like clusters of fruit.

  8 I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
              I will take hold of its fruit."
              May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
              the fragrance of your breath like apples,

  9 and your mouth like the best wine.

That doesn't sound like "necessary evil" to me. I'd say it sounds rather enthusiastic. :)

Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Image

iTunes Prohibits Terrorism 124

Posted by samzenpus from the great-songs-come-with-great-responsibility dept.
Afforess writes "A recent closer look at the oft-skimmed EULA agreement for iTunes has an interesting paragraph in it, Gizmodo reports. 'You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.' Although humorous, some readers suggested that this may be a defense measure to previously discussed price changes in the iTunes music store."
First Person Shooters (Games)

id Releases Open Source Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone 232

Posted by Soulskill from the ach-mein-leben dept.
An anonymous reader writes "id Software has released a port of the classic Wolfenstein FPS to the iPhone. Some of the coding was done by John Carmack himself, who also used original code combined with new code from Wolf3D Redux. The original code was open sourced years ago, and enthusiasts have been updating it, which made the port considerably easier for id. It's available in the iTunes App Store, but the source is available for free at id's website." Carmack also posted a detailed writeup about the decision to bring Wolf3D to the iPhone, including design notes and a few snippets of code. At the end, he says, "I'm going back to Rage for a while, but I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone." Kotaku got a chance to try the game at GDC: "It's not just a good reproduction of the original, it seems better."
The Courts

Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA 785

Posted by timothy from the similar-to-the-old-boss dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court's more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages. Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the Government brief asked the Judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?"
The Internet

South Korea Joins the "Three Strikes" Ranks 278

Posted by kdawson from the judge-and-jury dept.
Glyn Moody writes "For years, the content industries having been trying to get laws passed that would stop people sharing files. For years they failed. Then they came up with the 'three strikes and you're out' idea — and it is starting to be put into law around the world. First we had France, followed by countries like Italy, Ireland — and now South Korea: 'On March 3, 2009, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting & Communications (CCSTB&C) passed a bill to revise the Copyright Law. The bill includes the so called, "three strikes out" or "graduated response" provision.' Why has the 'three strikes' idea caught on where others have failed? And what is the best way to stop it spreading further?"

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