Comment Re:"Investors valued" (Score 2) 84
If you wanted the $86k from CarMax, you should have valued the car at $616,333. Algorithms, man!
Comment God damn it (Score 1) 388
Fuck off with this shit. Stop giving these idiots attention. It started out as a stupid meme and was taken over by idiots who didn't get the joke. You're helping to create more each time a news outlet reports on it. Stop!
Comment Re:Fingerprint reader? (Score 1) 66
The tin-foil hat, conspiracy theory part of me wonders if it's some convert government program pushing smart phone makers to get pictures of their users for "law enforcement" purposes.
Pfft! That's nothing compared to the terabytes of facial data we provide Google every day via Google Photos.
Comment Re:LOL, NO (Score 1) 66
Also, don't forget that Google in years past has had some really good black Friday deals that pissed me off since I bought the phone at full price.
Comment Re:YouTube is Free (Score 1) 54
True, but it offers content for pretty much every niche. I don't know what interests you, but if you search for it on YouTube, there's a good probability you'll find content about it. I'm in my mid-30s and could easily have it be my only source of entertainment because I can subscribe to content that I'm interested in. If you look at what's trending on YT, there's your drivel!
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 362
It will be featured on the Big Bang Theory.
Broadcom Releases Source Code For Drivers 350
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Broadcom, the world's largest manufacturer of Wi-Fi transceivers, open sources its Linux device drivers. This is a big win for Linux users, as there are a lot of users that face Wi-Fi problems when they use Linux on their laptops. With these device drivers now open source, distributions can ship them out-of-the-box, and that means no Linux Wi-Fi problems for new devices and upcoming distributions at all."
Infinite Mario With Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment 103
bgweber writes "There's been a lot of discussion about whether games should adapt to the skills of players. However, most current techniques limit adaptation to parameter adjustment. But if the parameter adaptation is applied to procedural content generation, then new levels can be generated on-line in response to a player's skill. In this adaptation of Infinite Mario (with source [.JAR]), new levels are generated based on the performance of the player. What other gameplay mechanics are open for adaptation when games adapt to the skills of specific players?"
The Limits To Perpendicular Recording 222
peterkern writes "Samsung has a new hard drive and says it can now store 667 GB on one disk, which comes out to be about 739 Gb/sq. in. That is more than five times the density when perpendicular recording was introduced back in 2006, and it is getting close to the generally expected soft limit of 1 Tb/sq. in. It's great that we can now store 2 TB on one hard drive and that 3-TB hard drives are already feasible. But how far can it go? It appears that the hard drive industry may start talking about heat-assisted magnetic recording again, soon."
Comment Get your school to apply for grants... (Score 1) 170
At the university where I work, we got a $100,000 grant from the USDA to upgrade our aging V-tel units to Tandberg systems a few years ago. If you want this done right, you'll need the right equipment, it's just that the equipment costs an arm and a leg and getting free money from the government helps. Also, perhaps going through a videoconferencing underdog like LifeSize could help get you going. I hear LifeSize is trying to get their foot in the door by providing sweet deals that undercut the likes of Cisco, Tandberg, and Polycom. Good luck!
Licensing Dispute Threatens Future of Skype 282
tomlins writes "eBay is faced with the prospect of having to close down the hugely popular VoIP app Skype due to its reliance on proprietary code still owned by Skype's original founders, who are threatening to pull the plug on the licensing agreement they have with eBay."
Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter" 406
Professor_Quail writes with this interesting excerpt: "Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion."
Why Game Developers Should Shut Up About Used Games 590
Ssquared22 writes "It may feel like a rip-off to some, but you've got to admit that paying $30 for Gears of War 2 sure beats paying $60! Game publishers and developers may not like it, but people are going to trade in used games for new games and those old games will be sold back to other people. There's nothing game developers can do to stop them, and companies like Gamestop continue to laugh all the way to the bank. In an article at Crispy Gamer, David Thomas dissects one of the most critical issues in gaming today: used games and merchants (online and brick-and-mortar) who specialize in this 'sleight of hand.'"
New Service Converts Torrents Into PNG Images 297
jamie points out that a new web service, hid.im, will encode a torrent into a PNG image file, allowing it to be shared easily through forums or image hosting sites. Quoting TorrentFreak:
"We have to admit that the usefulness of the service escaped us when we first discovered the project. So, we contacted Michael Nutt, one of the people running the project to find out what it's all about. 'It is an attempt to make torrents more resilient,' Michael told [us]. 'The difference is that you no longer need an indexing site to host your torrent file. Many forums will allow uploading images but not other types of files.' Hiding a torrent file inside an image is easy enough. Just select a torrent file stored on your local hard drive and Hid.im will take care the rest. The only limit to the service is that the size of the torrent file cannot exceed 250KB. ... People on the receiving end can decode the images and get the original .torrent file through a Firefox extension or bookmarklet. The code is entirely open source and Michael Nutt told us that they are hoping for people to contribute to it by creating additional decoders supported by other browsers."
US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux 477
twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."
Slashdot Top Deals
One small step for man, one giant stumble for mankind.
