Comment from-the-no-shit-department (Score 1) 337
When it happens, It's going to be really bad.
4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101
A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
Comment As a Minneapolis resident... (Score 3, Funny) 104
I feel safer already.
Comment Re:"cellular" means frequence reuse (Score 1) 247
Not so with CDMA/UMTS/LTE. All cells operate on the same frequency.
Under these coding schemes, more cells allow more capacity, but they all use the same spectrum.
Senator Uses FCC Nomination Process To Question National Wireless Network 101
K7DAN contributes this excerpt from the intersection of politics, regulation, and high technology: "Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his threat to place a hold on two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission over concerns about a controversial new wireless network the agency has allowed to move forward. The Iowa Republican this week accused the FCC of refusing to comply with his requests for information on its discussions with Virginia company LightSquared regarding its next-generation national wireless network. Some fear the network would hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS systems — used by the military, farmers and others. Grassley also raised questions about the involvement of Harbinger, the hedge fund behind the project and founded by Democratic donor Philip Falcone."
Comment Website. Gallery Software. (Score 1) 680
1. Get Website
2. Install http://gallery.menalto.com/
3. Store Photos.
4. ????
5. Profit!
Comment Drug cases (Score 2, Interesting) 260
I wonder how the cases where drugs were found and reported to law enforcement will pan out.
Does consenting to a TSA screening also mean you're consenting to a search? I'm certain someone will attempt to try the unreasonable search and seizure/warrentless search defense.
This troubles me.
Comment Heck, I work for a mobile phone company.... (Score 1) 129
And they make me pay for my own service. Discounted, but I still have to pay. The phone is mine.
And because of this, I can refuse to receive work email on it. Come 5 pm, I'm out, and I'll be back tomorrow. No answering mail at 2 am for me.
Comment Re:EXPOSURE: 1 hour of cellphone=lifetime with WiF (Score 4, Informative) 474
FWIW, I'm a GSM RF Engineer. Two issues with your post:
In the US, phones are limited to 1 W max for 1900 MHz (aka PCS) transmission, and 2 W for 850 MHz.
The interference you hear on your speakers isn't due to the amount of power being transmited, but it's actually caused by the modulation of the signals being transmitted. That modulation occurs at 217 Hz....which is audible.
Comment Re:We are a bunch (Score 2, Interesting) 898
You've never tried texting on New Year's Eve. Many of those texts don't go through for hours.
FWIW: I work for T-Mobile in an engineering capacity. I know of what I speak.
Layoffs at Microsoft, Intel, and IBM 623
Normally I try to avoid posting straight business news, but I think that these 3 stories combine to something meaningful.
Muleguy noted Microsoft is laying off 5,000,
Mspangler reports that
Intel is cutting 5-6k, while
nonyabidness afraid4myjob submitted that IBM Layoffs have begun with no number, but estimates as high as 16,000.
Comment Re:EQ might be better than UO for this one. . . (Score 1) 261
It appears the idea they are trying to patent is that, in a 3D world, when you turn the camera to look a given direction, you should only see some avatars, and not others (that is, only the ones in your field of view). Additionally, if there are a lot of avatars, this patent claims protection for the idea that the client can implement a maximum number of avatars to display, and to use the knowledge of the maximum number to display, combined with the position information, to determine some subset of the avatars to display (presumably the X nearest avatars, where X is the maximum number to display, though the patent doesn't specify this explicitly).
Neal Stephenson covered this in 1992 in Snow Crash when he described the behavior of avatars in the Metaverse (the 3D virtual world in the novel). In large crowds the clients would typically display other avatars as ghosts to cut down on rendering time and to avoid avatar collisions.
Comment Wait (Score -1, Offtopic) 179
wat?
Comment Re:Struggling to parse the submitter's blurb (Score 1) 172
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