RichardK - Slashdot User

Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos 428

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 12, 2010 @04:36PM from the two-pound-hammer-and-ten-penny-nail dept.

wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.

Black Mesa Nearing Completion, Trailer Released 103

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @04:10AM from the silencing-naysayers dept.

Today, the Black Mesa Team released an impressive trailer for their remake of Half-Life . The remake is a total-conversion mod for Half-Life 2, bringing the updated graphics and AI of the Source engine to the original game. The team has been dropping hints lately that the project, which began in 2004, is almost done, and the trailer confirms that it will be out in 2009. They also recently announced that they've "dropped Counter-Strike: Source as a requirement for Black Mesa, and from now on, the only thing you'll need to play the mod is a Steam account with any Source engine game installed! Black Mesa is now running completely off of our own content and base Source shared content, and we felt the vastly increased user base more then [sic] justified creating all the extra assets needed to make this switch."

Rewriting a Software Product After Quitting a Job? 604

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @03:57AM from the clean-room-white-coats dept.

hi_caramba_2008 writes "We are a bunch of good friends at a large software company. The product we work on is under-budgeted and over-hyped by the sales drones. The code quality sucks, and management keeps pulling in different direction. Discussing this among ourselves, we talked about leaving the company and rebuilding the code from scratch over a few months. We are not taking any code with us. We are not taking customer lists (we probably will aim at different customers anyway). The code architecture will also be different — hosted vs. stand-alone, different modules and APIs. But at the feature level, we will imitate this product. Can we be sued for IP infringement, theft, or whatever? Are workers allowed to imitate the product they were working on? We know we have to deal with the non-compete clause in our employment contracts, but in our state this clause has been very difficult to enforce. We are more concerned with other IP legal aspects."

SpaceX Launch Fails To Reach Space 263

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 03, 2008 @09:05AM from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.

azuredrake and many other readers have written to tell us: "The New York Times reports that the third SpaceX launch has failed following the second-stage ignition of the Falcon 1 rocket. The SpaceX launch had three satellites on board, all of which were presumably destroyed in the incident. This marks the third failed launch for SpaceX — twice they failed to reach orbit, and once the Falcon 1 rocket was lost five minutes after launch. While the company vows to carry on, this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry." Reader Nano2Sol points out a video of the launch from a camera on Falcon 1, and notes a small oscillation just prior to the footage being cut off. Spaceflight Now ran a mission update blog leading up to the failure, and they also have more coverage on the loss of the rocket.

Comment Re:I wonder... (Score 1) 105

by RichardK on Thursday March 20, 2008 @07:26AM (#22804958) Attached to: Stanford Team Developing Super 3D Camera

If you use a high-res 16bpp b/w digital camera, you can produce "true" HDR images by using the same technique as an early Russian photographer - simply rotate between red, green and blue filters. You now have a 48bpp colour image.

There are two problems with this:
1. 16bpp is still not enough to represent a true high dynamic range, and
2. the change in colour filters requires time, bringing home the root of all modern HDR capture problems: scenes almost never remain static!

Now I know this is a little nit-picky, but it's certainly worth the mention. Modern consumer hardware just doesn't cut-it when acquiring HDR images. You need plenty of time to capture all your exposures and, in your case, colour planes, and this time is often too long for normal scene capture.

That being said, using 16bpp sensors that truly DO capture 16bpp of correct light information would be a step up on current methods for generating HDR images using consumer digital cameras.

WoW Expansion Sells 2.4 Million, New MMOG Planned 161

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @01:22PM from the that-is-a-lot-of-nerds dept.

Computer and Videogames is reporting that 2.4 Million copies of Burning Crusade were sold on the first day of retail sales. Those numbers are just for North American and the EU, too, which totally discounts any sales the box may have had in Asian markets. Even without our eastern brethren, that number pretty much destroys every other launch-day sales number for a PC game. Meanwhile, the same gent that teased us with the next StarCraft game has tossed out this bone as well: Blizzard's next MMOG 'won't be another WoW'. From the article: "'When we announce our next MMORPG it's not going to be another WOW--we're not a company that tends to tread the same ground,' he told British film magazine Empire. 'It'll be something innovative and new that really brings entertainment to another level.' American Blizzard reps declined to expand on Bassat's comments, although the fact that the company began hiring real-time strategy developers last summer might offer a clue." So ... another Blizzard MMOG. Huh.

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