adez - Slashdot User

Demo of Spatially Aware Blocks 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 13, 2009 @01:51PM from the but-will-they-survive-my-2-year-old dept.

Chris Anderson writes "This 5-min demo just posted from last week's TED — got a big crowd reaction. It's a new technology coming out of MIT, about to be commercialized. Siftables have been seen before, but not like this. They're toy blocks/tiles that are spatially aware and interact with each other in very cool ways. Initial use may be as toys, but there's big potential for new paradigm of spatially-aware physical mini computers."

Comment Why are people still talking about this? (Score 0) 371

by adez on Sunday July 22, 2007 @02:30PM (#19947391) Attached to: Where the Wii Fits In

Every time I read one of these "OMG!?! What is Nintendo doing?" stories, I get a good chuckle. Nintendo is still doing what they are good at, and will keep on doing it. I don't think their 'strategy' is so revolutionary. Casual games are HUGE on the PC. They are just going with the flow. They are expanding the console market by making fun, easy to play games. Do you think the casual gamers who buy the Wii are gonna turn into hardcore online FPS players? Probably not. They are expanding the market, but the people they are picking up are people who wouldn't have bought a 360 or PS3 in the first place. I bet they won't in the next generation, either.
For all the people who thought the Gamecube was a failure, keep in mind that Big N made money on every one they sold. They aren't a big conglomerate that subsidizes the cost of their bloated hardware, in hopes of making money off the games. They make money on the systems and the games.
After they got their asses handed to them by Sony and the original PlayStation, They found their little corner of the gaming market and keep expanding it slowly while still turning a profit. What about the GBA? It WAS the hand held console of the last generation. There were some others, but they aren't even worth mentioning. While the Gamecube was seen as a failure(which it wasn't, IMHO), the GBA sold like hotcakes for years. The DS already beginning to repeat that success.

Submission + - Slackware 12.0 is released (slackware.com)

Submitted by

Matt

on Monday July 02, 2007 @07:23PM

Matt writes: "Straight from our good friend and colleague in the fight for quality distributions, Mr. Patrick Volkerding, comes a brand-new and eagerly-awaited release of Slackware, version 12. HAL automount, KDE 3.5.7 and XFCE 4.4.1, Xorg 7.2, 2.6 kernels as far as the eye can see, oodles of updated applications and utilities, and hardware support for just about anything under the sun. Enjoy! I know I will."

Best Buy Accused of Overcharging 301

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 25, 2007 @03:11PM from the maybe-shouldn't-be-quite-so-greedy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has accused Best Buy of overcharging its customers. His accusation is that customers see one price on Best Buy's website, in stores salespeople would show them a different internal site from a kiosk. Best Buy denies the charges. 'Previously, the company confirmed that store employees have access to an internal Web site that looks nearly identical to the public BestBuy.com site, but the company's policy is always to offer customers the lowest quoted price unless it's specifically identified as a deal available only to online shoppers. Jerry Farrell Jr., Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner, said the lawsuit should be a warning to companies to be more transparent in their business practices.'"

Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is 519

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:29PM from the and-the-earth-is-not-flat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet. Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals. "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is". he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws. Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts.""

Submission + - Toyota going 100% hybrid by 2020

Submitted by

autofan1

on Monday May 14, 2007 @09:08PM

autofan1 writes: "http://www.motorauthority.com/cars/toyota/toyota-c utting-hybrid-costs/ Toyota's vice president in charge of powertrain development, Masatami Takimoto, has said cost cutting on the electric motor, battery and inverter were all showing positive results in reducing the costs of hybrid technology and by the time Toyota's sales goal of one million hybrids annually is reached, it "expect margins to be equal to gasoline cars". Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020, hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for "100 percent" of Toyota's cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle."

Submission + - OLPC a reality in Uruguay

Submitted by

Acer500

on Friday May 11, 2007 @09:52PM

Acer500 writes: "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality yesterday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of the school number 24 "Italy" in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez, as most newspapers in the country headlined yesterday (in Spanish)

El Observador http://www.observa.com.uy/Osecciones/ciencia/nota. aspx?id=76129.
El Pais http://www.elpais.com.uy/07/05/10/ultmo_279860.asp

In what has become a matter of national pride in being the first country to realize the project's goal, the target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project.

From the newspaper articles "The happines of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams"

According to the unofficial blog of the Uruguayan project, named "proyecto Ceibal", , the infrastructure for wireless is not yet in place but will be provided in the next few days by the national telco ANTEL. No photos of the event have been posted online, but you can see an institutional video on Youtube here

One interesting point is that it has not yet been decided that the XO will be the laptop of choice for the entire project. Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC , and israeli-manufactured ITP-C. In a press conference, Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP. http://tic.item.org.uy/?q=node/1013

As advisor and local guru Juan Grompone stated, "who will ultimately benefit from this is education". This will be an interesting test to see if the OLPC project meets its intended goals of "learning learning". Let's hope this project is the means that will foster among some of the children the desire to learn and to tinker; I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting the first feedback from this."

iPod/iPhone Nano With Touch Panel? 122

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 11, 2007 @05:21PM from the they-feel-you dept.

Staska writes "A new Apple patent filing shows new directions for Apple's touch interface design. For smaller devices like iPod Nano, touchscreen interface may not be feasible — the screen is just too small for touch operation. According to the patent, Apple can still make full screen iPods and put a touch panel on the backside of the device with transparent controls on the front screen. In addition to iPod, patent filing also describes controls for the phone. ZDNet even thinks that this patent can hint about future touch interfaces for all Apple products."

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