brainwash - Slashdot User

Comment Re:There is hope (Score 1) 512

by brainwash on Tuesday October 21, 2008 @03:33AM (#25450405) Attached to: Recovering Moldy Electronics?

Not so fast. With today's surface mount electronics there is the danger that water has set beneath the components and the hummidity has infiltrated. This causes a slow and agonizing death to components.

I've seen this happen to mobile phones (dropped in the bucket or rained upon), television sets, media players, etc.

The best bet would be to submerge the PCBs in alcohol (98%) and leave them there for a day. Then just hope that the circuits won't corrode over time, as they do in this cases. This is the standard recovery method used here for mobile phones or home electronics.

You can also use some water-repelling products for larger electronics with wide PCB traces. I'm thinking something in line with WD40, contact sprays sometimes contain that.

Again, with the average life of these electronics being around 5 years you might squeeze some more usage from them, but it's a bet. There's no guarantee that they work flawlessly after being subjected to >80% hummidity.

The Blending of Music and Games 119

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @07:07PM from the i-just-five-starred-halo dept.

Gamasutra has an opinion piece by the 'father of music games,' Masaya Matsuura, who questions the evolution of video game music (or the lack thereof) as the industry's technological advancements give rise to the capability for greater complexity. "Most games these days seem to use gorgeous orchestral soundtracks. While these large-scale soundtracks may generally be lovely to listen to, if we really think about it, isn't it all a bit lacking in imagination? Thinking about it from a simplistic visual perspective, while films are basically just watched, games are interactive." He also discusses the predilection for games to encourage "competitive fun," as opposed to "cooperative fun." GameSetWatch has a related article which talks about how excellent musical scores can help to create an emotionally charged experience, rather than simply occupying one's mind for a time.

DARPA Developing Super Scope 44

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @01:19PM from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Strategic Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are developing new high-resolution scopes that extend the range of viable image recognition and reduce atmospheric interference. Still in the early prototyping stage, DARPA hopes the new optical system (PPT presentation) will eventually result in a decrease of friendly fire incidents and collateral damage from military operations. 'Called the Super-Resolution Vision System (SRVS), this new system exploits atmospheric turbulence effects that magnify pieces of images behind heat haze. The formal name for this phenomenon is atmospheric turbulence-generated micro-lensing and it creates a brief, high resolution image behind the haze. The SRVS takes many such images and collates them to create a cohesive image of the entire larger area under observation using new advances in signal processing made possible by advances in computer processing power and increased storage capabilities.'"

New "Endoscope On a Pill" 96

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 25, 2008 @02:34PM from the easy-to-swallow dept.

ScienceDaily is reporting that a new form of endoscope developed at the University of Washington is more like swallowing a pill than the typical "massive" cable. The pill, complete with a 1.4 mm wide tether, contains a single optical fiber for illumination and six fibers for collecting light. "Once swallowed, an electric current flowing through the UW endoscope causes the fiber to bounce back and forth so that its lone electronic eye sees the whole scene, one pixel at a time. At the same time the fiber spins and its tip projects red, green and blue laser light. The image processing then combines all this information to create a two-dimensional color picture."

Submission + - Fighting Online Game Cheating in Hardware (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by

Monk

on Sunday July 01, 2007 @08:28AM

Monk writes: "Multiplayer games these days have one problem. Cheating. Cheating is out of control because of failed attempts by software such as Punkbuster, and VALVe's Anticheat (VAC). Now it seems that could change change with intel's own Anticheat Software/Hardware."

Download Only Song to Crack the Top 40 391

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:03PM from the all-shook-up dept.

nagora writes "The BBC is reporting that next week's UK music chart may have the first sign of the end of the recording industry as we know it. From this week (7th Jan, 2006), all downloaded music sales are counted in the official UK chart, not just tracks which have had a physical media release. Now, an unsigned band called Koopa is poised to enter the top 40 without any old-world recording, distribution, or production deals. Band member Joe Murphy says "If someone comes along and gives us an offer, we'll talk to them." before continuing on to add the words the recording industry has been having nightmares about since the introduction of the mp3 format: "If we can get enough exposure and get in the top 40 by the end of the week, do we necessarily need a large label? Probably nowadays, no you don't." Is this finally the crack in the dam we've all been waiting for to wash away the entrenched monopolies of 20th century music production? Or just a sell-out waiting to happen?"

DIY 4 GHz Dual Core Gaming Rig For $720 201

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday June 13, 2006 @05:47PM from the not-for-long dept.

Tom's Hardware has posted the detailed results of their recent quest to build a beefy gaming rig without a visit to the poorhouse. The trick it seems is to find a processor with 'cores designed for a much faster clock than their nominal rating at a speed of up to 4 GHz without problems.' They provide shopping lists for both a 'budget version' and a 'top flight version'.

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