buggybison - Slashdot User

Supersizing the "Last Supper" 98

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @12:38PM from the a-meal-fit-for-a-king-of-kings dept.

gandhi_2 writes "A pair of sibling scholars compared 52 artists' renditions of 'The Last Supper', and found that the size of the meal painted had grown through the years. Over the last millennium they found that entrees had increased by 70%, bread by 23%, and plate size by 65.6%. Their findings were published in the International Journal of Obesity. From the article: 'The apostles depicted during the Middle Ages appear to be the ascetics they are said to have been. But by 1498, when Leonardo da Vinci completed his masterpiece, the party was more lavishly fed. Almost a century later, the Mannerist painter Jacobo Tintoretto piled the food on the apostles' plates still higher.'"

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @12:27PM from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.

longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."

Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies 397

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @02:22PM from the cause-or-symptom dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"

PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles 361

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 17, 2009 @03:18PM from the load-photon-torpedoes dept.

darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."

Hand Written Clock 86

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:11PM from the up-to-the-minute dept.

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Comment Recently Installed Ubuntu (Score 1) 727

by buggybison on Thursday May 21, 2009 @01:25PM (#28042233) Attached to: Ubuntu 9.04 For the Windows Power User

(for some reason Hard Returns are ignored by /. on the Mac?, should be several paragraphs!!! not one big one??? /. - WTF?) After reading an article about WUBI and the installation process for Ubuntu AND since I was reinstalling the XP OS on my Dell I thought it would be a good time to try Ubuntu and see what the hype was all about. So, reinstall XP from the hidden partition to factory. (BTW, smartest thing Dell ever did), install Firefox and flash, Goggle Earth, etc..., make sure everything works. Then straight to wubi-installer.org and start the download. Couple hours later download is done and the installation has started. So far so good. Installation complete and boot for the first time. OH NO, PARTIAL VIDEO! Spend three days reading many posts concerning video drivers, ATI cards, and Ubuntu. Ah, here's the command. Remove driver through Linux command and reinstall OS driver the same way. Works but slow. Goto ATI site and download driver from them. Some troubles getting it to work then BAM everything seems to work just fine. Install firefox and flash. Seems ok, but wait flash boxes sometimes show blank but sound is ok. Weird! Unresolved! Install VLC, works but way slower than VLC on XP, barely plays video, hesitates, etc... Hmmm, install Goggle Earth, barely works way too slow to display, then stops working all together, starts menus etc but no display now. Frustrating! So after playing around and getting things to work in Ubuntu I found that many tasks were much slower or wouldn't work at all. So now I'm pretty diappointed. In the end I check my email, surf the web (mostly) from Ubuntu. I goto XP anytime I need to use an Adobe product. I'm a Graphic Designer and Adobe is the industry standard. Must have it. Now I need XP to watch videos with VLC, runs great and much faster with the latest version, scrubs video much faster now. When I do use Firefox I only goto selected sites I know are safe! Google Earth runs great Way Fast!!! Flash works every time on Youtube, big plus there. Decidedly, Ubuntu is not a replacement for XP just yet. It does have potential. But for my uses I could never go all the way. Gimp doesn't even support CMYK modes, disappointing. Better driver support from manufacturers would be a big plus. I still use Ubuntu for all the sites I would never go to with an XP box. Gotta like that! Also for email, any files go to the external drive if I need them on the XP side. Well, that a summary of my experience with Ubuntu. wish it worked better and faster, etc... just gonna have to wait.

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