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Comment Re:So another "Hailo"? (Score 1) 155

The last (and I mean /last/) time I hailed a cab it was with an app called Taxi Magic (now Curb). After 40 minutes and a muffled unintelligible phone call from the driver, I got back on the app and saw the little GPS icon of his car had gone to the airport instead of picking me up.

A friend accidentally left her purse in a Lyft car. Clicked one link in the confirmation email, which started a text conversation with the driver, who promptly brought it back to her apartment. Try that with any taxi service.

Comment Re:Next Gen Q (Score 2) 634

I actually think Voyager needed a character like Q a lot more than TNG did. Voyager needed a recurring villain that they could meet up with every now and then even though their main goal was to travel as fast as possible back home. Q could have done that, while tempting them with instant transport home if only they'd sufficiently prove their humanity out in the oh so dangerous delta quadrant. That might still qualify him as a dumb plot device, but it would have made a little more sense. Instead, Voyager kept meeting with the same dumb villains over and over again even though they should have fled their territory after three episodes, and killed off potentially interesting shipboard recurring characters, like Brad Dourif's psychopath crewman.
Music

Submission + - "Open Source Bach" project completed; score and recording now online (opengoldbergvariations.org) 1

rDouglass writes: "MuseScore, the open source music notation editor, and pianist Kimiko Ishizaka have released a new recording and digital edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The works are released under the Creative Commons Zero license to promote the broadest possible free use of the works. The score underwent two rounds of public peer review, drawing on processes normally applied to open source software. Furthermore, the demands of Bach's notational style drove significant advancements in the MuseScore open source project. The recording was made on a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial piano in the Teldex Studio of Berlin. Anne-Marie Sylvestre, a Canadian record producer, was inspired by the project and volunteered her time to edit and produce the recording. The project was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign that was featured on Slashdot in March 2011."

Comment Re:Ahhh...memories and Blutack (Score 1) 196

Never thought of that - that would have saved me no end of grief.

But I did have a Winky Board - a little circuit board to go between the ZX81 and the cassette player, presumably to improve reliability of loads and saves. For all I know it just made a couple LEDs blink.

I had both a ZX81 and a TS1000. (and the TS1500 printer.) One of the computers couldn't use the memory expansion pack, and the other one couldn't use the cassette deck. And me with a stack of tapes of games that required 16K memory...

Comment Re:You too can do this (Score 1) 80

There would also be some difficulty in getting each of the computers to run the same game engine simultaneously, taking in the same input and outputting its appropriate piece of the dome image, in real time and all synchronized. It's certainly possible, but I doubt with some unmodified, off-the-shelf game.

Comment Re:I like the old ones (Score 2) 80

My dome has a GOTO Chiron hybrid system + E&S Digistar 3, that communicate together to keep digital constellation figures and other graphics aligned with the mechanical star field. The Chiron has a reasonably small profile and doesn't get in the way like some of the old beasts did. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

Comment Re:I like the old ones (Score 1) 80

You forgot about the color of the old Digistar stars, uniformly pale green. Digistar 3 is significantly better, but no substitute for a optomechanical star ball. About the best attempt at digital stars I've seen is in the newly renovated theater in Chicago, with 8K resolution, distributed over NINETEEN video projectors. Each requiring automated alignment, registration and color balance. The projectors also have an insane contrast ratio so that the stars are bright and the black in between is black (not washed-out grey)

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