Comment Re:Just tell me (Score 1) 463
Are we still at "Go get a helmet" or have we graduated to "Put on the damn helmet"?
Comment Re:This is a bit too much (Score 1) 83
I'm all for gadgets, but why not just take the Catan board from the shelf and play?
What about playing in a car? It seems to me that virtual pieces being displayed on a LCD screen would be less prone to jostling then the real board.
Or what about on a camping trip where compactness is a desired feature? A single tablet could hold alot more board games then you'd normally have room for in the car.
Comment Re:Status Update: (Score 1) 104
We need two terror alert levels... "Go find a helmet" and "Put on the fucking helmet"....
Submission + - Pay what you want: a sustainable business model?
revealingheart writes: As the 2010 comes to a close, this could be remembered as the year that pay-what-you-want pricing reached the mainstream. Along with the two Humble Indie Bundles, YAWMA offer a game and music bundle, and Rock, Paper and Shotgun reports on the curiously named Bundle of Wrong, made to help fund a developer who contracted pneumonia.
More examples include Reddit briefly offered their users to choose what to pay when they were in financial difficulties; the Indie Music Cancer Drive launched Songs for the Cure for cancer research; and Mavaru launched an online store where users can buy albums for any amount. Can pay-what-you-want become a sustainable mainstream business model? — or destined to be a continued experiment for smaller groups?
More examples include Reddit briefly offered their users to choose what to pay when they were in financial difficulties; the Indie Music Cancer Drive launched Songs for the Cure for cancer research; and Mavaru launched an online store where users can buy albums for any amount. Can pay-what-you-want become a sustainable mainstream business model? — or destined to be a continued experiment for smaller groups?
Submission + - How The Free Market Rocked The Grid (ieee.org)
sean_nestor writes: Most of us take for granted that the lights will work when we flip them on, without worrying too much about the staggeringly complex things needed to make that happen. Thank the engineers who designed and built the power grids for that—but don't thank them too much. Their main goal was reliability; keeping the cost of electricity down was less of a concern. That's in part why so many people in the United States complain about high electricity prices. Some armchair economists (and a quite a few real ones) have long argued that the solution is deregulation. After all, many other U.S. industries have been deregulated—take, for instance, oil, natural gas, or trucking—and greater competition in those sectors swiftly brought prices down. Why not electricity?
Submission + - Scientifically, You Are Likely In The Slowest Line (hothardware.com) 1
MojoKid writes: "As you wait in the checkout line for the holidays, your observation is most likely correct. That other line IS moving faster than yours. That's what Bill Hammack (the Engineer Guy), from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois — Urbana proves in this video. Ironically, the most efficient set-up is to have one line feed into several cashiers. This is because if any one line slows because of an issue, the entry queue continues to have customers reach check-out optimally. However, this is also perceived by customers as the least efficient, psychologically."
Submission + - FCC Chair Seeks Comcast-NBC Merger Conditions (huffingtonpost.com) 1
Anarki2004 writes: From the article: The head of the Federal Communications Commission proposed regulatory conditions Thursday to ensure that cable giant Comcast Corp. cannot stifle video competition once it takes control of NBC Universal. Comcast is seeking government approval to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. for $13.8 billion in cash and assets. The deal would create a media powerhouse that both produces and distributes content.
Submission + - Aerial Video Footage of New York Taken By RC Plane (singularityhub.com)
kkleiner writes: Expert remote control pilot Raphael “Trappy” Pirker recently took his 54 inch Zephyr model plane on a harrowing tour of Manhattan and the surrounding area. The best part: his RC vehicle was fitted with a camera that wirelessly transmitted an amazing recording of everything it saw – Pirker was piloting his craft with this visual feed. As you can see in the video, the results were spectacular. The plane looks to be flying within a few feet of buildings and whizzing past bridges with ease. You have to check out around 2:01 when he starts to buzz right by the Statute of Liberty. Phenomenal! Could the new era of personal video recording be spreading to the sky?
Comment Re:the question is (Score 1) 176
How could it possibly be encrypted from google itself, when they're the ones providing the search results?
Submission + - 'Supertaskers' can safely use mobiles while drivin (itpro.co.uk)
nk497 writes: While most of us are dangerous when texting, chatting on a phone or being otherwise distracted while driving, one in 40 are actually just fine with such distractions. In a small study, such 'supertaskers' were just as good at driving when carrying on a conversation over a hands-free phone as they were when fully focused. That said, the researchers warned that most people are much worse at driving while chatting and shouldn't do it, adding: "Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers.”
Submission + - New Interactive Black Hole Simulation Published (newscientist.com)
quaith writes: "The New Scientist reports on a simulation just published in the American Journal of Physics that shows how the sky would appear in the vicinity of a black hole — if an observer could actually get near one. Using real positions of around 118,000 stars, the simulation shows how the bending of light, the frequency shift, and the magnification caused by gravitational lensing and aberration in the vicinity of the black hole affect the sky's appearance. The simulation is interactive and allows the user to explore the stellar sky around the black hole. The simulation offers a couple of modes: "quasi static" or "freely falling" and the sample videos are quite spectacular. The New Scientist has a writeup, with an embedded video. The original article citation is here. The simulation, which runs on Linux or Windows, as well as sample videos can be downloaded from the University of Stuttgart website."
Submission + - Is Internet Explorer 6/7 support actually required (frozenrails.eu) 3
k33l0r writes: Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, has me wondering whether we (web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and 7?
Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?
Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.
Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?
Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?
Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.
Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?
The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."
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