joepez - Slashdot User

Submission + - Texas Student Attends School as a Robot (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @02:49PM

kkleiner writes: Freshman Lyndon Baty’s immune system is so fragile he can’t risk being surrounded by people his own age, yet he attends classes at his high school in Knox City, Texas every day. All thanks to a robot. The Vgo telepresence platform is a four foot tall bot on wheels with a small screen, camera, speakers and microphone at the top. Baty logs into the robot remotely from his home, using his PC and a webcam to teleconference into his classes. Baty can drive Vgo around his school, switching between classes just like regular students. For a boy that has spent much of his life sick and isolated from his peers, Vgo not only represents a chance at a better education, it’s also an opportunity for freedom and comradery.

Submission + - News Corp & Apple launch The Daily for iPad (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @02:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: After delaying the release, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Apple's VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue announced that iPad-exclusive news app The Daily would be launched at noon today. The announcement came from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City an hour before the planned launch.

Submission + - 19 Year Old Teen Makes Homemade Solar Death Ray (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @01:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: Concentrated solar power has the potential to generate immense amounts of energy — but it can also be amazingly destructive. American student Eric Jacqmain has assembled over 5,800 mirrors into his own parabolic ‘solar Death Ray’, which can reportedly melt through metal and concrete.

TheSpaceGame — Design Your Route To Jupiter 76

Posted by Soulskill on Monday October 04, 2010 @10:51PM from the try-the-clarke-kubrick-corridor dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency is celebrating World Space Week (4-10 October 2010) with the release of 'The Space Game,' an online game for interplanetary trajectory design. The Space Game is an online crowdsourcing experiment where you are given the role of a mission designer to seek the best path to travel through space. The interactive game, coded in HTML5, challenges the players to devise fuel-efficient trajectories to various bodies of the Solar System via a user-friendly interface. The aim of the experiment is get people from all ages and backgrounds to come up with better strategies that can help improve the effectiveness of the current computer algorithms. As part of the events organized worldwide for Space Week, the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant. The best scores by 10 October will be displayed on the Advanced Concepts Team website and the three best designs will also receive some ESA prizes."

UK Man Prevented From Finding Chipped Pet Under Data Protection Act 340

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday September 23, 2010 @09:50AM from the clause-22 dept.

Dave Moorhouse was elated when he was informed that a microchip provider had information on the whereabouts of his stolen dog. This joy soon faded when the company informed him that it could not divulge the Jack Russell terrier's location because it would breach the Data Protection Act. Last week a court agreed with the chip company and refused Mr Moorhouse's request for a court order compelling them to reveal the name and address of the new owners. Steven Wildridge, managing director of the chip company said: “This is not a choice, it’s an obligation under the Data Protection Act. If the individuals involved do not want us to pass on their details to the original owner then we cannot do so unless compelled to following a criminal or civil proceeding."

Autism Diagnosed With a Fifteen Minute Brain Scan 190

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 19, 2010 @04:08AM from the 15-minutes-definitely-15-minutes dept.

kkleiner writes "A new technique developed at King's College London uses a fifteen minute MRI scan to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scan is used to analyze the structure of grey matter in the brain, and tests have shown that it can identify individuals already diagnosed with autism with 90% accuracy. The research could change the way that autism is diagnosed – including screening children for the disorder at a young age."

Aquaria Goes Open Source 58

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 04, 2010 @05:58PM from the come-on-in-the-water's-fine dept.

A post on the Wolfire blog yesterday announced that the source code for Aquaria has now been released. Aquaria, an action-adventure, underwater sidescroller from Bit Blot, was part of the Humble Indie Bundle, which was so successful that the developers of four games pledged to release them as open source. This marks the final release, following Lugaru, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture. The source code is available from a Mercurial repository.

Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision 82

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 23, 2010 @07:41AM from the almost-rocket-docket dept.

eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 18, 2009 @08:20AM from the or-druid-as-the-case-may-be dept.

A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Comment Re:No hulu for boxee means... (Score 1) 375

by joepez on Thursday February 19, 2009 @05:31PM (#26922077) Attached to: Boxee Drops Hulu Support

I wouldn't say this is Hulu's fault, but I do think Hulu is using this as an excuse. I find it highly suspect that 100% of the content providers are saying pull me off of Boxee. I'm sure there are a few who are failing to grasp the implications, but all of them? All of them care? It seems that Hulu is getting pressure to target Boxee (what about the other apps? or embeds?) and Hulu (for whatever reason) is going along with this request. If Hulu can allow other apps and embeds to work, then there is no way this is just about distribution. Hulu has a vested interest in getting people to go to their site as a destination (future business model, part of their sell, etc), and apps like Boxee take that reason away (lord knows I don't visit hulu except through an un-named app, so no-one takes it away). There has to be more than just a request from content providers going on here.

BBC Trust Will Hear iPlayer Openness Complaints 177

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:16AM from the tv-without-internet-explorer dept.

AnotherDaveB writes with a Register story reporting that the BBC Trust has asked to meet with open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on-demand broadband TV service, iPlayer. The development came less than 48 hours after a meeting between the Open Source Consortium and regulators at Ofcom on Tuesday. Officials agreed to press the Trust, the BBC's governing body, to meet the OSC. The consortium received an invitation on Wednesday afternoon.

Comment Re:Hello... DEMOCRACY? (Score 1) 1974

by joepez on Thursday October 06, 2005 @02:38PM (#13732905) Attached to: EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US

Your case is based on incorrect assumptions.

The US is not a Democracy, never has been. The US is a Federal Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Republic/). Speaking of elections if you read election rules you'll see that there is nothing to stop a 3rd party from running provided they can actually get the backing of the people. And there are numerous cases of independent or small parties winning elections in local or even federal government.

Some local state goverments do have Democracy particpation on specfic aspects of their government (check your state's constitution) but the US as a whole is a federal republic.

And the electoral (what you are referring to) continues to serve an extremely useful purpose as it was intended when it was first put in place. Read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_college. Without the electoral college small states would have little to no voice in any presidential ellection, so be glad it exists. And in some states it is state law that the electoral college vote with the will of the people. So if you live in one of those states then your vote does indeed count directly toward the election of the president.

The US Gov hasn't "stolen" anything. The country was founded this way. Go read US history, federal (there's that word again) law, or perhaps the constitution. Every vote is worth something, just because your candidate doesn't get anything for not being able to convince people doesn't make the system any less effective.

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