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Comment Re:Bring back the TRS-80 (Score 1) 200

by nascentmind (#51185489) Attached to: Merry Christmas - Be an Erector Engineer!
There is world outside of Raspberry Pi. You can always buy the MSP430 with IC's in DIP package. Burn one of the GPIO's, no problem. Remove the IC from the DIP and a put a new one costing really really less.($1 or $2) I suppose. Buy a cartridge of them and you are good to go. You can blink LED's, write your own baremetal OS etc. The tools are also good with gnu tools also available.

Comment Re:Well duh (Score 1) 200

by nascentmind (#51185469) Attached to: Merry Christmas - Be an Erector Engineer!
I am kind of OK with kids solving something using iPad etc but don't you think at her age she should be building/solving something with her hands? What I believe is that using a pen and paper would help them build/solve a lot more better than using a some gadget. The problem solving boundaries are always stuck inside what the application/device can do. From my own experience even now doodling something on paper helps me clear my doubts rather than sitting in front of VIM. As I am a visual learner I tend to draw abstract topics which helps me think clearly.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 94

by nascentmind (#50699047) Attached to: ARM Processor On a Breadboard
You need to get a clue on microcontrollers and CPU's. There are plethora of 32 bit microcontroller robots and drones available in the market. You can control a drone using a simple MSP430/MSP432 and conserve as much power as possible.

Comment Re:Different use cases (Score 1) 94

by nascentmind (#50699029) Attached to: ARM Processor On a Breadboard
When you say ARM draws higher power what do you mean? It does not depend only on the instruction set. It also depends upon the process behind the manufacturing of the microcontrollers. Currently ARM microcontrollers from TI are the lowest power i.e. the MSP432 line ARM Cortex M4 MCU's in the market.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 94

by nascentmind (#50699015) Attached to: ARM Processor On a Breadboard
The guy does not know the difference between Microcontrollers and CPU's. M3 and M4 does not have an MMU and multi stage pipelines. I really don't understand how he is doing drone software without knowing the controller internals.
Government

Obama Wants Broader Internet Wiretap Authority 646

Posted by CmdrTaco from the tap-this-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The White House plans to deliver a bill to Congress next year that will require Internet-based communication services that use encryption to be capable of decrypting messages to comply with federal wiretap orders. The bill will go beyond CALEA to apply to services such as Blackberry email. Even though RIM has stated that it does not currently have an ability to decrypt messages via a master key or back door, the bill may require them to. Regarding this development, James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology commented on the proposal, saying, 'They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.'"
AMD

AMD Details Upcoming Bulldozer Architecture 234

Posted by CmdrTaco from the summon-bob-the-builder dept.
Vigile writes "AMD is taking the lid off quite a bit of information on its upcoming CPU architecture known as Bulldozer that is the first complete redesign over current processors. AMD's lineup has been relatively stagnant while Intel continued to innovate with Nehalem and Sandy Bridge (due late this year) and the Bulldozer refresh is badly needed to keep in step. The integrated north bridge, on-die memory controller and large shared L3 cache remain key components from the Athlon/Phenom generation to Bulldozer but AMD is adding features like dual-thread support per core (but with a unique implementation utilizing separate execution units for each thread), support for 256-bit SIMD operations (for upcoming AVX support) all running on GlobalFoundries 32nm SOI process technology."
The Media

Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks 489

Posted by CmdrTaco from the balls-of-steel dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
First Person Shooters (Games)

Crytek Dev On Fun vs. Realism In Game Guns 324

Posted by Soulskill from the rocket-jumping-is-as-real-as-it-needs-to-be dept.
An anonymous reader tips a post from Pascal Eggert, a gun enthusiast and Crytek developer, who sheds some light on how weaponry in modern shooters is designed. Quoting: "Guns in games are like guns in movies: it is all about looks, sounds and clichés. Just like in the movies, games have established a certain perception of weapons in the mind of the public and just like in movies games get almost everything wrong. ... The fact is that we are not trying to simulate reality but are creating products to provide entertainment. ... if you want to replicate the looks of something you need to at least see it, but using it is even better. You should hold a gun in your hands, fire it and reload it to understand what does what — and at that point you will realize, there is nothing on it that does not have a function — because guns are tools for professionals. Lot of weapon designers in the game industry get that wrong. They think of guns like products for consumers or magic devices that kill people at a distance when really it's just a simple and elegant mechanism that propels little pieces of metal. Unfortunately 3D artists often only get access to the photos that Google Image Search comes up with if you enter 'future assault rifle' or, even worse, pictures from other games and movies that also got it wrong. This may explain a lot of common visual mistakes in games, especially since guns are mostly photographed from the side and egoshooters show weapons from the first person view." This article is drawn from his personal experience in the game industry. The images shown are Pascal's personal work and are not related to his work at Crytek.
Space

Scientists Discover Biggest Star 202

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bigger-than-miley dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have discovered the most massive stellar giant, R136a1 measured at 265 solar masses, using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from the Hubble Space Telescope. It's in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small 'satellite' galaxy which orbits the Milky Way. Previously, the heaviest known stars were around 150 times the mass of the Sun, known as the 'Eddington Limit,' and this was believed to be close to the cosmic size limit because as stars get larger, the amount of energy created in their cores grows faster than the force of gravity which holds them together. 'Because of their proximity to the Eddington Limit they lose mass at a pretty high rate,' says Professor Paul Crowther, the chief researcher in the Sheffield team. Hyper-stars like R136a1 are believed to be formed from several young stars merging together, and are only found in the very heart of stellar clusters. R136a1 is believed to have a surface temperature of more than 40,000 degrees Celsius, and is 10 million times brighter than the Sun. Crowther adds that R136a1 is about as big as stars can get. 'Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon.'"
Hardware Hacking

How To Build an Open Source House? 274

Posted by timothy from the mind-the-gap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting a project that I hope that the engineers, makers and general DIYers in the Slashdot crowd can help out with. The full story's on the website, but the short version is as follows: my aim is to make a cheap, recycled, sustainable building, to document the process fully and to release anything that would help others to do the same. I intend to use an old train carriage as the shell, but the ideas should extend to shipping containers, aeroplane fuselages or anything similar. I know I'm not the first to do this, but I can't see anyone else who's provided a detailed step-by-step account of the build, complete with plans and the rest. Before I start, though, I'm trying to draw on as much collective experience as possible, and to head off mistakes before they happen. My question to Slashdot is simple: what do you think I need to know before I begin?"
Education

Finding a Research Mentor? 162

Posted by kdawson from the there's-your-thesis-right-there dept.
bsomerville writes "As an aspiring social scientist preparing to apply to Ph.D. programs, I'm keen to find a faculty mentor somewhere in North America who shares my research interests. This is more difficult than I thought it would be. While links to program websites are readily available, I'm surprised to find no comprehensive collection of faculty research interests in my field (clinical psychology). Instead this information is buried several levels down in each university website. Is this a common problem across all fields? Is there some inherent reason why no wiki-type Web resource exists to meet this need? It seems like a text-searchable database could be built fairly quickly and maintained by users, saving countless aspiring grad students thousands of clicks through university websites."

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