Slashdot Mirror

Robots.
Hundreds of barnacle-scrapping robots per unit.
Sounds like a business opportunity to me.

Awww crap, somebody else beat me to it.

A total of 1920x1080 for both eyes might be passable, but NOT when that 1920x1080 isn't actually 1920x1080.
The Note 3 has a pentile display - you're getting significantly reduced chroma resolution.

This version is just a DK.

Oculus is working on a 4K:

http://www.dvice.com/2013-10-2...

Well why not own an iPhone then? What the hell is the point of having a smartphone unless you can take advantage of the world of applications?

Because iPhone owners can't "take advantage of the world of applications". For one thing, if I switched to an iPhone, I'd lose access to Wi-Fi network cataloging and troubleshooting apps like MozStumbler and WiFi-Where, which Apple forbids in the App Store because it refuses to provide the required public API. For another, if I switched to an iPhone, running apps I developed myself would cost $748 extra for the first year for a second computer and a certificate and $99 extra for each additional year to renew the certificate.

It's the way Android lets me spy on the wireless signals passing through my body that I like. The user can choose to delegate management of the Wi-Fi data link to a specialized application, which lets users choose to contribute to an access point map. Because Apple has chosen not to make an equivalent API available to iOS applications, there won't be "an app for that". The user of an Android device can also choose to install from trusted third parties, unlike Apple which spies on all installations of all apps onto all iOS devices that aren't associated to a paid developer or enterprise program. So who's the spy now? Ha ha ha, boom boom.

the same applies to any kind of video-recording device (glasses, shoes, pens, phones, etc)

And therefore would apply to camera glasses connected to retinal implants for the blind, like e.g. http://www.dvice.com/2013-8-6/...

i dont see how asking people to wear regular non-video-recording glasses would be against such a law

I do, see above.

That copywriter over at dvice is a hoot!:
Harvesting gas from Uranus could power an interstellar spaceship
Telescope sees past clouds of gas and into depths of Uranus
Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought

That copywriter over at dvice is a hoot!:
Harvesting gas from Uranus could power an interstellar spaceship
Telescope sees past clouds of gas and into depths of Uranus
Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought

That copywriter over at dvice is a hoot!:
Harvesting gas from Uranus could power an interstellar spaceship
Telescope sees past clouds of gas and into depths of Uranus
Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought

I honestly I think this, like the Samsung Round, is a "shot in the market" to see what people want. Basically Korean makers now have flexible screens, but can't (yet) make fully flexible phones, so they're just sort of coming up with random phones to see where the interest lies.

It's basically early alpha editions of what will eventually be fully flexible phones. That's my take, anyways, from visiting Korea and seeing this stuff.

Why would I want a fully flexible phone that can be twisted like a block of rubber? A device like this one, for example, would just annoy me. I can see lots of uses for electronic paper, like wallpapering your apartment with it and changing the scenery on the walls depending on your moods (like they did in Cloud Atlas) but rubber phones? Perhaps if the device was mildly bendable and would adjust to the shape of your butt-cheek like this one does when you stuff it into your back trouser pocket that might be useful. I suppose Samsung could sell some phones to novelty freaks with wrap around displays also annoying, unless perhaps if you use the wrap around part for software buttons or curved/shaped displays (less annoying) but these are hardly a must-have feature. Just about the only really interesting concept prototype of a flexible display device that I have seen so far was a cylindrical e-reader where you could pull out a thin flexible screen and then reel it back into the device. It offered the same reading area as a small tablet but took little more space than a large roll of coins. It looked a bit like this thing. Then I began to wonder what happens when you want to use a ultra flexible electronic paper display like that as a touch-screen interface. Try holding up a thin and flexible piece of cardboard and think about what it would be like to use as a touch screen. Perhaps a device like this could use voice commands (don't have much hope for that after variations in english accents defeated Siri) or eye and gesture tracking instead?

As far as I'm concerned, in my home a single entity that post on /. instead of doing the job that is paid for (that's me!) is more than enough.

I hereby do solemnly declare that my fridge doesn't and will never have any other option than to keep my food cool. Similar goes for all the other appliances I or will own (mobile phone included: a mobile phone is a phone , no photocam/GPS/gaming console or Internet-enabled-tracking-device... and it better stays this way dam'it, social contract or not).

http://www.dvice.com/2013-8-5/flying-car-completes-first-public-demo-flight

http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/07/hyperloop-elon.php

LA to SF in 30 minutes. Still much faster than current high speed rail, but nowhere near as insane as NY to LA in 30 minutes. Getting a mass transportation vehicle to travel at Mach 5.2 might happen one day, but we will have to see many evolutionary steps between now and then.

And can you find me these "Experts" you are talking about?

Will Stephen Hawking do?

"our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space." - Stephen Hawking

Go find the nearest spray can. See the label which says "NO CFCS"? Chlorofluorocarbons WERE a huge concern, until we stepped up as a civilization and made the necessary changes to solve the problem. You don't hear about that problem anymore because we solved it. It didn't go away on its own. It didn't fade away like some green-fad. We recognized an environmental issue and solved it, and now the ozone layer is recovering.

Similar points can be made about the other things you mentioned. Those are all bad, we are taking steps to address them, or at least figuring out if it's feasible to use a replacement or change our industrial/ag processes to minimize those pollutants. We aren't just ignoring them. And you're right, there WILL be new environmental pollutants to worry about. That doesn't invalidate the concerns over the previous ones we've identified.

Science constantly moves forward, adjusts, corrects itself when it makes mistakes. That's not a weakness, that's its chief virtue. It's the meddlesome lay people, the politicians, and the mouth breathing ignorant masses who believe you have to stick with your story, your narrative, or be deemed unprincipled or untrustworthy.

What remains is that the genetic pool can't be refreshed easily during the long journey, when multiplying the conventional way. So enough sperm and ovules would be required to have the crew survive long enough. (A kind of rotation might be OK, current crew might donate something to be used in later generations.)

Thinking about it, we might plan a project already and assemble a premium crew for it. Top politicians, top managers, top hairdressers and phone desinfectors.

“These days, there seems to be nowhere left to explore. Victims of their very success, the explorers now, pretty much, stay home. Maybe it's a little early- maybe the time is not quite yet- but those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Just now, there a great many mattters that are pressing in on us that compete for the money it takes to send people to other worlds. Should we solve those problems first, or are they a reason for going? Our planet and our solar system are surrounded by a New World ocean: the depths of space. It is no more impassable than the last.” - Carl Sagan

SpaceX will need it or something significantly larger if Musk wants to realize his vision.

The system has to be able to handle delivery of more useful items than misplaced iPhones. Like groceries. A standard tote container (22"L (550mm) x 15"W (390mm) x 10"H (250mm)) is probably the minimum useful load size. There really isn't much demand for moving envelope-sized objects around any more. This is the same reason that pneumatic tube systems remain a niche product.

It's possible to scale up battery powered quadrotors to that size. But they get a bit large for urban operation.

Other sources seem to show that children exposed to technology might actually end up learning better than otherwise. http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. "If this program is successful, space debris becomes space resource," says DARPA Director, Regina E. Dugan. However satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts says David Barnhart. "This requires new remote imaging and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify complex systems." For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Legos at the same time while looking through a telescope. "If you've got a satellite up there already, don't worry, this isn't going to be some illicit grave-robbing mission to create hordes of evil Frankensatellites," reports Dvice. "DARPA says the agency will make sure and get permission before it chops anything up for scrap."

Oh but they ARE fixing iTunes.

Haven't you heard? They're adding facebook integration and making iTunes lean toward getting people to use the iCloud.
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/06/itunes-will-get.php

And, in case you missed the memo, iCloud is that platform that desktop apps can only access if they are sold from the Mac App Store.
http://www.macstories.net/stories/the-state-of-icloud-enabled-apps/

Of course, it's all for the benefit of the end-user.

Same thing with killing off Flash. It's not that they thought Flash was a piece of garbage - which in many ways it was - but that they would much rather people develop native apps.
Kill Flash, and what cross-platform alternatives are there? HTML5? Ah, yes... HTML5. Because that's looking like it's such a winner right now (and by 'right now' I mean for many months previous and many more months to come).
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/16/0248232/hard-truths-about-html5
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/06/22/186249/the-death-of-an-html5-game-breeds-an-open-source-project
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/06/28/1719233/facebook-ios-app-ditching-html5-for-objectivec

While JAVA is perfectly capable, it, too, is not supported on the iDevices.

And, again, users aren't exactly complaining. It's not their problem if a developer has to put in extra work to support multiple platforms just because they can't fully rely on cross-platform app development, but it is their problem if an HTML5 application fails to work because the browser doesn't support what's in the specs yet. It is their problem if their favorite game's sound is laggy, won't play more than a few sounds simultaneously, etc. because the browser->sound system wasn't built for it. It is their problem when they try to use a JAVA-based navigation app only to realize that on the platform chosen, JAVA can't access the system's GPS because the manufacturer believes that's far too dangerous a piece of information to be left in the hands of JAVA developers.

tl;dr: Flash's death would have been better if HTML5 were a more realistic competitor.

This is why anti-Apple sites only show you the front of the frame, to make you think the whole thing looked like an iPad. The patent does not just concern the front, but the whole design together, which must be copied in order to get an injunction.

Apparently, that's not the case according to the German judge (and apparently Apple):

According to Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann, Samsung “didn’t keep enough distance from the Apple design.” While the back of the tablets are quite different, the front part of the Galaxy Tab is “nearly identical” to the iPad.

(Also quoted here and here.)

Well it's still at a very early stage, but the Skylon spaceplane design has been deemed to be solid enough for beginning to static test the engines.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/skylon-spacepla-1.php

Good luck fitting a useful EDR to a pre-OBD vehicle. NHTSA means to mandate EDRs in all new vehicles. Here's a more accurate article: http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/feds-to-require.php

More likely one of these, M61 "Counter-Rocket" gatling gun-on-a-truck shoots down mortars like skeet; why use fans when there are systems that spit out 4500-7000 round a minute pretty much without human intervention! Cool video on the link too.

These conditions persist at this one location for hours on end, every single day. How many hash challenges do you suppose there are in just this one photo?

My estimate is that there are 250 vehicles in the photo, generating 31250 hash challenges in a single moment of time at a single location.

Hundreds of billions of hash challenges per hour would be a severe low-ball on this planet, especially if we use your 10 mile radius figure. I am not full of shit as these conditions happen in hundreds of thousands of places around the world all the time

You need to check some of your assumptions.

Forget LCD - I'm sure you've heard of OLED. It will be better than CRT in most or every way.

However, have you heard of QLED (quantum dots)? It's been making the news recently, and promises again to be better than *even* OLED in every way that OLED could even remotely fall short, including better colour, much brighter, more energy efficient (even OLED requires colour filters), easily printable, better resolution, and even thinner. And it should obsolete all current lighting technologies too. See these links:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=19591482
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot_display
http://dvice.com/archives/2010/12/quantum-dot-led.php

When these things become available (or even when OLED does), I'm sure you'll be the first to throw (along with any incandescent, flourescent, or LED bulbs you happen to have) the CRT in the trash ;) .

This is what net neutrality is all about. (Direct image link here.

This is what net neutrality is all about. (Direct image link here.

Show your friends this picture http://dvice.com/assets_c/2009/10/net-neutrality-thumb-550xauto-27419.jpg This is what Net Neutrality protects them from.

A Slashdot submission... linking to a forum... linking to a new site... linking to a.... Slashdot submission???

When I think SEO backlinking... I think this.

Interestingly, that was the same point made by the first comment posted to the story that TFA references.

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/09/holy-moly-tract.php [dvice.com]

...but here's a wonderful graphic that AT&T can repurpose.

I believe the later iPhones use a lens like this one.

New parachute-like devices are being proposed that create more drag for spent rockets and satellites so that they come down sooner:

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/03/cubesail-parach.php

It won't work for lost parts and collision debris, but it's a start.
     

The student demoing the suit could do 30kg (~66lb) on his own, and 50kg (~110lb) assisted by the suit, that's a 60% increase in lifting capacity... Maybe MJOLNIR armor isn't too far off... Dibs on serial # 117.

P.S. I mean something that looks more kickass than this: http://dvice.com/archives/2007/01/reallife_halo_suit_is_develope.php

Anyone else noticed DARPA's recent major marketing/publicity campaign? There is now this well-publicized balloon hunt. There was the televised robotic vehicle challenge. Even very recently, DARPA was central to the plot of an episode of NCIS: LA. Its research efforts have been given very visible press in magazines such as Scientific American. (Look here for another recent SA article about DARPA research.) DARPA has also been featured twice on 60 Minutes in the past few months. And, it now has quite a following on Facebook.

All of these somehow involve or inform the general public--not exactly par for the course given DARPA activities historically have been kept very much under wraps. What's really going on here? Why the recent publicity barrage? Two years ago, or less, I'm willing to bet 98% of Americans had no idea DARPA even existed. Might it be the old magician's trick of having us watch one hand while the other hand is actually performing the "magic?" For example, have you seen iRobot's shape-shifting Chembot recently developed with DARPA funding?

Well current solar panels that people can buy are pretty inefficient, 20% max and often far less than that maybe even 5% for the cheap stuff. Pretty sure Prius didn't put top of the line solar panels in as it only runs a fan as you say.

When solar panels get more efficient - labs are producing 40%+ efficiency now, this idea will be more credible to implement but not now.

As far as solar powered carports go, check out Dells facility: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/10/dells-solar-pow.php

I'll agree that Greenpeace is not an idiotic organization, but thats because they are very good at capitalizing on people's fears and the general ignorance of the world. Using two simple figures as above illustrates this point, as it makes many unreasonable assumptions, and doesn't emphasize the proper conclusion.

Assuming that the above figures are correct and that half the solar panels will always be in the dark, we find the amount of surface area required to power mankind's average consumption. Searching google for:
((radius+of+earth)^2)*4*pi%2F2500+in+km^2

gives us a area of 204 481 km^2.

Then, for the sake of comparison, we grab a list of countries by total area, and compare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_outlying_territories_by_total_area

It turns out that just to meet current consumption would require covering an area the size of Romania with solar cells. Add on the fact that no solar cell is more than 50% efficient (i am rounding up from 41.1% http://dvice.com/archives/2009/01/germans_break_t.php ) and we end up covering at least all of Japan.

So while nuclear power may not be sustainable, and is therefore impractical in the longrun, solar power is already impractical.

My real question is, why don't they just give up on this 3D crap already?

Money.

Don't get me wrong - I love me some stereographic 3D (actual 3D is even nicer but well out of reach).

But the only motivator for 3D content right now is money. Money spent on 3D projection systems, the glasses, eventually special Blu-Ray (or beyond) features, displays (in the news a lot lately), cameras*, etc. etc.

Eventually stereographic 3D will become mainstream, as there's a -huge- push behind it. Eventually, smell-o-vision will be tried again as well.

*
stereoscopic video camera: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/04/panasonic-takes.php
( same in concept as sticking a big ol' 3D Lens in a Cap on your dSLR, fwiw )
stereoscopic photo camera: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909457,00.html?CNN=YES

Not particularly new. There have been stereographic 3D photo cameras before that you'd get developed at a special lab that'd stick a lenticular sheet over it. Those usually had 3-5 lenses, too, for even greater effect (some perspective shift):
http://www.lenticulations.com/images_stereogram/nimslo.jpg ( creating output a la: http://www.lenticulations.com/#1 )

But the main article is fairly wrong. The Audio Return channel doesn't require a different cable, and the higher resolutions and 3D will both work over the high-bandwidth version. The ethernet options will be different cables, as will the automotive, so there will be quite a few new cables, but I don't think that's particularly confusing. (That's normal HDMI; HDMI plus ethernet; high-speed HDMI; high-speed HDMI plus ethernet; and automotive HDMI.)

dvice.com has some analysis and the press release.

The Audio Return thing will allow your display to send audio to your receiver, instead of using a second audio (e.g. optical or coaxial) cable. Why that wasn't there from the beginning is beyond me, since the connection was already bidirectional (to negotiate DRM).

No, I remember reading about the Pleo robotic dinosaur, last year, I think. There was one review where the reviewers tortured it, and a /. article.

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/03/asus_dual-scree.php
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/03/asus-shows-dual-screen-notebook-prototype.html
http://gizmodo.com/5162780/asus-dual-panel-laptop-resembles-two-iphones-mating

Mind you, I really liked the look of the wallet that the MS Codex came in, with the mesh pocket and pen-holder and stuff.

Is there any chance that they might market just the wallet, without all the nasty heavy electronic stuff? The wallet's cool. Wouldn't mind one of those. You could maybe stick, like, a tear-off notepad in it. It'd be useful.

Someone wearing HAL vs someone wearing Tmsuk Enryu.

I can't think of anything more awesome right now.

Take a look at :

http://dvice.com/voting/

I think their map is great for letting you know who uses what equipment. I'd need to see a little more documentation and research on their part before I'd trust their rankings though.

The nyud.net links weren't working for me. Here's a pic on DVICE, at least.

Link
Check the map.

Whose scripts do I need to enable to see the map?

Check the map.

scalpel.

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/06/knife_with_a_co.php

It joins these wonderful architectural accomplishments:

http://swedish.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/p/pjgeraci/188.jpg
http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/writing/folio/vol2/duck_side.jpg
http://i-eclectica.org/wordpress/wp-content/my images/architecture/architecture2/piano house 1.jpg
http://dvice.com/pics/shoe_building.jpg
http://dvice.com/pics/japan_upsidedown_house.jpg

I'd love working in the building, myself. I can imagine each time I cross over the big gap between the most offset buildings. Each time I did this, I'd need to go up a level to the walkway and cross over a bunch of unused space which will provide more external surface area, thus making cooling more expensive. I'd just love it. People wasting my time on something inefficient is what I live for.

But why a bar code? Why not a bug? Or a CD ROM? Or a finger pressing an ANY key?