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We had equipment like this at my high school. Of course, it wasn't ultra-high quality or anything, but the video was very watchable. Equipment consisted of a film projector, a Digital Video Camera [*drool* I wants one (-;] and the "mounting bracket". The mounting bracket was quite simple. You had the projector at 90 degrees to the Camera, and there was a mirror that reflected the output into the input. I can't remember if there was a scrim to diffuse the light before it went into the camera or not, bit I do rember that it worked. Like I said, not ultra-high quality, but very watchable.

on the link thoughtfully supplied by an ac i found the faq and some other other stuff. i looked to see what happens if the designers and engineers had supplied any way of turning aibo off in case of an emergency...yep sure enough.... i found it

Q. Why does aibo have a pause button on it's chest?
A.The pause button on ABIOS's chest is used to stop AIBO in any emergencies, and also used to rivive (sic) AIBO when it has put itself into deep sleep.

it made me think that if they are starting to develop robotics with 'emotion' like behavour, are they going to read asimovs, 'i robot' and utilise the 3 laws of robotics or are they going to have a problem with their machines much like the beasty boys clip for hello nasty?

http://www.world.sony.com/robot/top.html for all the information you need.

IMHO this is just too cool; web site explains all ..

Y'know, over on Ars Technica there's a very interesting interview with the lady who paid $2025 for an Ultima Online account, which sheds some light on the decision from her point of view.

It all boils down to the old economic principle of "opportunity cost" in making a decision . . . she had the money, and of all the alternatives on which she could spend it, this was the most attractive to her.

She's no rank newbie trying to buy her way into riches, either--she'd played the game since October 1997. The main reason for the purchase, she says, was the impossibility of acquiring "real estate" in UO anymore.

And of course, games involving real money for virtual property aren't new. I've yet to see anyone mention Chron X, an Internet CCG where you use your credit card to pay real money for virtual cards...

I'm the "game design guru" here at Genetic Anomalies. We've been doing online virtual property for 2 years now -- patent pending and everything.

What I'm failing to understand is this: If a character in UO is not owned by the player -- and it is not, check their EULA -- why do people pay for accounts? If their server crashes and they cannot recover it, too bad. That time you spent? Gone. That money you spent on eBay? Gone too. Oops. Oh yeah, once you buy the character you still have to pay Origins $10 a month to "use" your "property."

What if you had to pay $10/month to walk through your front door each month? (The door to the house you own outright, not rent or lease or have payments to make on.)

Our Collectible Bits(TM) technology allows for real ownership of virtual property. In Chron X, our first commercial application of this technology, we've handled millions of trades and purchases of virtual cards IN REAL TIME without a hitch. And our users own the cards. We don't charge any fees to keep the cards, log into our servers, download our full-feature client or to play games. We sell virtual property.

...and our Collectible Bits titles are fully compatible with each other. We have the license to make an online game featuring the World Wrestling Federation superstars, and you'll be able to trade Chron X cards for WWF moves and holds. Try doing that in UO with Everquest. (Or for a more fair comparison, UO with Origin's other online games. When they make some.)

- Anthony Shubert
ashubert@geneticanomalies.com
(Not an Anonymous Coward. /. is not emailing me a password. Sigh. =)

The Sony Vaio PCG-C1X w/ the lithium ion option and a PCMCIA cellular modem fits your bill.


Sony's Computer page


It even has an entry in the
Linux Laptop Page

I guess that now I'll have to deliberately put my web pages in a different room, to make me get up ;)

Seriously though, if you're using this and moving around, you'd better have a really good model of the environment or a camera mounted on the outside of the headset or something. Otherwise you'd be forever bumping into things.

Anyway, MIT should to go over (yeah, all of 'em) to You Do It Electronics in Needham, and build the laser display into the shell of the Sony Glasstron. Which is not very good, and way overpriced, but looks very cool. I played with one over there.

Don't believe the 52" thing though. It looked like a 20" screen to me....

Read all about it from Sony's web site:

"Solid, durable and protected within its own cartridge, Sony MiniDiscs are small enough to fit into most shirt pockets. But don't let their small size fool you, a 2.5 inch MiniDisc can hold up to 74 minutes of music. That's about as long as a compact disc"

You can read all about it at Sony's Blank Media page for MD's.

This sounds to me like it will hold 650MB of data.

if you liked dark city, you'll love City of Lost Children. for the most part, i believe dark city took the theme from the earlier movie and tried to sanitize/americanize the story(i.e. underdog hero, romantic interest, happy ending)and change the story line enough not to be accused of plagiarism. COLC has the same feeling of dark city, but not quite as formulaic as a hollywood production. also, it has the same retro feeling that alot of current sci-fi has been rolling out(dark city, 5th element, even the matrix) in which the future isn't the shiny antiseptic vision, but one that somehow retains the grunge of yesteryear. this movie is definitely in my top-10, if-i-were-on-a-desert-island-and-had-to-pick-only- ten-movies list.

yes, this announcement is serious. our robotics group at northwestern had been using them for robotics research for quite a while now, and they're very cool.

btw, just look at the specifications (scroll all the way down that page) for more info...

How long would it take someone to take Sony's OPEN-R specification, and replace Aperios with Linux or RT-Linux?

My MP3 recorder weighs about 8 ounces, is a bit smaller than four stacked 3.5" floppies, and can go about 16 hours between recharges, or about 10 if I'm recording... Storage for each additional 75 minutes of software is less than $3. I could have got this model for about US$220, but I wanted the latest and greatest, so I paid a bit more.

My device: a Sharp 722 MiniDisc recorder. (The $220 model is the recently discounted Sharp 702).. Or you can go Sony if you like...

MD recordings make MP3s sound like crap.. But you can still record them, nonetheless...