Slashdot Mirror

woosh
--
http://www.reytrajano.com/
http://vimeo.com/thephotographer

technology can help the classroom. many technologies don't help the classroom. educators/administrators are pressured to fight for and then use technology budgets to show how well they are educating. The big problem is they have to guess at (a) what is available, (b) what is useful, (c) what is effective. (b and c don't always coincide).

For a while technology meant 'get PCs in the schools'. Now it's more than that. I've seen more immediate benefit in a classroom from a $75 digital camcorder (showing the kids a discussion session, reviewing an oral presentation, etc. so that they get a 3rd person view of themselves.) than a $50,000 'learning lab'. "Prometheus Boards" are the new hot item http://www.vimeo.com/367993 with some use shown when used right in certain classrooms. But what's the best way to use them, what is and isn't more effective than traditional teaching methods (with a zero dollar comparison cost), etc.

These are all questions it would be nice to have answers to, simply because experiments on real kids are tough to accept when they extend beyond minor things.

nokia and others have been showing mockups of such interfaces for file transfer between mobile devices.

http://vimeo.com/2364830

note about 1 min into the video, where two devices are overlapped and the king kong photo is pushed from one to the other.

While this is not a probable long-term solution to clicking with your eyes, the EyeWriter software is one approach. Video describing the drawing software itself: http://vimeo.com/7321287

This is a video describing in detail many of the studies and issues discovered in GMO's. http://vimeo.com/6575475

I can tell you that as far as I know, there are no plans to scrap the current extension system. The plan is to provide an easier way of developing extensions, that will be powerful enough for the vast majority of extensions, and easy enough to allow a far greater amount of people to take part in the process.

I believe much of this confusion could be alleviated if everyone concerned watched this video http://www.vimeo.com/8372101 (a talk on the topic by Aza Raskin, head of UX at Mozilla) - and for those who can't be bothered with it all, you can skip to 35:10 or read this rough transcript:

"The rough plan for where we're going with this, is that by Firefox 3.7, this will be baked into Firefox in some degree, so that's end of Q2. [snip] And by Firefox 4 we're really going to be pushing for making Jetpack or Jetpack enabled extensions the premier way of writing extensions, and while I don't think we're ever going to phase out the old model entirely [...] we're going to be pushing that almost everything happens inside of this." -- Aza Raskin

-- cers / Christian Sonne

If you can remember how to use it.

I'm thinking, cell phones good, Tesla coils better?

For a few ideas of what might be in store from virtual worlds like Second Life in the future check out a trailer made for the "Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds." This group has over a thousand members from government, the private sector, and educational institutions.

http://www.vimeo.com/4623997

You can find more information about the group and their next conference at:

http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fcvw/fcvw10/index.html

I mean, doesn't a walking penis receiving an eyeball from a farting eyeball creature just make you want to rush out and buy a Zune?

What? It doesn't?

Philistine.

For an example of what NASA TV should have as filler between live stories, try this http://www.vimeo.com/7852885 The first few minutes are slow-paced, then it's all action.

Speaking of asian porn. The funniest porno I have ever seen, Crouching woman, hidden boner

Who is this "we" of whom you speak?

I'm a paid Vimeo member, too.

Maybe the Magic Money Fairy comes by your house every other week, but he seems to bypass mine. And (shock) most of the people who pay me to make videos want to promote or sell something.

Are music videos promotions? How about live performance videos like this one?: http://vimeo.com/7366434

That's an original song, sung and played by its creators, shot and edited by me. But (horrors!) I mention the name of the band -- and of the nightclub whose owner was 100% happy to have me shooting his house band.

I post very little on Vimeo these days. My "fun" stuff often gets popular enough on YouTube that they send me money instead of the other way around, and other services happily host my promo videos at very reasonable rates. Vimeo is gradually falling off my radar.

I probably won't renew my Vimeo "Plus" membership. Too many limitations, and many other video hosts now offer H.264 quality as good as Vimeo's. Why should I pay where I'm not wanted?

You guys have fun, okay? :)

- Robin

Hi!

You may not upload commercials, infomercials, or demos that actively sell or promote a product or service.

        * Exceptions: independent production companies, authors, musicians, non profits, churches, artists, and actors may show or promote the work they have created.

From here. Arguably, a 'indie'/solo-guy developer that wants to show his game falls under under this exception.

Can you tone it down just a tad, please?
 

No amount of tomatos, sweet basil, and other crap will be believable as an alibi when the cops show up at your door for growing pot in the closet of your rental apartment.

I seriously doubt the 'medical use only' excuse will work either. Lolz!

Oh wait, you actually asked Sheriff Arpaio to a duel last year? Not the sharpest tool in the shed, I see... Nice!

Whoa! Multi-million dollar deal? I'd like to see that! Woop!

So, how long until all of the above go full-private? Anonymous is waiting, numbnutz!

If you at least know why you're not getting work, you can take that and go after someone who's got something on you up on the net. Asking politely doesn't work, you've got to have your lawyer call that guy to make something like that happen.

Or you could try to sue him yourself. I think around 2 billion dollars would be sufficient...

Just wanted to mention how Slashdot never fails to disappoint.

For the record, textfiles.com has no ads. None. Going to it or not going to it doesn't affect my revenue/income particularly. I don't run that site for money.

But if you'd rather hear a much funnier story about the legal threats I get, please watch my video That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop/play/clip:7852885/e8f6708238afda12c32617a81458ed27/1259508600/?q=hd

I think that was the goal of OpenMoko, and it failed because it couldn't deliver even a basically competitive user experience.

Fortunately, Android is reasonably FOSSy, and I think that's going to be the best you'll find.

I am working on a social kiosk project which modifies on Firefox. We have used an early version of this system in some Mozilla events in Brazil where you can check a video of the used template here - http://www.vimeo.com/tag:tagvisor. This uses the Web model ( read XML, CSS, RSS feed, SVG, HTML etc... ) all in client side for the presentation parts. The main challenges we are facing ( as now we work to put this at one of the computer science department of University of Sao Paulo in Brazil ) now are related to stability so that it works 24x7. At this point, we have modified an Ubuntu OS to boot without the graphics manager ( so now mouse etc ) and then it launches a Firefox in full screen. This Firefox has a controller extension in it. This extension puts the Kiosk Mode to function and our goal is to improve the management aspects - so that you can control this Firefox remotelly as this is intended for many terminals. We decided to go with full firefox + an extension so that we can take advantage of a full Mozilla system, with plugin and some updates, and yet we can limit Firefox user interface functions so that popups do not appear, updates are queued for later etc.

I'm a lazy bastard, so rather than write a whole new post for this, I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on another forum.

About a month or two ago, I heard of this interesting project for an MMO of sorts being produced by a company called Quel Solaar. This game is supposed to be experimental in that it isn't as massive as other MMOs, with each server being limited to perhaps 300-500 players, the game world is entirely modifiable, with players and AI making constant changes to the landscape, and it is also experimental in that it is meant to provide a reasonably modern game with only one person making it. In an age when develop teams of a hundred or more are the norm, Eskil Steenberg has created the tools and an engine which can produce a fully realized game by one person. This game is his work of Love.

He recently released an alpha of it, which can be freely downloaded, though connecting to a server runs €3 a month. It is indeed in alpha state in that while it is fully playable and in more or less complete form, it has major balance issues. The AI is relentless after a recent update, and people have trouble building up settlements that last more than a few hours. There isn't a great deal to the game. The primary gameplay factor is that it changes over time, with new settlements being created and recreated. There is no direct PvP. Griefing is possible, but the intent is to have players work together against the AI, building up competing settlements. Users create account names, but the player names are generated by the games. This is excellent to me, as it prevents the inundation of "BritneySpears22" and "M45T3R_BL45T3R" style player names.

Graphically, the game is actually rather simple. The whole system is based upon blocks, but the engine applies a great deal of variation to the blocks, which allows for terrain to combine in unique compositions throughout the gameworld. Eskil himself used the example of trees in the game. Every single tree in the game is based upon the same model. The variations in the trees are created from the details of the blocks upon which they're placed, which makes a forest of trees actually look like a bunch of different trees of the same type. You can potentially create a line of the same tree over and over when creating a settlement, but this requires "planting" the trees on the same size and shape blocks. In addition to the variation on the building blocks of the game, there are previously designed bits - the trees, as mentioned, as well as various forms of stairs and bridges. There are also graphical filters added to make different "materials" and to add a somewhat cartoonish fuzziness to the game. These combine in such a way that the game can be played on relatively weak hardware, using relatively few OpenGL calls to produce these effects.

The game world actually forms around a sphere of sorts, created by taking a cube and "smoothing" it over. This means that a player could potentially circumnavigate it, and it allows for a night and day system created by having a "sun" going around the world (or the world going around the "sun", I don't know which). This is especially noticeable when traveling far from a chosen respawn point, as I have died during the late day of one part of the world only to respawn and find it to be night time.

Well, I've gone on far too long as it is, but I'm honestly very excited by this game. It's more of a proof of concept rather than a full game, but it has so many cool ideas, and with all the variation in a gameworld, I can go in after a day and expect to find new settlements and new terrain. It's a marvel of one man's creativeness and ingenuity that I really hope has a powerful impact on future games. It is a bit difficult to get into at first - it has a steep learning curve to start, in part because of the unreal look to the game. It takes time to get your bearings and in the meantime, you

Here is the link to the non-embedded video.

http://vimeo.com/7022707

vimeo video link: (the only part still up when I visited
http://vimeo.com/5286822

In case of slashdotting, watch the video:

http://vimeo.com/6496886

If you don't have/want flash/javascript, get the trailer here.

Trying to play Chess on a Zune:
http://vimeo.com/6612641

The crummier the original source (dash cam, web cam, etc) the easier it is to blend in CG elements perfectly.

The higher quality the source (35mm film, RED 4k Camera, IMAX) the harder it is.

And, just FYI, Hollywood is easily capable of creating photo-realistic CGI- but most movie companies aren't interested in paying or scheduling for it. And that's not even considering the fact that all CGI has to be approved by the director- who many times DOES NOT know what looks right in the scene and says it looks too blue or too orange. The end result is that most VFX shots are "good enough" for the money and time allotted.

Lastly, there are many talented individuals out there who given enough time can do photoreal effects.

Here's just one example:
http://vimeo.com/5407991?hd=1

Speaking of maneuverability, can a Segway do THIS? :-)

No, but neither can I.

What do you think about Unison and Postgresql?

http://harts.net/reece/pubs/2009/unison-UCSF-sfpug.pdf

Video of above presentation:

http://blog.thebuild.com/sfpug/sfpug-unison-20090311.mov
http://www.vimeo.com/3732938

See also: http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/proceedings/psb09/hart.pdf

Presenter is not very good though in my opinion :).

editor embedded in the browser ?L You mean Mozilla Bespin project ?:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/02/introducing-bespin/
http://www.vimeo.com/4183124

There is a little girl in a red riding hood that needs help. Here is a real life story: http://vimeo.com/3514904

She is under attack from a wolf, and would need a phone, without patent restrictions.

Will Apple's move have that girl killed? What do the iPhone dudes think of, really?

I ran across this spectacular video a few days ago, and it took me awhile to figure out what the giant pink thing was that started creeping across the sky.

Sure, I'd seen pictures of the Milky Way in textbooks and stuff, but never in motion or with my own eyes. I've lived in Ohio for my entire life, which has pretty bad light pollution over most of the state.

I now aspire to travel west, at least once, in order to find sufficient darkness to actually see this thing for real.

Flash is a resource hog? Little Red Riding Hood for you!

http://vimeo.com/3514904

How can you call that a hog? It is a blast, on any CPU.

http://vimeo.com/2423528

The High Quality Viemo version can be viewed here:

http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

Radiohead were so impressed that hey linked to it from their homepage for a while.

Was that "until their record company bosses noticed it was an unlicensed reproduction and sued their asses"???.

http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

Radiohead were so impressed that hey linked to it from their homepage for a while.

"Well of course this is... Who cares?"

Anyone who's thinking, "Why does this matter?" needs to see this video and the Absolut vodka logo in comic sans.

And why was this moderated off topic? Seeing how the article on WSJ was %50 about bancomicsans, this is extremely relevent.

Nope, sweet basil.

http://vimeo.com/kalikitsune/videos

Jo momma.

Vimeo's guidelines are even stricter than YouTube's. You can't upload public domain videos, and you can't upload videos on behalf of an author who is someone else. You can't upload videos to promote your business. You can't upload videos of video games at all because you aren't the game's author.

Can't wait until I can make a decent movie using nothing but Second Life / Eve Online characters, or even better... when someone with actual creativity can. This is my favorite machinima yet... by far. http://www.vimeo.com/609147

We're getting there!

An interesting tidbit... on the "news" section of the FPFC site, it shows a short video clip of Waterman ranting about his 11 quid...

http://vimeo.com/3836793

My favourite bit is how he talks about Youtube running a "Rick-Rolling" campaign.. I suppose perhaps he means the April Fools thing last year, but still...

No detraction from their achievements but far from perfect:

Any comments on the nozzle burning through; it can be seen clearly at 1:05-6 http://www.vimeo.com/3531197 flying off "vertically"; look carefully and the nozzle is heating up then "ping" - once the nozzle cone has gone then the burn starts to go turbulent.

This is also very clear in the high-speed footage of this event from the www.copenhagensuborbitals.com site.

Also the engine shutdown seems very messy - lots of random bits'n'pieces thrown about (e.g. down through the flame) - looks like the top of the inside of the booster section sucked down through the ignition chamber.

Well this stuff will be fixed I am sure and congratulations to them.

video 2:02. Exhaust nozzle lives 2 seconds

Up-close videos from the test:
http://www.vimeo.com/3531197

Pretty cool stuff, the whole team is all smiles. What was tested is a scaled-up design from a smaller hybrid rocket motor. The fact that the burn was even and stable demonstrates that the motor design is sound, and the math checks out. As such the team remains confident that an atmospheric launch of either this specific rocket or its twin can be carried out by mid-summer. Also, work continues on scaling the design further for the HEAT booster with a body diameter of 60 centimeters (3 times the diameter of the HATV rocket tested yesterday). The goal of the HEAT booster program is to develop a safe, economical and environmentally friendly man-rated sub-orbital propulsion technology. On the www.copenhagensuborbitals.com website you can read about their miniature spacecraft that would sit atop HEAT and carry a would-be astronaut on a no doubt exciting suborbital flight.

Reminds me of the Big Ideas (don't get any) remix of Radiohead's "Nude".

Thoroughly worth watching, but feel free to skip to the beginning of the music at about 1:10.

Nice so it can be re posted on YouTube with little effort. Still think using a free service that everybody and their dog uses makes a lot more sense than paying for it.

Yes it Can... be reposted to Youtube or Vimeo, or Archive.org or Blip.tv or even your preferred P2P network, you can even host it yourself because as far as I know this videos are all public domain.

But you don't need to re-post them to Youtube and Vimeo at least, because whitehouse folks already do that for you:

• http://www.youtube.com/whitehouse
• http://www.vimeo.com/whitehousevideos

They only stopped embedding youtube videos on the whitehouse gov site (maybe to stop advertising google's service for free on a tax-payer funded website, although the link to Vimeo is still there), but they are still publishing copies of the weekly videos on youtube and other free services that everybody and their dog uses...

Well, I'm not sure if there's some crazy DNS/softlinking stuff going on that the bandwidth isn't being taken from whitehouse.gov, but it looks like the technology is being provided by Vimeo, whoever they are.

And if you want to download the video, it's in .mp4 format, with AVC1 and AAC-LC codecs. Personally I'd rather see H.264/Vorbis .MKVs, but...

Also check out this movie that's been makng the rounds, very informative and makes everything quite clear.

No, the underlying question was, literally, "why is a cut-and-paste advertisement here?". Since Slashdot accepts advertising space, that's where it should go.

The advertisement also had no pertinent information about the game, its plot, gameplay elements, or anything else useful.

Responding to my shock at it being a blatant cut-and-paste advertisement, with no information, with yet another advertisement, with no further useful information, is not helpful, and quite frankly, is rude. Did you/they learn how to market from this ad (probably NSFW)? THIS post has very little pertinent information either. It says it's a modified open source FPS. Even if someone saw that (I sure didn't), how many were likely to pass it off as a Blood source port (which I now understand does not actually exist), or something else for which the developers were too lazy to come up with words to DESCRIBE IT?

Personally, I care about what a game is about, what engine it's based on (mentioned in a post last month, not this one), what kind of single player features and depth of story it has, and moddability. There are a few pretty darn good games out there, a fair number of mediocre with a lot of problems, and a ton of real bombs that are more likely to make your PC beg for forgiveness for whatever it did wrong, than bring the player a good experience.

If there's a Linux port, that's icing, but obviously that can't improve the quality of the game. How is an utter lack of description helping anyone care about your game? How is an utter lack of description in the advertisement posted in response to the complaint helping anyone care about your game? How is advertising compulsively instead of responding Like An Human And Not A Bot to a legitimate point about what's going on, going to do anything other than piss off people? Seriously?

4 - There are no good pick up lines. Stop trying, stop reading the speed seduction books, they do not work if you do not understand human psychology and look like a "hunk" or at least semi cute to a woman.

Actually there are good pickup lines. Try "Hi".

If you do want to learn to become better at talking to or picking up women there is plenty of information and help out there. No, you don't have to look like a "hunk" or good looking (though it helps).

I'm working on a documentary of the pickup artist community in the DC area. What these guys can do is amazing and most of them don't look like jocks or pretty boys. It's all social skill learned from the various pickup companies and from each other. Most of these guys are in IT, and started out with the same level of social skills as the average slashdotter.

Here are some interviews of the less than pretty pickup artists from my documentary:

Knack

Cuisine

Allen

Want to learn more? Here are some links to reputable pickup artist and dating coach companies:

Venusian Arts

Ask Romeo

Mehow's Get the Girl

Style Life

Love Systems

If you can't find something that works for you from that list, nothing can help you except possibly therapy.

P.S. Yeah, Speed Seduction pretty much worthless.

4 - There are no good pick up lines. Stop trying, stop reading the speed seduction books, they do not work if you do not understand human psychology and look like a "hunk" or at least semi cute to a woman.

Actually there are good pickup lines. Try "Hi".

If you do want to learn to become better at talking to or picking up women there is plenty of information and help out there. No, you don't have to look like a "hunk" or good looking (though it helps).

I'm working on a documentary of the pickup artist community in the DC area. What these guys can do is amazing and most of them don't look like jocks or pretty boys. It's all social skill learned from the various pickup companies and from each other. Most of these guys are in IT, and started out with the same level of social skills as the average slashdotter.

Here are some interviews of the less than pretty pickup artists from my documentary:

Knack

Cuisine

Allen

Want to learn more? Here are some links to reputable pickup artist and dating coach companies:

Venusian Arts

Ask Romeo

Mehow's Get the Girl

Style Life

Love Systems

If you can't find something that works for you from that list, nothing can help you except possibly therapy.

P.S. Yeah, Speed Seduction pretty much worthless.