Even without a working optic nerve, the visual processing centers of our brain can still be active. When people who can see dream, their visual cortex is active. This is no different for blind people--those who are blind simply don't receive visual messages to interpret while they are awake. When they are asleep, no receiving occurs--the images are formed by the brain, not the eye.
Back when annotations first came to Youtube, the site advertised that the annotations could be used to make interactive videos and games by linking together videos. They included a magic trick video as an example in which you would select a particular card or something to that effect and you would be linked to the magician doing a trick specifically based on that card.
The description of the patent sounds very similar to the language they used when describing it, so I don't believe we can expect any innovation (covered by this patent at the very least) beyond what Youtube already has.
Depending on your kid's preferences, there is a good chance that he likes to make games. I find that Game Maker can be a great starting off point for a young programmer--it has a simple, graphical interface with a simple programming UI that, while drag and drop, still programming logic and structure. Then have him graduate to using GML, which is the programming language included with Game Maker. Its syntax is very similar to C and C++ and, at least for me, it proved to be an excellent introduction to programming.
While you may not be hurting a business directly if you are pirating material that you would not purchase from them, if you are seeding a torrent as you download the file, then you are providing access to the file to other people who may or may not have the same intentions as you do.
Re:Do we need the anti-smoking jab
on
A Geek Funeral
·
· Score: 1
While I do agree that smoking is a dangerous activity and that a significant portion of the tax should go to anti-smoking campaigns, it is worthy to point out the fact that as cigarettes are relatively inelastic, taxes placed on them will gain more revenue for the government than taxes placed on more elastic goods like ice cream. This means that some of the most stable income for public goods and services come through taxes on goods like cigarettes.
Does this opinion take into account the fact that longer amounts of schooling have the potential to make a higher percentage of people high achievers?
With extra time each day, some students who struggle to keep up in their classes may be able to absorb the material properly and join their higher-performing peers. Not only that, but the extra hours would allow the already high-achievers to fly past what they were previously capable of by allowing room for more courses and harder curriculums.
Most Wii's have been doing fine, but with some recent games such as Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Metroid Prime Trilogy, there have been some disc read issues in certain shipments of Wii's from the original launch. These Wii's are developing dirty lenses that are causing games on dual-layer DVD's to frequently return disc read errors.
The issue here is that the phone might not be available in the first place. A network that "carries" a phone is one that provides network service to it, so if networks choose not to carry this phone, you won't be able to do what you just described.
The AO rating is legally enforceable across the entire country because the rating is (theoretically) given only to games with content such as explicit sex that only people ages 18 and up can legally view in the United States.
Additionally, a small number of states have enacted state laws banning the sale of M-rated games to minors, and many more have laws that require a parent to be there when the sale occurs.
...I'm not so sure this design will ever hit market. Nintendo's got a bit of a history for filing patents on applications of the Wii Remote and never following through with them.
While robotic parking garages would be an efficient use of space, they would not answer the problem of people freeloading off street meters that cities are facing. Constructing one of these parking garages would likely cost the same as building parallel parking spots and "smart" meters over the space of 50 city blocks, and, as another commenter pointed out, regular parking garages can cost millions to build on their own.
Regardless of glass's age, it has only become a mainstream feature of desks in the past five to ten years. I would be willing to bet that five years ago, the fraction of people using a glass computer desk was a tiny minority.
Aside from that, mousepads were still in wide circulation, as roller ball mice were still somewhat mainstream. These two facts combined mean that very few people would run into a problem with being able to use their mouse with a glass desk.
The idea is that these batteries will only be used for items that need very little battery power, like cards with audio greetings or to light signs announcing yard sales, parties, etc, that will only need to be lit for a day or two.
That may be the case, but they can demonstrate many more versatile uses for the technology than changing the darkness a character prints in. They have already presented an example in which it affects the physical size of the letters typed, something that the manual typewriters cannot do.
In addition, I highly doubt that the manual typewriter patents included the fact that keys could be pressed for lighter or darker keys.
An example of this scenario: Earlier this year, the principal of my school got on the intercom in order to make a very important announcement: that Firefox was "some sort of proxy" and that any students caught using it or installing it on any school computer would be immediately suspended for a one-week period.
That had to have been the most WTF thing I've heard from the administration on opensource software.
There is a distinct difference between your iPod locking up and the Zune doing the same. When your iPod locks up, you simply need to reset it by holding down two buttons for a few seconds, turning it back on, and start playing again.
The issue with the Zune is the fact that the only way to "hard reset" the affected Zunes is to unscrew the casing, rip it off, disconnect the battery, and connect it again. And even then, plugging the Zune back into the computer updates the firmware and causes it to brick again.
Not only that, but an entire product line is being affected by this issue.
Do you guys seriously believe that the gaming market for the iPhone is going to just kick off? The iPhone was designed to play music, to surf the web, and to talk. Playing games was not and is not the focal point of owning an iPhone.
You can't just release a device like an iPhone, wait a few months, and then call to arms the video game industry.
The problem with the iPhone and gaming is that the iPhone isn't a gaming platform. People are not going to buy an iPhone with the express purpose of gaming.
While there are tens of thousands of titles available in netflix's streaming service, only a handful of them are popular films. Personally, only 4 of the DVD's in my 72 movie queue are available to instantly stream. In my case, I could be done with all four movies in a week or two and be out of things to stream until I happen to come across another movie that I think I'd enjoy.
The problem is that there is not a great selection of movies available for instant play, and of this limited selection, far fewer are popular titles.
EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game.
Spore is built on downloadable content. Throughout the game, the creatures you encounter, the worlds you visit, the buildings you see--they are all player-created objects and will all be downloaded in the background while the game is running. Spore is a game that only works well with downloadable content, and if I have to enter a validation code every time the game decides to download a creature or a planet, I'm not sure the promising gameplay will be worth the hassle.
I don't think that it is so much a problem with not testing the hardware enough as it is a problem with how OLPC designed the laptops.
These are computers that are being used widely by children all over the world, and, regardless of how you look at it, kids have a tendency to break things. Now, it is obvious that the XO-1 is designed to be a sturdy piece of equipment, but I find it downright silly that the keyboard is non-replaceable. The keyboard, of all things, should be easy to swap out for a new one--it is after all the primary input device on the computer, and if you lose that, you lose the computer.
OLPC should have thought ahead to possible broken parts and made everything--from the touchpad to the keyboard to the LCD to the hard drive--removable and replaceable.
Slashdot Mirror
Even without a working optic nerve, the visual processing centers of our brain can still be active. When people who can see dream, their visual cortex is active. This is no different for blind people--those who are blind simply don't receive visual messages to interpret while they are awake. When they are asleep, no receiving occurs--the images are formed by the brain, not the eye.
My status is currently the same. Either netflix is lagging behind or this release is staggered.
Wear Leveling, RAID Can Wipe Out SSD Advantage for enterprise.
While it may not be efficient to slap together a platter of 16 SSDs, it is worthwhile to upgrade personal computers to use an SSD.
Well, there's always the LHC... ;)
"all though there were less people using devices while driving." [citation needed]
Back when annotations first came to Youtube, the site advertised that the annotations could be used to make interactive videos and games by linking together videos. They included a magic trick video as an example in which you would select a particular card or something to that effect and you would be linked to the magician doing a trick specifically based on that card. The description of the patent sounds very similar to the language they used when describing it, so I don't believe we can expect any innovation (covered by this patent at the very least) beyond what Youtube already has.
Depending on your kid's preferences, there is a good chance that he likes to make games. I find that Game Maker can be a great starting off point for a young programmer--it has a simple, graphical interface with a simple programming UI that, while drag and drop, still programming logic and structure. Then have him graduate to using GML, which is the programming language included with Game Maker. Its syntax is very similar to C and C++ and, at least for me, it proved to be an excellent introduction to programming.
While you may not be hurting a business directly if you are pirating material that you would not purchase from them, if you are seeding a torrent as you download the file, then you are providing access to the file to other people who may or may not have the same intentions as you do.
While I do agree that smoking is a dangerous activity and that a significant portion of the tax should go to anti-smoking campaigns, it is worthy to point out the fact that as cigarettes are relatively inelastic, taxes placed on them will gain more revenue for the government than taxes placed on more elastic goods like ice cream. This means that some of the most stable income for public goods and services come through taxes on goods like cigarettes.
Does this opinion take into account the fact that longer amounts of schooling have the potential to make a higher percentage of people high achievers? With extra time each day, some students who struggle to keep up in their classes may be able to absorb the material properly and join their higher-performing peers. Not only that, but the extra hours would allow the already high-achievers to fly past what they were previously capable of by allowing room for more courses and harder curriculums.
Most Wii's have been doing fine, but with some recent games such as Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Metroid Prime Trilogy, there have been some disc read issues in certain shipments of Wii's from the original launch. These Wii's are developing dirty lenses that are causing games on dual-layer DVD's to frequently return disc read errors.
The issue here is that the phone might not be available in the first place. A network that "carries" a phone is one that provides network service to it, so if networks choose not to carry this phone, you won't be able to do what you just described.
The AO rating is legally enforceable across the entire country because the rating is (theoretically) given only to games with content such as explicit sex that only people ages 18 and up can legally view in the United States. Additionally, a small number of states have enacted state laws banning the sale of M-rated games to minors, and many more have laws that require a parent to be there when the sale occurs.
...I'm not so sure this design will ever hit market. Nintendo's got a bit of a history for filing patents on applications of the Wii Remote and never following through with them.
While robotic parking garages would be an efficient use of space, they would not answer the problem of people freeloading off street meters that cities are facing. Constructing one of these parking garages would likely cost the same as building parallel parking spots and "smart" meters over the space of 50 city blocks, and, as another commenter pointed out, regular parking garages can cost millions to build on their own.
Regardless of glass's age, it has only become a mainstream feature of desks in the past five to ten years. I would be willing to bet that five years ago, the fraction of people using a glass computer desk was a tiny minority. Aside from that, mousepads were still in wide circulation, as roller ball mice were still somewhat mainstream. These two facts combined mean that very few people would run into a problem with being able to use their mouse with a glass desk.
The idea is that these batteries will only be used for items that need very little battery power, like cards with audio greetings or to light signs announcing yard sales, parties, etc, that will only need to be lit for a day or two.
That may be the case, but they can demonstrate many more versatile uses for the technology than changing the darkness a character prints in. They have already presented an example in which it affects the physical size of the letters typed, something that the manual typewriters cannot do. In addition, I highly doubt that the manual typewriter patents included the fact that keys could be pressed for lighter or darker keys.
An example of this scenario: Earlier this year, the principal of my school got on the intercom in order to make a very important announcement: that Firefox was "some sort of proxy" and that any students caught using it or installing it on any school computer would be immediately suspended for a one-week period. That had to have been the most WTF thing I've heard from the administration on opensource software.
There is a distinct difference between your iPod locking up and the Zune doing the same. When your iPod locks up, you simply need to reset it by holding down two buttons for a few seconds, turning it back on, and start playing again. The issue with the Zune is the fact that the only way to "hard reset" the affected Zunes is to unscrew the casing, rip it off, disconnect the battery, and connect it again. And even then, plugging the Zune back into the computer updates the firmware and causes it to brick again. Not only that, but an entire product line is being affected by this issue.
Apparently it affects memory as well. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/27/2221228&from=rss
Do you guys seriously believe that the gaming market for the iPhone is going to just kick off? The iPhone was designed to play music, to surf the web, and to talk. Playing games was not and is not the focal point of owning an iPhone. You can't just release a device like an iPhone, wait a few months, and then call to arms the video game industry. The problem with the iPhone and gaming is that the iPhone isn't a gaming platform. People are not going to buy an iPhone with the express purpose of gaming.
While there are tens of thousands of titles available in netflix's streaming service, only a handful of them are popular films. Personally, only 4 of the DVD's in my 72 movie queue are available to instantly stream. In my case, I could be done with all four movies in a week or two and be out of things to stream until I happen to come across another movie that I think I'd enjoy. The problem is that there is not a great selection of movies available for instant play, and of this limited selection, far fewer are popular titles.
EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Spore is built on downloadable content. Throughout the game, the creatures you encounter, the worlds you visit, the buildings you see--they are all player-created objects and will all be downloaded in the background while the game is running. Spore is a game that only works well with downloadable content, and if I have to enter a validation code every time the game decides to download a creature or a planet, I'm not sure the promising gameplay will be worth the hassle.
I don't think that it is so much a problem with not testing the hardware enough as it is a problem with how OLPC designed the laptops. These are computers that are being used widely by children all over the world, and, regardless of how you look at it, kids have a tendency to break things. Now, it is obvious that the XO-1 is designed to be a sturdy piece of equipment, but I find it downright silly that the keyboard is non-replaceable. The keyboard, of all things, should be easy to swap out for a new one--it is after all the primary input device on the computer, and if you lose that, you lose the computer. OLPC should have thought ahead to possible broken parts and made everything--from the touchpad to the keyboard to the LCD to the hard drive--removable and replaceable.