You say that they should go after the uploaders. That sounds like a good principle (in fact, I favor this approach - although in my view rapidshare would not be an innocent bystander either).
There's just one problem with what you are suggesting - how do you suggest they go after the uploaders?
Have you ever sent an e-mail to rapidshare asking for information on the user who uploaded a file? Did you get that information? Were you able to use that information to get additional information required for legal action from the ISP? Were you then able to successfully bring forth legal action against the person?
Note that at every single question mark above, there are at least a dozen reasons why you would be answering 'no', and half a dozen more from privacy advocates who would rather that the above were, in fact, impossible - from strong defenses to weak ones. Just think of the very last one.. have you seen the discussion here since, well, forever, that a subscriber is not necessarily the person actually uploading? Could be somebody else in the household or maybe the WiFi was hacked.
So how, exactly, would you suggest that they actually go after the uploaders?
Though you are right that it might hurt their business - seeing as every single case against an actual uploader that's been covered here has resulted in very, very negative comments on the action. It seems the only acceptable response to many is to do nothing. Let piracy happen. Or offer better alternatives (and accept that piracy will still happen because it'll never be 'better' enough for everybody.)
But in the interim, I would guess that targeting the hosting sites AND major indexing sites is at least the most efficient, even if the effect of doing this lasts at most a week (at which point pretty much everybody using the site will know of the alternatives to go to).
A shame for Ouya if not kept alive
on
Trouble At OnLive
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· Score: 2
Seems a shame for the Ouya platform if their 'deal' with Onlive isn't kept alive after the restructuring/relaunching/whatever they're doing over there.
Ouya simply doesn't have the hardware to run e.g. battlefield. However, it has the hardware just fine to run an Onlive client, meaning even the 'hard core' gamers (if they can deal with the bit of latency) could get their fill.
It's unfortunate that it appears not enough publishers were willing to go with Onlive - although I suspect that's a combination of income from game sales themselves and pressure from certain hardware companies that like seeing their logo slapped on triple-A titles.
Hopefully they can reorganize, rethink their business strategy, and get to a successful formula.
On the other hand.. outside of the Ouya.. take a budget graphics card, drop it into a computer from 2 years ago, and you'll still be gaming along with the guy next door with a $4k setup - just slightly less flashy. Add to that data use limits likely to make their comeback (many ISPs in the U.S. already do, iirc), and perhaps it's just not as attractive as it was when they first launched.
If they completely overextended, then they shouldn't have bumped up the limits.
The project started out with a limited number of rewards and they have bumped those up a few times.
It's entirely likely that's part of the marketing spiel (they have pretty much admitted that they're using KickStarter in part for that purpose).
Which in turn leads to the whole "they're seeking funding outside of KickStarter as well" stuff.
Personally I think it can be done - but don't see the point. But if it ends up a very popular gaming platform, or just forces others to serve the market, then mission accomplished.
Let's hope so - bring on the 4k2k@50fps hype instead.
I, for one, can't wait for all the content creators and hardware companies to start pushing everyone toward it.
Yeah right, and charge $2.50 more per ticket, no doubt!
They want me to buy Star Wars again even though I bought it on VHS back in the 80's!? (and bought the LaserDisc, the DVD set, the Blu-Ray box...)
They're just doing this to thwart piracy! Well screw them - I'll keep downloading the 480p rips!
What's the point, I can't even watch it 1:1 on my retina display New iPad, LOL!*
The smooth picture gives me a headache!
Omg it looks so FAKE without proper camera shutter!
I'm not buying into this until I no longer have to wear those ridiculous glasses. Oh, wait, they're my prescription glasses.
Digital cinema like 4k2k commands killed movies for me; bring back film, the scratches, blotches, jitter and off-key audio are part of the soul of a movie!
Note, however, that KickStarter takes their hands off of these projects as soon as it is funded. Their only involvement at that point is keeping the project page (for updates, comments) running.
If you believe you've been wronged, and the project's creator won't refund you, you're going to have to grab a lawyer who does contract law cases and point them at it. Note: for most projects, hiring the lawyer + spending the time on the case will be far more costly than the $99 pledged (well up to $250 - beyond that it might start to be worth the bother).
There is currently 1 such case being played - and its outcome is uncertain; the project's creator got served in Arizona and, unless he responds real quickly, will be entering default status on the complaint.
As far as the OUYA goes - patents are probably its biggest threat at this time, not any perceived failure to deliver as promised. It's certainly a doable project for the price (some of the higher pledge levels bring little physical extra and are thus largely profit), and the creators wisely chose to limit the number of pledges allowed per tier. Doesn't mean that they will deliver for sure - or, assuming they will, 'on time' - but also no particular reason to believe they won't.
I don't see a real market for it, though - but I'll happily let them prove me wrong.
Considering they can't find a way to stop Assad from using tanks on his own people
Don't be silly - they do have a way, but certain member states are opposed to those ways and will use their veto rights to get proposals to use them dismissed.
You could suggest that they do away with the veto power - but then you'd have to concede that the U.S. gets to lose its veto vote on any Israel/Palestine issues as well.
( Note that the above two are generally the Security Council, not the Human Rights Council - but I can understand your grouping them all together under the UN flag. )
As for Apple's patent - it's pretty much 'ambilight for HMDs'. There's a wee bit more to it, of course, but if painting with the same broad brush that Apple uses when asserting their patents, the aforementioned description fits the bill.
Considering the crazy things that get funded through CrowdFunding (not just at KickStarter, and in fact I don't think KickStarter wouldn't allow them, but at e.g. IndieGoGo, RocketHub (who testified before Congress on the JOBS Act, pretty interesting stuff in the video of that), etc.), that could - possibly - be an avenue.
But I think SETI lacks something.. SETI simply isn't sexy. Its greatest benefactor in popular media was probably the movie Contact - but even in that the message from the skeptics rang more true than that of the 'believers'.
While I think the response of various cultures around the world to undeniable proof of life outside of our solar system would be rather interesting, there's very little we could actually do with that knowledge in terms of actionable items. I guess that maybe it'd push governments and businesses to work together to make interstellar travel the next "go to the moon" thing (after going to Mars, perhaps), but I wouldn't exact bet on it.
Not sure why you're modded off-topic - considering that Shapeways or, and I guess I'll plug their 'competitor' here, i.materialise, are a great option for those who want high quality (much higher than what you get out of Makerbot etc.) for a low price (compared to buying a 3D printer (kit+assembly)) with practically zero hassle.
I guess this Cube thing is somewhere between the Makerbots and the z-corp et al high end devices, but still more on the Makerbot end.
There are also desktop 3D printers that cost a bit more but may be worth the bother if you need what they do. One site that comes to mind is http://desktopfactory.com/
It occurs to me, reading the page there, that 3D Systems may be on their way to trying to corner the consumer/prosumer market.
Title: Cubify 3D Printers Aren't Just for Squares Description: There are other 3D printers out there, but Cubify claims theirs is easier to use, has easier cartridge changes, and is all-around nicer and cooler than their competition.
00:00 TITLE A shot of a 3D printer printing an object is shown, with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "The Cubify 3-D Printer at Google I/O 2012"
00:03 TITLE Timothy Lord is shown standing in a hallway
00:03 Timothy Here's another intriguing product on display at Google I/O, mostly because it can be controlled from an Android tablet, although it can also be fed data from a wireless network or from a USB stick plugged into the side.
00:12 TITLE Another shot of the 3D printer printing an object is shows.
00:18 TITLE Back to the shot of Timothy
00:18 Timothy It's a 3D printer that tries to emulate the easy-of-use of a laser printer, rather than a typical 3D printer where you have to feed it rolls of continuous stock.
00:27 TITLE The view changes to Adam of cubify.com in front of their booth at Google I/O. At the booth there are 3 Cube printers set up that are shown behind Adam.
00:27 Adam Hey, this is Adam with cubify.com , part of 3D Systems, and we're here with the Cube, just having an opportunity to take a quick little demo. Just finished printing up a little Android right now, so if you wanna take a look a little bit closer...
00:42 TITLE The view zooms in on the Cube printer
00:43 Adam There are a couple of things here that are actually unique to this particular 3D printer. Where there are several other printers that exist out there, at a similar price point, that are a little bit more open - instead what we opted to do was, rather than having to worry about "how hot does the extruder need to be?", "is my plastic gonna be too hot or too cold?", "If it's too cold is it gonna jam the head, possibly unhinge something?", "if my bed is too hot or too cold causing any kind of warping", "do I have to worry about in-fill pattern?", Support material designs?" - our 26 years of engineering experience have automated that for us. So this way all I need to do is to be able to hit 'build', and I'm able to get my parts. For our support materials, what we actually did was created some perforated supports, so this way [...]
01:24 TITLE Adam reaches over to the printed Android robot and pokes at some support structures
01:24 Adam [...] they snap right off - no big deal at all, doesn't take any heavy lifting, doesn't damage the part.
01:32 Adam Now, from what I heard, you guys were interested in changing out some cartridges. Before we go ahead and do that.. You can take any STL format, pop it into our software, hit 'import', hit 'build' - from there you're ready to go. Everything is automated for you as far as support structures, everything is ready as far as build times and fill patterns. You can either do it via USB, or via WiFi, no problem at all.
01:56 Adam We're gonna do a really quick demo right now as far as how to input and change out a cartridge, so come on over.
02:00 TITLE Adam inputs a few commands on the control panel.
02:03 Adam We have two screens between 'print' and 'setup'. We're just gonna go to 'setup', and our first option is to 'load cartridge'. So as we hit that, what's going on now is we're heating up the extruder, and we're actually gonna reverse out the plastic material right here. And in a matter of seconds what's gonna happen next minute, minute and a half, is the material is actually gonna eject. We're gonna pull it out, we're gonna pop in another cartridge, and from there we're just gonna feed it right back in. Really simple. Now it says right here to replace the cartridge and press the button. Hit that. Now I'm just gonna insert the filament right in here, like so, and right now you can see it pulling in. Now another 5, 10 seconds you're gonna see a little bit of excess material
What happens in your GUI when you have a folder with 10,000 files in it? What if you want to do something with all those files? Are you going to do it one click at a time?
Well that depends on what's drawing the window (a smart GUI would keep the 10,000 files in memory and only bother displaying / retrieving any metadata about those actually on-screen), and what you want to do with it.
For example, P:
Just yesterday I had to change extensions for a bunch of files in a directory, and each of those files was in its own sub directory. Using a little for loop and the handy '*', everything was changed and I could continue on with my life.
While I would use the CLI for this task as well*, I could just as easily use e.g. Total Commander. 1. Select the files + sub directories you want to filter in, if you just want all, skip this step. 2. Search for the extension you want to replace** 3. Feed to listbox** 4. File - Multi Rename Tool 5. In Search & Replace, fill in the Search / Replace fields. 6. Hit Start (or press enter)
* Of course, Total Commander has a CLI built-in and running console rename commands in that works just fine. ** Steps needed because multi-rename tool doesn't search in subdirs itself. If the files are in a single directory then these steps also become unnecessary.
The reason I use the CLI for this is pretty obvious - it's much faster. But it can be done in a GUI fairly well, and a more dedicated 'batch rename' utility would probably do it in less steps still. Additionally, let's say you have all those subfolders, but there's a few that you want to exclude. Within the Total Commander GUI, all I'd need to do is de-select them. On the command line... well I'm not sure what the exclusion flags would be, actually.
So like you basically said - there's a right tool for every task and every user. GP would do well to look beyond the stock tools, though:)
I wish GIMP allowed such a thing, it'd be a blast for sprite art.
It does - sort of. The supported languages are not very well-tailored to the application, but there is a Console and you can enter commands in there directly if you want. I haven't checked if there's a 'apply pencil at x,y' - but I would imagine there is one:) ( I have only used it for some batch processing - specifically for a segmentation-based chromatic aberration removal process for a lens that makes the usual tools very unhappy (the equations they use just don't fit nicely). Admittedly, the lens is a piece of $20 e-bay crap:) )
how many popular software products today actually require the end user to run terminal commands
Thankfully, not many.
On the other hand, very thankfully many CAD applications and the like do have a 'command line'. Not a terminal one, but one built into the GUI. The reason this is 'very thankfully' is because 1. some things really are just easier when typed in, and 2. it forces the developers to make everything that's doable through the UI, no matter how awkwardly, doable in the command line. The latter is very important when you consider the potential for macros, batch operations, more full-fledged scripting, etc.
If anything, more applications should have command lines.
I realize the article is more about the main CLI, though - and the modifier "required".. in which case I agree, the CLI shouldn't really be required. It's just damn nice it's there when you want it.
I don't know if open sourcing everything is necessary.
If SONY wants their experia UI, HTC wants their Sense, Samsung wants whatever theirs is called, then I'd be fine with them keeping that locked up as tight as they want.
But when they add a piece of hardware that is not familiar from other devices, open up the interface to that hardware.
Right now I could put CyanogenMod on mine, but the FM radio wouldn't work, the camera wouldn't work, and mobile data wouldn't work. Pass. But that's not the CyanogenMod devs fault - they have to work with what's available, and the stock Android rom doesn't know what to do with the hardware there either. If only the manufacturer opened up the interfaces, then those devs could easily build bridge software.
As it is, I opted to go with another rom that's based on the manufacturer's official rom binaries. That's not gonna fly for getting ICS or JB on there, though.
That said, I'm happy with it as it is - some setcpu and link2sd sprinkled on top and off it goes. It'll never be a Galaxy SIII - but then, a Galaxy SII will never be a Galaxy SIII either.
Until Slashdot decides to embed video through HTML5 video tags, I guess you'd just have to enable Flash in your mobile browser.
Here's the transcript anyway. ----- Title: Android-Controlled Lego Battle Robots Go To war Description: Google Input|Output 2012 has Android-controlled fighting Lego robots bringing havoc to the show floor! Slashdot takes you there!
00:00 TITLE Timothy is shown standing in a hallway with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Timothy Lord meets Stupid Fun Club (and Lab)'s Michael Winter & His Android-Controlled Lego Robots"
00:00 Timothy I talked with Michael Winter of Stupid Fun Labs, who's come up with some battlebot-style destructo devices that are remote-controlled from an Android tablet.
00:08 TITLE Michael Winter is shown at a Google I/O Android floor with people operating robots in the background.
00:08 Michael One month ago, Google gave us a call and said "We need something fun that's powered by Android". I think it came from Andy, the guy who invented the Android iOS.. or.. sorry, not iOS *chuckles* it came from Andy that invented the Android operating system. So we made combat robots that people can build themselves. They use Legos to build up weapons and defense, then go into an arena or [...]
00:36 TITLE Several shots of Android-powered Lego battle robots are shown along with tablets set up as controllers for them.
00:36 Michael [...] or, here in this case, it's on the convention floor and they battle each other, trying to knock the driver off the other person's robot.
00:44 Michael My background is in combat robots. I won the first Robot Wars and I make things, I build electronics. We use an ARM chip inside of the robot that has an emotion-based operating system, so the robots can get mad and do things and they can kill the driver like to hard.. drive better, or to shape up in general.
01;05 TITLE The view fades back to the shot of Michael.
01:05 Michael They also monitor how much damage they get. If a robot continues to get hit, the damage level goes up, and the driver of the robot gets that information displayed on their Android tablet. We know how many times the robot gets fired, we know what distance the other robots are away from it, and all this comes back to the driver or, if you're making a TV show out of this, the TV audience could see, like, how much damage a robot got.
01:32 TITLE A time lapse shot is shown of somebody building a Lego battle robot as a piece of techno music is played over the video.
02:00 TITLE A short shot taken from the perspective of one of the robots is shown before fading back to Michael.
02:01 Michael The software runs on the Android tablet, uses Bluetooth to communicate with the robot. To steer the robot you hold down the dead man's switch and you put the tablet forward to go forward, the tablet backwards to go backwards, left, right, and so steering is super-convenient, there's no joystick or anything like that. And the weapon, you just push a button, and the weapon fires, or you can push the macro button and have the robot just go crazy, spinning all the way around, whacking everything in sight.
02:32 Timothy What's your vision for this?
02:33 Michael The vision is to do a reality TV show. While we were building it, one of the big three networks actually came up to us, and was talking about this prime time show, and we said, well, here's kind of the technology that we can use to do things in real time. So that's one thing, we're very interested in the toy market. We do talk with Lego R&D and Hasbro and Mattel. Some wild ideas have been thrown out here at the convention, one is that.. wouldn't it be fun to do Lego, rather than a Lego Mindstorms, a Lego Google.. where you would buy your Lego robotics set, and it would just connect with your phone so you can use the power of your phone or your tablet to control your Legos.
At which point Samsung will have $95M but will have to re-start their advertising campaign, essentially re-launch the product, and target a market that has just bought a bunch of competing products - among which iDevices from which Apple stands to gain a lot more through e.g. app store purchases, third party products such as docks that use licensed tech, etc..
And that's assuming that by the time the decision lands the device is even relevant enough in the market to be relaunched. It may be better to launch a new product instead. Which Apple would then seek an injunction against.
$95M - I'd love to have it, but I'm guessing Samsung are not particularly impressed.
Then why did Apple so heavily promote HTML apps, even after the App Store came around... year after year they have added more support to help HTML apps look and feel like native apps and able to use the same APIs.
Didn't you have work or something* to do when you wrote that comment?
*write, play adventure games, read, taking random and not-so-random photos
For me, this is a pastime (and no, I'm not getting paid for it - unless I missed it and an e-mail fell down a deep black hole again) that helps me listen, type, and every once in a while actually learn something.
In this particular video's case I had hoped the video would actually be about how to get involved with a Maker type place, rather than going to one and a very brief how-to on operating a laser cutter, but you can't have everything.
And in case you're wondering - I'm writing this while colleagues take their smoke break. Amazing.
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.
littlebigbot pretty much sums it right up, but here you go anyway.
----
Title: A Laser Cutter Demo Description: Slashdot editor Jeff Boehm visited Maker Works in Ann Arbor, MI, where they not only have an Epilog Helix Laser Cutter & Engraver, but let him use it.
00:00 TITLE Slashdot Editor Jeff Boehm, as identified by titles, is shown standing in a room next to a piece of machinery.
00:00 Jeff Over the past several months we've run videos of various Maker Spaces around the country, and several readers brought to us the request for a more granular look at how to get involved in a Maker community. To that end, I'm here at the MakerWorks at Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a look at one of those ways.
00:16 TITLE The view fades to the SlashdotTV title sequence reading "Using a Laser Cutter" before fading back out again to the view of Jeff Boehm.
00:22 Jeff Standing next to me is the Epilog Laser Helix - it's a laser cutter and engraver, and it is one of the more interesting tools here at the MakerWorks. This tool has several things going for it. First, it can create a wide variety of very interesting designs on many types of materials, from metal to wood, paper, plastic - all sorts of things. Two, it is very easy to learn and operate. And three? Lasers(!)
00:48 TITLE The view fades to a shot of the top of the engraver/cutter with Jeff pointing out its major components.
00:48 Jeff The device itself is fairly straight-forward. You place the object you're cutting inside here, where the exhaust vent will create small suction, so for example paper won't blow away. The laser itself is in this little unit right here. It is automatically propelled on both the X and the Y axes by this large device. The control panel, here, is for zeroing it out and various other things. You send jobs to it much as you would a printer.
01:19 TITLE The view changes to that of a computer screen with design software shown. Jeff interacts with its interface throughout this segment, working with a Star Wars/Rebel Alliance logo.
01:19 Jeff Operating the software for this device is also very simple. To begin, just download any image from the internet, and then import it into the software you're using - in this case, it is Corel Draw. I think we're going to make a drink coaster out of this one, so let's resize this to something a little more manageable. Now, if we were just engraving, we would be done right here. But first we need to do one more step. Since coasters are circular, we need to do a circular cut. So I'll create a circle, tell it how wide and tall we want it to be, tell it where to center, and there - that looks like roughly the right shape. I can go here and scrunch it down just a little bit to make sure it fits better... that looks about good.
02:19 Jeff We'll also tell it we want it to be a hairline cut, rather than a cut of a particular thickness. This is what tells the device to actually do a cut. If you tell it to do a thicker line, it will try to just engrave.
02:31 Jeff Once that's done, we do pretty much what we do with a regular drawing that we're trying to print. We go to the Print, and it will bring up a box saying that we're printing to the engraver, and we go to properties.
02:45 TITLE The engraver's driver interface is shown with various engraving/cutting settings.
02:45 Jeff This is where the engraver's driver comes in. We'll tell it what kind of DPI we want. This tells us whether we want to do "raster" or "vector" - that just means whether we want to engrave, or cut - since in this case we're doing both, we leave it on "combined". Now, we need to determine exactly what laser settings we need to use.
03:07 TITLE The view fades to a shot of a large chart with various materials and engraving/cutting properties in a table revealing recommended engraver/cutter settings.
Interesting... in electronics design, the 'mil' is a common unit of measure. E.g. a trace might be 6 mils wide. A 'mil' is 1/1000th of an inch. Checking wikipedia, it seems some call it a 'thou' - can't say I have encountered that.
The issue is clouded, but why you would conclude that this somehow means I don't have a 'real opinion' is, once again, confusing. You can look through my earlier comments to see what my opinion on all this is.
I can't say the same for you; well, presuming that's actually your site under that Homepage link. If it's not, oh well. Continuing under the assumption that it is or that at least you align yourself with its writings: the June 12th entry (about the subject of this Slashdot story) about monetizing user-provided content (which may or may not be infringing on copyright holders' rights) is entirely an admission that the writer's opinions aren't on entirely solid ground - accepting technical limitations on one hand, fighting the cause for 'everything should be free because it promotes the arts' on the other hand, then pulling a third hand out of thin hand that wags a little finger at sites that make money off of the earlier two constructs (in the specific site's case, via ads). I would think that would be one of the simpler things to take a stance on - although I've seen such wavering before; when culpability for software defects are discussed, many are quick to suggest that e.g. GPL software be exempt. After all, it's free (as in speech).. also as in beer so the developer could never actually cover culpability. It's as if things magically change when there is no intent for profit; which is true, to an extent, if you register as a not-for-profit. Pretty sure that doesn't apply to copyright infringement, however.
Slashdot Mirror
You say that they should go after the uploaders. That sounds like a good principle (in fact, I favor this approach - although in my view rapidshare would not be an innocent bystander either).
There's just one problem with what you are suggesting - how do you suggest they go after the uploaders?
Have you ever sent an e-mail to rapidshare asking for information on the user who uploaded a file? Did you get that information? Were you able to use that information to get additional information required for legal action from the ISP? Were you then able to successfully bring forth legal action against the person?
Note that at every single question mark above, there are at least a dozen reasons why you would be answering 'no', and half a dozen more from privacy advocates who would rather that the above were, in fact, impossible - from strong defenses to weak ones. Just think of the very last one.. have you seen the discussion here since, well, forever, that a subscriber is not necessarily the person actually uploading? Could be somebody else in the household or maybe the WiFi was hacked.
So how, exactly, would you suggest that they actually go after the uploaders?
Though you are right that it might hurt their business - seeing as every single case against an actual uploader that's been covered here has resulted in very, very negative comments on the action.
It seems the only acceptable response to many is to do nothing. Let piracy happen. Or offer better alternatives (and accept that piracy will still happen because it'll never be 'better' enough for everybody.)
But in the interim, I would guess that targeting the hosting sites AND major indexing sites is at least the most efficient, even if the effect of doing this lasts at most a week (at which point pretty much everybody using the site will know of the alternatives to go to).
Seems a shame for the Ouya platform if their 'deal' with Onlive isn't kept alive after the restructuring/relaunching/whatever they're doing over there.
Ouya simply doesn't have the hardware to run e.g. battlefield. However, it has the hardware just fine to run an Onlive client, meaning even the 'hard core' gamers (if they can deal with the bit of latency) could get their fill.
It's unfortunate that it appears not enough publishers were willing to go with Onlive - although I suspect that's a combination of income from game sales themselves and pressure from certain hardware companies that like seeing their logo slapped on triple-A titles.
Hopefully they can reorganize, rethink their business strategy, and get to a successful formula.
On the other hand.. outside of the Ouya.. take a budget graphics card, drop it into a computer from 2 years ago, and you'll still be gaming along with the guy next door with a $4k setup - just slightly less flashy. Add to that data use limits likely to make their comeback (many ISPs in the U.S. already do, iirc), and perhaps it's just not as attractive as it was when they first launched.
If they completely overextended, then they shouldn't have bumped up the limits.
The project started out with a limited number of rewards and they have bumped those up a few times.
It's entirely likely that's part of the marketing spiel (they have pretty much admitted that they're using KickStarter in part for that purpose).
Which in turn leads to the whole "they're seeking funding outside of KickStarter as well" stuff.
Personally I think it can be done - but don't see the point. But if it ends up a very popular gaming platform, or just forces others to serve the market, then mission accomplished.
There's an overview of positive and negative articles somewhere I saw:
http://www.crowdthunder.net/ouya-news-round-up-2012-07-17/
Let's hope so - bring on the 4k2k@50fps hype instead.
I, for one, can't wait for all the content creators and hardware companies to start pushing everyone toward it.
Note, however, that KickStarter takes their hands off of these projects as soon as it is funded. Their only involvement at that point is keeping the project page (for updates, comments) running.
If you believe you've been wronged, and the project's creator won't refund you, you're going to have to grab a lawyer who does contract law cases and point them at it.
Note: for most projects, hiring the lawyer + spending the time on the case will be far more costly than the $99 pledged (well up to $250 - beyond that it might start to be worth the bother).
There is currently 1 such case being played - and its outcome is uncertain; the project's creator got served in Arizona and, unless he responds real quickly, will be entering default status on the complaint.
As far as the OUYA goes - patents are probably its biggest threat at this time, not any perceived failure to deliver as promised. It's certainly a doable project for the price (some of the higher pledge levels bring little physical extra and are thus largely profit), and the creators wisely chose to limit the number of pledges allowed per tier. Doesn't mean that they will deliver for sure - or, assuming they will, 'on time' - but also no particular reason to believe they won't.
I don't see a real market for it, though - but I'll happily let them prove me wrong.
Don't be silly - they do have a way, but certain member states are opposed to those ways and will use their veto rights to get proposals to use them dismissed.
You could suggest that they do away with the veto power - but then you'd have to concede that the U.S. gets to lose its veto vote on any Israel/Palestine issues as well.
( Note that the above two are generally the Security Council, not the Human Rights Council - but I can understand your grouping them all together under the UN flag. )
They haven't been alone for some time now - that is to say, since before they even mentioned what they may or may not have been working on.
Google's glasses aren't HMDs, though.
The Rift would be an HMD that'd warrant a further look;
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=14777
As for Apple's patent - it's pretty much 'ambilight for HMDs'. There's a wee bit more to it, of course, but if painting with the same broad brush that Apple uses when asserting their patents, the aforementioned description fits the bill.
Snap - I messed that up.
Option A: I don't think KickStarter would allow them.
Option B: I think KickStarter wouldn't allow them.
Considering the crazy things that get funded through CrowdFunding (not just at KickStarter, and in fact I don't think KickStarter wouldn't allow them, but at e.g. IndieGoGo, RocketHub (who testified before Congress on the JOBS Act, pretty interesting stuff in the video of that), etc.), that could - possibly - be an avenue.
But I think SETI lacks something.. SETI simply isn't sexy. Its greatest benefactor in popular media was probably the movie Contact - but even in that the message from the skeptics rang more true than that of the 'believers'.
While I think the response of various cultures around the world to undeniable proof of life outside of our solar system would be rather interesting, there's very little we could actually do with that knowledge in terms of actionable items.
I guess that maybe it'd push governments and businesses to work together to make interstellar travel the next "go to the moon" thing (after going to Mars, perhaps), but I wouldn't exact bet on it.
Not sure why you're modded off-topic - considering that Shapeways or, and I guess I'll plug their 'competitor' here, i.materialise, are a great option for those who want high quality (much higher than what you get out of Makerbot etc.) for a low price (compared to buying a 3D printer (kit+assembly)) with practically zero hassle.
I guess this Cube thing is somewhere between the Makerbots and the z-corp et al high end devices, but still more on the Makerbot end.
There are also desktop 3D printers that cost a bit more but may be worth the bother if you need what they do. One site that comes to mind is http://desktopfactory.com/
It occurs to me, reading the page there, that 3D Systems may be on their way to trying to corner the consumer/prosumer market.
Title: Cubify 3D Printers Aren't Just for Squares
Description: There are other 3D printers out there, but Cubify claims theirs is easier to use, has easier cartridge changes, and is all-around nicer and cooler than their competition.
00:00 TITLE
A shot of a 3D printer printing an object is shown, with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "The Cubify 3-D Printer at Google I/O 2012"
00:03 TITLE
Timothy Lord is shown standing in a hallway
00:03 Timothy
Here's another intriguing product on display at Google I/O, mostly because it can be controlled from an Android tablet, although it can also be fed data from a wireless network or from a USB stick plugged into the side.
00:12 TITLE
Another shot of the 3D printer printing an object is shows.
00:18 TITLE
Back to the shot of Timothy
00:18 Timothy
It's a 3D printer that tries to emulate the easy-of-use of a laser printer, rather than a typical 3D printer where you have to feed it rolls of continuous stock.
00:27 TITLE
The view changes to Adam of cubify.com in front of their booth at Google I/O.
At the booth there are 3 Cube printers set up that are shown behind Adam.
00:27 Adam
Hey, this is Adam with cubify.com , part of 3D Systems, and we're here with the Cube, just having an opportunity to take a quick little demo.
Just finished printing up a little Android right now, so if you wanna take a look a little bit closer...
00:42 TITLE
The view zooms in on the Cube printer
00:43 Adam
There are a couple of things here that are actually unique to this particular 3D printer.
Where there are several other printers that exist out there, at a similar price point, that are a little bit more open - instead what we opted to do was, rather than having to worry about "how hot does the extruder need to be?", "is my plastic gonna be too hot or too cold?", "If it's too cold is it gonna jam the head, possibly unhinge something?", "if my bed is too hot or too cold causing any kind of warping", "do I have to worry about in-fill pattern?", Support material designs?" - our 26 years of engineering experience have automated that for us.
So this way all I need to do is to be able to hit 'build', and I'm able to get my parts.
For our support materials, what we actually did was created some perforated supports, so this way [...]
01:24 TITLE
Adam reaches over to the printed Android robot and pokes at some support structures
01:24 Adam
[...] they snap right off - no big deal at all, doesn't take any heavy lifting, doesn't damage the part.
01:32 Adam
Now, from what I heard, you guys were interested in changing out some cartridges.
Before we go ahead and do that..
You can take any STL format, pop it into our software, hit 'import', hit 'build' - from there you're ready to go.
Everything is automated for you as far as support structures, everything is ready as far as build times and fill patterns.
You can either do it via USB, or via WiFi, no problem at all.
01:56 Adam
We're gonna do a really quick demo right now as far as how to input and change out a cartridge, so come on over.
02:00 TITLE
Adam inputs a few commands on the control panel.
02:03 Adam
We have two screens between 'print' and 'setup'.
We're just gonna go to 'setup', and our first option is to 'load cartridge'.
So as we hit that, what's going on now is we're heating up the extruder, and we're actually gonna reverse out the plastic material right here.
And in a matter of seconds what's gonna happen next minute, minute and a half, is the material is actually gonna eject.
We're gonna pull it out, we're gonna pop in another cartridge, and from there we're just gonna feed it right back in.
Really simple.
Now it says right here to replace the cartridge and press the button.
Hit that.
Now I'm just gonna insert the filament right in here, like so, and right now you can see it pulling in.
Now another 5, 10 seconds you're gonna see a little bit of excess material
GP
Well that depends on what's drawing the window (a smart GUI would keep the 10,000 files in memory and only bother displaying / retrieving any metadata about those actually on-screen), and what you want to do with it.
For example, P:
While I would use the CLI for this task as well*, I could just as easily use e.g. Total Commander.
1. Select the files + sub directories you want to filter in, if you just want all, skip this step.
2. Search for the extension you want to replace**
3. Feed to listbox**
4. File - Multi Rename Tool
5. In Search & Replace, fill in the Search / Replace fields.
6. Hit Start (or press enter)
* Of course, Total Commander has a CLI built-in and running console rename commands in that works just fine.
** Steps needed because multi-rename tool doesn't search in subdirs itself. If the files are in a single directory then these steps also become unnecessary.
The reason I use the CLI for this is pretty obvious - it's much faster. But it can be done in a GUI fairly well, and a more dedicated 'batch rename' utility would probably do it in less steps still.
Additionally, let's say you have all those subfolders, but there's a few that you want to exclude. Within the Total Commander GUI, all I'd need to do is de-select them. On the command line... well I'm not sure what the exclusion flags would be, actually.
So like you basically said - there's a right tool for every task and every user. GP would do well to look beyond the stock tools, though :)
It does - sort of. The supported languages are not very well-tailored to the application, but there is a Console and you can enter commands in there directly if you want. :) :) )
I haven't checked if there's a 'apply pencil at x,y' - but I would imagine there is one
( I have only used it for some batch processing - specifically for a segmentation-based chromatic aberration removal process for a lens that makes the usual tools very unhappy (the equations they use just don't fit nicely). Admittedly, the lens is a piece of $20 e-bay crap
I'd start with these two:
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-using-script-fu-tutorial.html
http://www.gimp.org/docs/python/index.html
Thankfully, not many.
On the other hand, very thankfully many CAD applications and the like do have a 'command line'. Not a terminal one, but one built into the GUI.
The reason this is 'very thankfully' is because 1. some things really are just easier when typed in, and 2. it forces the developers to make everything that's doable through the UI, no matter how awkwardly, doable in the command line.
The latter is very important when you consider the potential for macros, batch operations, more full-fledged scripting, etc.
If anything, more applications should have command lines.
I realize the article is more about the main CLI, though - and the modifier "required".. in which case I agree, the CLI shouldn't really be required. It's just damn nice it's there when you want it.
I don't know if open sourcing everything is necessary.
If SONY wants their experia UI, HTC wants their Sense, Samsung wants whatever theirs is called, then I'd be fine with them keeping that locked up as tight as they want.
But when they add a piece of hardware that is not familiar from other devices, open up the interface to that hardware.
Right now I could put CyanogenMod on mine, but the FM radio wouldn't work, the camera wouldn't work, and mobile data wouldn't work. Pass.
But that's not the CyanogenMod devs fault - they have to work with what's available, and the stock Android rom doesn't know what to do with the hardware there either.
If only the manufacturer opened up the interfaces, then those devs could easily build bridge software.
As it is, I opted to go with another rom that's based on the manufacturer's official rom binaries. That's not gonna fly for getting ICS or JB on there, though.
That said, I'm happy with it as it is - some setcpu and link2sd sprinkled on top and off it goes. It'll never be a Galaxy SIII - but then, a Galaxy SII will never be a Galaxy SIII either.
Until Slashdot decides to embed video through HTML5 video tags, I guess you'd just have to enable Flash in your mobile browser.
Here's the transcript anyway.
-----
Title: Android-Controlled Lego Battle Robots Go To war
Description: Google Input|Output 2012 has Android-controlled fighting Lego robots bringing havoc to the show floor! Slashdot takes you there!
00:00 TITLE
Timothy is shown standing in a hallway with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Timothy Lord meets Stupid Fun Club (and Lab)'s Michael Winter & His Android-Controlled Lego Robots"
00:00 Timothy
I talked with Michael Winter of Stupid Fun Labs, who's come up with some battlebot-style destructo devices that are remote-controlled from an Android tablet.
00:08 TITLE
Michael Winter is shown at a Google I/O Android floor with people operating robots in the background.
00:08 Michael
One month ago, Google gave us a call and said "We need something fun that's powered by Android".
I think it came from Andy, the guy who invented the Android iOS.. or.. sorry, not iOS *chuckles* it came from Andy that invented the Android operating system.
So we made combat robots that people can build themselves.
They use Legos to build up weapons and defense, then go into an arena or [...]
00:36 TITLE
Several shots of Android-powered Lego battle robots are shown along with tablets set up as controllers for them.
00:36 Michael
[...] or, here in this case, it's on the convention floor and they battle each other, trying to knock the driver off the other person's robot.
00:44 Michael
My background is in combat robots.
I won the first Robot Wars and I make things, I build electronics.
We use an ARM chip inside of the robot that has an emotion-based operating system, so the robots can get mad and do things and they can kill the driver like to hard.. drive better, or to shape up in general.
01;05 TITLE
The view fades back to the shot of Michael.
01:05 Michael
They also monitor how much damage they get.
If a robot continues to get hit, the damage level goes up, and the driver of the robot gets that information displayed on their Android tablet.
We know how many times the robot gets fired, we know what distance the other robots are away from it, and all this comes back to the driver or, if you're making a TV show out of this, the TV audience could see, like, how much damage a robot got.
01:32 TITLE
A time lapse shot is shown of somebody building a Lego battle robot as a piece of techno music is played over the video.
02:00 TITLE
A short shot taken from the perspective of one of the robots is shown before fading back to Michael.
02:01 Michael
The software runs on the Android tablet, uses Bluetooth to communicate with the robot.
To steer the robot you hold down the dead man's switch and you put the tablet forward to go forward, the tablet backwards to go backwards, left, right, and so steering is super-convenient, there's no joystick or anything like that.
And the weapon, you just push a button, and the weapon fires, or you can push the macro button and have the robot just go crazy, spinning all the way around, whacking everything in sight.
02:32 Timothy
What's your vision for this?
02:33 Michael
The vision is to do a reality TV show.
While we were building it, one of the big three networks actually came up to us, and was talking about this prime time show, and we said, well, here's kind of the technology that we can use to do things in real time.
So that's one thing, we're very interested in the toy market.
We do talk with Lego R&D and Hasbro and Mattel.
Some wild ideas have been thrown out here at the convention, one is that.. wouldn't it be fun to do Lego, rather than a Lego Mindstorms, a Lego Google.. where you would buy your Lego robotics set, and it would just connect with your phone so you can use the power of your phone or your tablet to control your Legos.
But just old enough to still remember them and collect that cookie, I see? :)
( Too many here are too young to even know the cartoons. )
Oh I do hate when that happens at work. We end up so bewildered. "Are we dead? Or is this Ohio?"
( cookies for whoever gets the reference without Googling. )
At which point Samsung will have $95M but will have to re-start their advertising campaign, essentially re-launch the product, and target a market that has just bought a bunch of competing products - among which iDevices from which Apple stands to gain a lot more through e.g. app store purchases, third party products such as docks that use licensed tech, etc..
And that's assuming that by the time the decision lands the device is even relevant enough in the market to be relaunched. It may be better to launch a new product instead.
Which Apple would then seek an injunction against.
$95M - I'd love to have it, but I'm guessing Samsung are not particularly impressed.
Then why did their new bosom buddy facebook
http://mashable.com/2012/06/11/apple-facebook/
drop HTML5 to go native?
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/06/28/1719233/facebook-ios-app-ditching-html5-for-objectivec
I guess "year after year" needs a few years of prmotion more for HTML apps to actually be (allowed to be) capable enough to replace native apps.
Didn't you have work or something* to do when you wrote that comment?
*write, play adventure games, read, taking random and not-so-random photos
For me, this is a pastime (and no, I'm not getting paid for it - unless I missed it and an e-mail fell down a deep black hole again) that helps me listen, type, and every once in a while actually learn something.
In this particular video's case I had hoped the video would actually be about how to get involved with a Maker type place, rather than going to one and a very brief how-to on operating a laser cutter, but you can't have everything.
And in case you're wondering - I'm writing this while colleagues take their smoke break. Amazing.
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.
littlebigbot pretty much sums it right up, but here you go anyway.
----
Title: A Laser Cutter Demo
Description: Slashdot editor Jeff Boehm visited Maker Works in Ann Arbor, MI, where they not only have an Epilog Helix Laser Cutter & Engraver, but let him use it.
00:00 TITLE
Slashdot Editor Jeff Boehm, as identified by titles, is shown standing in a room next to a piece of machinery.
00:00 Jeff
Over the past several months we've run videos of various Maker Spaces around the country, and several readers brought to us the request for a more granular look at how to get involved in a Maker community.
To that end, I'm here at the MakerWorks at Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a look at one of those ways.
00:16 TITLE
The view fades to the SlashdotTV title sequence reading "Using a Laser Cutter" before fading back out again to the view of Jeff Boehm.
00:22 Jeff
Standing next to me is the Epilog Laser Helix - it's a laser cutter and engraver, and it is one of the more interesting tools here at the MakerWorks.
This tool has several things going for it.
First, it can create a wide variety of very interesting designs on many types of materials, from metal to wood, paper, plastic - all sorts of things.
Two, it is very easy to learn and operate.
And three?
Lasers(!)
00:48 TITLE
The view fades to a shot of the top of the engraver/cutter with Jeff pointing out its major components.
00:48 Jeff
The device itself is fairly straight-forward.
You place the object you're cutting inside here, where the exhaust vent will create small suction, so for example paper won't blow away.
The laser itself is in this little unit right here.
It is automatically propelled on both the X and the Y axes by this large device.
The control panel, here, is for zeroing it out and various other things.
You send jobs to it much as you would a printer.
01:19 TITLE
The view changes to that of a computer screen with design software shown. Jeff interacts with its interface throughout this segment, working with a Star Wars/Rebel Alliance logo.
01:19 Jeff ... that looks about good.
Operating the software for this device is also very simple.
To begin, just download any image from the internet, and then import it into the software you're using - in this case, it is Corel Draw.
I think we're going to make a drink coaster out of this one, so let's resize this to something a little more manageable.
Now, if we were just engraving, we would be done right here.
But first we need to do one more step.
Since coasters are circular, we need to do a circular cut.
So I'll create a circle, tell it how wide and tall we want it to be, tell it where to center, and there - that looks like roughly the right shape.
I can go here and scrunch it down just a little bit to make sure it fits better
02:19 Jeff
We'll also tell it we want it to be a hairline cut, rather than a cut of a particular thickness.
This is what tells the device to actually do a cut.
If you tell it to do a thicker line, it will try to just engrave.
02:31 Jeff
Once that's done, we do pretty much what we do with a regular drawing that we're trying to print.
We go to the Print, and it will bring up a box saying that we're printing to the engraver, and we go to properties.
02:45 TITLE
The engraver's driver interface is shown with various engraving/cutting settings.
02:45 Jeff
This is where the engraver's driver comes in.
We'll tell it what kind of DPI we want.
This tells us whether we want to do "raster" or "vector" - that just means whether we want to engrave, or cut - since in this case we're doing both, we leave it on "combined".
Now, we need to determine exactly what laser settings we need to use.
03:07 TITLE
The view fades to a shot of a large chart with various materials and engraving/cutting properties in a table revealing recommended engraver/cutter settings.
03:08 Jeff
This job is m
Interesting... in electronics design, the 'mil' is a common unit of measure. E.g. a trace might be 6 mils wide. A 'mil' is 1/1000th of an inch. Checking wikipedia, it seems some call it a 'thou' - can't say I have encountered that.
I see you wrote this on a typewriter ;)
The issue is clouded, but why you would conclude that this somehow means I don't have a 'real opinion' is, once again, confusing. You can look through my earlier comments to see what my opinion on all this is.
I can't say the same for you; well, presuming that's actually your site under that Homepage link. If it's not, oh well. Continuing under the assumption that it is or that at least you align yourself with its writings: the June 12th entry (about the subject of this Slashdot story) about monetizing user-provided content (which may or may not be infringing on copyright holders' rights) is entirely an admission that the writer's opinions aren't on entirely solid ground - accepting technical limitations on one hand, fighting the cause for 'everything should be free because it promotes the arts' on the other hand, then pulling a third hand out of thin hand that wags a little finger at sites that make money off of the earlier two constructs (in the specific site's case, via ads).
I would think that would be one of the simpler things to take a stance on - although I've seen such wavering before; when culpability for software defects are discussed, many are quick to suggest that e.g. GPL software be exempt. After all, it's free (as in speech).. also as in beer so the developer could never actually cover culpability. It's as if things magically change when there is no intent for profit; which is true, to an extent, if you register as a not-for-profit. Pretty sure that doesn't apply to copyright infringement, however.