I had an argument with somebody with a very pro-liberty (even if at the indirect cost of others) stance.
When asked if he believed that companies should be allowed to ban African-Americans from doing business with them, his reply was along the lines that indeed they should be allowed to, and in a free market there would simply be some other store that welcomes them, that's how the free marker is supposed to work, and the government should butt out of businesses' decisions.
When asked what happens when there is no viable competition - say for a drug that can save lives but which is administered in private clinics so as to keep competing pharmaceuticals from gaining direct access to the drug - his reply was that he would then just grab a gun, go to that clinic, and get some of that drug himself and woe the person who would get in his way.
Rather than accept that governments may have to regulate some aspects of life and business for a healthy society, which in the latter case would mean no company could limit a drug via discrimination*, he would resort to violence.
In your scenario, he would choose homelessness...at least from the comfort of his recliner. Some people are just wired that way, I guess.
( * I know some drugs are so ridiculously expensive that one may as well recognize their availability as being subject to class discrimination. )
The UK, just as Australia and Europe, were - and still are (at one point it was even cheaper to get the boxed version than to get the download version) - basically being screwed over (and good luck checking that - their various international websites make it a pain in the ass to compare pricing) and the only reason for this is that the market will pay anyway. Why? Because 1. It's Adobe's products. If you have an interest in them, you're probably in an industry where you have little choice, so you'd probably pay twice the price and limit yourself to some grumbling on twitter, and 2. you probably earn the price of these products back on just a handful of jobs, after which you'd only have to worry about the upgrade pricing.
It's one market I wouldn't mind Apple upsetting, not one bit.
Similarly, if I recall correctly, there's a Native American language that uses before and behind as an analog for time but the other way around to most languages. Their analogy is that you know the past and you can see what it in front of you so forward = the past. You can't see behind you and you don't know the future so behind = the future
Yes, that may well have been...
the Aymara of the Andes [seem to do the reverse, placing the past in front and the future behind]
Source? TFA, which mentions the same researcher was involved with that finding.
When you're done scanning it could you post the result? PNG preferred, but JPEG at high quality (disable chroma subsampling, please - it's so harsh on subpixel-rendered fonts) would be acceptable as well.
Title: Paul 'Froggy' Schneider Talks About the Excitement of Putting a Hacker Conference Together Description: Froggy has organized the annual notacon hacker event for nine years and, even though the 2012 notacon just ended, is already hard at work planning notacon 10. If you ever plan to put together an IT get-together or conference, you should watch this video first.
00:00) <TITLE> A still view of the interviewee, Paul 'Froggy' Schneider' appears in greyscale and fades into color video as the SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Paul 'Froggy' Schneider talks about the thrills and chills of putting together the Notacon conference". Below the logo bar is the Notacon web address: www.notacon.org
00:05) Timothy> So, Froggy, congratulations on a fun conference.
00:07) Froggy> Thank you very much!
00:07.5) Timothy> How did you get into running a hackercon?
00:10) Froggy> Well, I got into attending hackercons in 2000 when I attended my first Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference, sponsored by 2600 New York City. Then I started going to other local conferences like Rubi-Con, which took place in and around the Detroit area. When that ended, I felt there was a hole that needed to be filled. There was a market that needed to be served, there were people that needed this event. So - foolishly, since I didn't know any better - I thought "Well, how hard can it be?" You know, I'd been to some really bad events before, and I'm like "I can do this just as well as anybody else. So let's make it happen, let's find the right people and see what we can do to do it differently."
00:52) Timothy> What has turned out to be your least favorite part of that process?
00:55) Froggy> The least favorite has always been trying to figure out how to pay for it. Money is not something I like to worry about a whole lot. I'd rather focus on the technology and the community aspects, and doing cool stuff. So figuring out how to pay for it has always been really hard. Because I want everybody who wants to attend to have the ability to attend.
01:18) Timothy> Well, on that front, what's the most satisfying aspect?
01:22) Froggy> Seeing people discover. I'd like to say at Notacon there's 2 or 3 talks, or things that you're into that you know about, and there's 6 to 12 things that you didn't even know existed that you want to learn about now. Seeing that process of discovery, or seeing that person who learned to solder for the firs time, or who wrote their first bit of demo code - seeing them experience that discovery process is fascinating, and it's really, really rewarding.
01:52) Timothy> You put a lot of time into this conference, can you quantify that at all?
01:56) Froggy> I've been on the plate for the past 1.5 years, so I've been doing this basically full-time. Over the past 1.5 months I've probably put in 200 hours of work. I get up in the morning, work on it, and go to sleep. But throughout the year I would say, I myself, probably put in 200-300 hours of work, and my wife puts in just as much time.
02:19) Timothy> You credit a lot of people obviously, in your brochure or program, with how much help they did. How do you divvy that work up - how do you delegate it?
02:30) Froggy> My management philosophy in general has always been to let people do what they do best, and get out of the way. So I try to run kind of an enlightened despotism where there is a strict hierarchy, but we decentralize it as much as possible, and empower people in their particular areas whether it's network or demo parties or locksport[?]. I give them the power and the trust to do what they do best, and they know that they can come back to me and say "Hey, here's what I need, here are the problems I'm having", and then I can work on that from there. So I try to sh
Good, two birds with one stone... 1. People 'forgetting' to install updates and leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities. 2. People complaining about the version numbers, as the version number is now something you should only encounter when you go looking for it.
I do wonder what security issues will pop up with this background service that has some privileges to deal with the installation, rather than Chrome's method of s/appdata/programfiles/, though.
However, the 'search result gets displayed in center' is much more interesting to me from a usability viewpoint.
I'd like to take this space to thank (since I never saw a donate button) White Alice0775 - whoever that is - for writing 'Find To Center' which had largely implemented this functionality for previous FireFox releases. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-to-center/ Your addon was well and truly appreciated.
Title: Chasing Federal Government IT Stories Description: Wayne Rash is a crusty old IT reporter who covers a lot of Federal Government actions, especially those that have to do with technology, for several well-known publications. How does he do it?
00:00) <TITLE> SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Wayne Rash is a senior tech reporter for eWeek and other well-known publications" appears over a view of the interviewee, Wayne Rash, sitting in a room cluttered with materials, with the picture fading from a grey scale still to a colored version.
00:05) <TITLE> A title appears superimposed over the image, reading "We asked Wayne: How do you find government-oriented IT stories? Specifically, what about Lightsquared vs all the GPS users in the world?"
00:05) Wayne> Well you get on a story like that to begin with by paying attention to what's going on in the FCC and in Congress - in other words: usually when a company decides to do something like what Lightsquared did, they send out a press release saying they're going to do it, or they somehow or other give information on it. In this particular case, the first piece of information I got was the announcement from the FCC that this was going to be on the docket.
00:36) Wayne> I'm on the press list. Anytime something happens, they send out a press release. In many cases just a paragraph long, but it tells you something happened. Then you've gotta go to the FCC's website and look for the filings, which can be an arcane practice in itself because they don't always make it easy to find.
00:55) Wayne> Yeah, it's good old-fashioned reporting. You have to know how to look and you have to know where to look. That's basically what I did; I went and looked for the initial history on the Lightsquared thing - which actually goes back several years. Then on the fact that the chairman was considering the request to be approved before the testing was done, I looked at everything they had there, and I looked at what Lightsquared said they were doing on their own website, to see what they said it was gonna be doing, as well. That's how I began to put the story together.
01:29) Wayne> In the case of something like Lightsquared, pretty much all of the documents are going to be public documents in one form or another, because.. before the FCC. While some details will be redacted - in this case: when they started doing the testing, the particular brands and types of GPS units were redacted, but the nature of the tests was not - and as a result you look through the public documents. But you also have to have a pretty good Rolodex so you know who to call, and who to ask about exactly what's going on there. This was made a little easier in this case because because there were some advocacy groups who wanted to make sure I knew about them, but it's like everything else: you can't trust the advocacy groups to tell you anything except what their position is; they're not necessarily going to give you a true picture of what the other side of the story is about.
02:24) Wayne> I've been doing this for about 20 years, I would say. Ever since I've been in D.C. and been doing journalism, I.. it's not so much what I would call investigative work as much I call it really, detail level reporting.
02:40) Robin> How did you get into it?
02:42) Wayne> I've been a journalist since I was in my teens. I've written for publications since then. I started writing about technology when technology started, showed up. Computers were not around when I was starting my journalism career. I was writing about city council meetings and police investigations and raids by the revenuers on evil stills in the mountains. There was a long time before I started having technology to write about.
Title: Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robotics Competition Description: They rock. They sock. They rebound. They SCORE! at the USFIRST.org Robotics Competition.
00:00) <TITLE> Scenes at the robotics competition are shown throughout the presentation. The SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robots Competition" before fading out.
00:03) Robert> Part pepperly[?], part battlebots and part rewards ceremony. The non-profit FIRST Robotics Competition allows kids to learn about technology in a hands-on way and have fun doing it. Founded by Dean Kamen, this year marks the 21st season of the competition. The FRC has grown from one event to almost 60, and from 28 teams to over 2,000.
00:05) Robert> Each team is made up of 10 to 25 high school aged kids, who work with a group of adult mentors and engineers. The teams get 6 weeks to build robots from a common set of parts. Once the build season is over, teams compete locally - with a chance to go to state or even national championships. The FRC is giving out almost $14M in prizes and scholarships this year, ranging from a one-time $500 prize to a 4-year full right scholarship.
01:41) Robert> This year's competition is called 'The Rebound Rumble'. Each team uses 3 remotely controlled robots, to score as many points in 2:15s matches possible. The match begins with a 15-second hybrid period, in which robots operate independently of driver input. During this period, 1 robot in each team may be controlled using a Microsoft Kinect. In the remaining 2 minutes, drivers score as many baskets as they can with their robots. The higher the basket, the greater the number of points. The match ends with robots attempting to balance on bridges located at the middle of the court.
02:15) Robert> Watching a bunch of 150-pound robots crash into each other and shoot baskets, is a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.
02:29> <TITLE> The SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robots Competition" fades back in.
It's pretty easy to determine that a game does not need to capture your keystrokes, and if a cool tool to change the wall paper needs "access to your Google account" then there's obviously something odd going on.
Certainly, but even when setting aside that people ignore this all too easily because they simply want the shiny, your examples are obvious.
What if a chat app wants access to the internet, your contacts, and your phone? Well the internet makes sense - can't very well expect an app that is intended for chatting to not have that connectivity.
Contacts also makes sense because in combination with the phone, it allows the app to send a text message if you have no internet connectivity or simply choose to use SMS instead of its internet-based chat functionality.
So you install the app, and the app sends all your text for datamining to China, all of your contacts to some company in Bulgaria, and sends a bunch of texts to expensive SMS service numbers. Oh, and it also lets you chat with people, so as far as you know, it's doing exactly as advertised.
This is no different on any other platform, of course. It may have been different in the early days of the iPhone, but I rather doubt that they still check each and every app before making them available and instead rely on exactly what the article says.. accountability.. you only get away with malware once unless you also manage to fool Apple into allowing you a new account. But to the end-user(s), the damage is already done anyway.
Title: Glitch Art Made by 'Weirdos Within the Weirdos' Description: notacon is 'an annual event that focuses on people who like to build, make, break and hack stuff,' and even in the notacon context the Glitch Artwork crowd stands out as slightly odd...
00:00) <TITLE> The tune from 'Twilight Zone' plays in the background as the video displays the following titles over a garbled video, with the 'notacon 9' logo appearing vertically on the left: There is nothing wrong with your monitor
Do not attempt to adjust the picture
You're seeing Glitch Art at Notacon 9 in Chicago, where brave hackers and artists explore the OUTER LIMITS of life, art, and technology www.notacon.org
In the bottom, having spiraled into view, is the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Your host: Slashdot Editor Timothy Lord"
00:10) <TITLE> A view of two men in casual clothing sitting in a conference room appears. The SlashdotTV logo bar identifies them as Jon Cates and Jake Elliott.
00:10) Jake> We first started interacting with notacon about 5 or 6 years ago. At that time they had a demo party component that was called Blockparty. But that doesn't run anymore, so now PixelJam [...]
00:24) <TITLE> The PixelJam logo fades in partially, then fades out again.
00:24) Jake> [...] is the demoparty that froggy created that replaced Blockparty after Blockparty kind of came in and brought that component to notacon - which has always been both a hacker conference and a kind of electronic art conference even before the demoparty thing was there. So that's what made it kind of like a really fertile ground for the kind of stuff that we do, which is, like, weirdo stuff, weird art and experimental music.
00:50) <TITLE> An insert picture fades of a man standing behind some hardware much like a DJ fades in and out of view. A small title within this picture identifies him as "Paul ``Froggy`` Schneider".
00:50) Jon> Yeah, and it's.. so Froggy had this concept of expanding the definition of a demo party and making it more inclusive and more expansive. As part of that, larger project of redefining what a demo party might mean, he asked us to be involved this year, in a more official capacity, to help organize this glitch artwork category - which is a category for, as Jake said, kind of 'weirdos within the weirdos'; Glitch art, bad code, bad bends, circuit breaking instead of circuit bending, all that sort of thing.
01;30) <TITLE> The video fades out and in fades stylized black/white portrait pictures of Jon.
01:33) <TITLE> The view changes to that of a young man standing in a room next to some hardware with other people in the background. The SlashdotTV logo bar identifies the young man as "Chicago-based artist David Musgrave".
01:33) David> I work with hacking electronics - mainly consoles, video game consoles. I'm here as a part of PixelJam, and I'm showing [...]
01:46) <TITLE> The camera pans toward the hardware David is talking about.
01:46) David> [...] some projects that I've worked on with a bent Playstation 1 and a bent Playstation 2 and a bent A5 Panasonic?) video mixer.
01:57) <TITLE> The view changes back to the initial view of David>
01:47) David> I'm a glitch artist, I guess. I have a background in abstract impressionist painting.
02:04) <TITLE> A graphic fades in partially, showing a 'glitchy' background that cycles through different colors and patterns, and two smaller inset images above each other, the top image depicting a broken document icon reading "GLI.TC/H" and the bottom image showing David and a piece of hardware with some text (illegible) below them.
02:04) David> This is my kind of response to that history of abstraction.
02:15) <TITLE> The aforementioned graphic fades out and the camera pans back around to the hardware and a projected video o
What muddies the waters is, of course, that they did actually collect statistics.
But I would imagine that the article wasn't written for statisticians, but rather for the layman. In which case, I know exactly what I'm talking about;)
But if you want to debate further, here's a few other words... theory (layman: hypothesis, science: no no no!), piracy (off the coast of Somalia vs copyright infringement), hardness (materials science).
I don't think I've actually watched an Olympic Games sports* event since I was 12.
Aside from the ridiculous rules, the insane costs, the fact that the country's representatives are not necessarily their best, the presence of 'team' sports, the use of pools (the competition form, not the bodies-of-water) in some sports events, etc. have long put me off watching.
* But I still watch the opening and closing ceremonies. I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to people who watch the SuperBowl for the commercials/halftime show, rather than for the football game.
4 of the levels of grey actually measured MORE of a power draw than pure white on the LCD monitor?
That's not so strange in electronics.
Take FETs - undriven they're fine, saturated they're fine, but the Ohmic region you typically (when using it as a switch) want to stay out of because the FET's just going to burn the excess off in the form of heat.
There's a bunch of reasons why some regions may take more energy than others. I wouldn't know what the reason is for the panel they used, somebody more intimately familiar with driver design and panel response would have to chime in.
I don't really see the problem with "not insignificant".
Just because something is "not insignificant" doesn't make it "significant".
Say I give you a papercut. You'll be in a "not insignificant" amount of pain.. in fact, you'll probably curse me all day long. But it's not exactly a "significant" amount of pain either.. it's not like you're curled up on the floor begging for somebody, anybody, to put you out of your misery or at least give you an OTC painkiller.
Perhaps a completely alternative term could have been used - suggestions? ( I used 'measurable' in another post - but while 0.01% might be measurable, it but would be insignificant. )
Seriously? Did anyone here actually believe this? The big power draw is from the backlight, which is still running even with black pixels.
Yes, anyone here actually believed this. I guess in your hurry to post, you misread the double-negative in the summary...
turns out there is a not insignificant difference
...that actually indicates that there is at least a measurable difference.
Note that their measurements apply specifically to the two models they tested, a CRT and a particular LCD. If 'white' means you have to drive the LCD, then white takes more energy. If 'black' means you have to drive the LCD, then black takes more energy. Most LCD drivers are standardized, though - and given the prevalence of lighter content, it may be worth it to the industry (even if only so they can use it in marketing) to switch the defaults.
is there a kickstarter like website that takes a smaller cut
Some, but not many.
Keep in mind that at best, you can only drop the platform's take. If you need to accept credit cards, PayPal, or whatever - they have their own charges. You can try to accept BitCoins, I suppose.
The exact takes per platform are sometimes difficult to decipher, depending on how you set up your project, whether or not it's successful, how people are paying (if a backer uses a throw-away credit card, the take is higher), etc. Plus they change them every once in a while without particular notice, so I stopped noting them down.
To be honest, though, you'd have better success at KickStarter and let them take their ~5%, unless you've got a very good publicity campaign to point people to your alternative of choice.
Title: Help Al Lowe Bring Back Leisure Suit Larry!" Description: 80s video game character Larry Laffer is stuck in the Land of the Lounge Lizards and needs your help to return.
00:00) <TITLE> The SlashdotTV logo bar with "Leisure Suit Larry Comes Again!" scrolling from right to left appears over a title graphic in the style of the old Leisure Suit Larry games reading "Leisure Suit Larry in The Land of the Lounge Lizards" while in the background the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune plays.
00:10) <TITLE> A picture-in-picture insert of Al Lowe giving his interview is shown in the bottom right corner over a view of a Leisure Suit Larry game setting. "Your Host: Al Lowe" scrolls into the SlashdotTV logo bar. Throughout the interview, the background changes between various Leisure Suit Larry game settings and the picture-in-picture view of Al Lowe disappears, re-appears, zooms in, zooms out, and other shenanigans appear.
00:11) Al> About a year ago Paul Trowe gave me a call and said "I think I can obtain the rights to Leisure Suit Larry. [...]
00:19) <TITLE> A static view of Paul Trowe fades in and out of the picture-in-picture view while the SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Paul Trowe is the primary instigator of ReplayGames.com"
00:19) Al> [...] Would you be interested in helping me do a remake?" and I said "Absolutely!" In the last.. oh, gosh.. it took him probably a year to obtain the rights, and then a period of months to seek funding. When Tim Schafer [...]
00:19) <TITLE> The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Tim Shafer of Double Fine did an amazing KickStarter campaign".
00:19) Al> [...] blazed a trail for the rest of us back in - when was it, February or March - he made it obvious that crowdsourcing was the way to go with this thing. So we jumped on KickStarter, we developed a.. I think a funny video, it's kind of pleasant.. and asked people for money and we've been absolutely astounded with the response we've gotten - a real kick.
01:08) Al> I think we've done a lot of creative - shall I say - reward levels. We've got a bunch of interesting stuff, and in the true spirit of Leisure Suit Larry; a little on the naughty side, but not obscene. We're just havin' a ball with this.
01:33) <TITLE> The background changes to a static screenshot of the "Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!" KickStarter project appears. The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Donation figures as of Apr. 10, 2012". The figures* referred to are: 5 updates 6,411 backers 872 comments $267,723 pledged of $500,00 goal.
01:33) Al> The way KickStarter works is: you pledge money at whatever level you wish to contribute, and then if [...]
01:40) <TITLE> The background changes to Leisure Suit Larry game settings again.
01:40) Al> [...] the campaign doesn't make its goal, nobody gets charged anything; we get nothing, and you pay nothing.
01:48) Al> We're giving people a chance to actually be in the game, to put an image of themselves in the game. In fact, if you remember Leisure Suit Larry, there was always a friendly dog that, if you stopped moving for too long, the dog would show up [...]
02:06) <TITLE> The background changes to a view of the scene described.
02:06) Al> [...] and humiliate you in yet another way; we're even giving you a chance to have your dog immortalized in the new version of the game *laughs*
02:16) <TITLE> The background music changes to that of a live version of the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune, played by Axes Denied.
02:26) Al> We need your support. If you ever played Larry and maybe didn't pay for it back then, now that you've got money, you've got a job, and you can afford it: come and help us - give a donation - give us a little donation on KickStarter.com [...]
How about we hold people liable when we discover they actually violate a particular copyright
Because then there will still be outrage? Or did we already forget about Capitol v. Thomas? She was actually being held liable.
But how dare the big companies come down on an individual, whose only 'crime' was to promote their dreck by sharing it with others? And how dare they file for millions, thousands, or even hundreds when that dreck costs $0.99 a piece in the iTunes store, and in reality the real damages are negligible! How dare they hold her liable for anything more than a token amount of $1?
Let's be honest, no matter which way the copyright holders will try to actually enforce their copyright, they're just going to get flack for it.
I even argued that copyright should be done away with (see earlier comment) and instead distribution rights should be improved and more thoroughly enforced, and I still believe that.
But distribution is what the problem in that case is (although a large part of that is whether 'making available' constitutes 'distribution' - i.e. whether my telling you that I have product X available makes me a distributor of product X, even if you decline the offer - for the purposes of jury instruction), so it wouldn't help and people would still cry foul.
Title: The Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Mile Description: An amazing variety of people turned out to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery's last landing ever. Slashdot's Timothy Lord talked with some of them.
[00:00] <TITLE> The SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Thousands of people watched space shuttle Discovery's last flight. Timothy Lord talked with a few of them" over a view of the space shuttle Discovery on the back of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (an extensively modified Boeing 747) as it descends with people whooping and applauding.
[00:16] <TITLE> Throughout the interview various interviewees appear, some with name indicated in a SlashdotTV logo bar, some without. Those without will be indicated by descriptive title.
[00:16] Patsy and Robert Davis, brother and Sister> Robert> We're from Fairfax, Virginia. Patsy> And where'd you get your shirt? Robert> I got my shirt [at] Kennedy Space Center years ago when the Discovery took off. Patsy> And my shirt is.. now; the Discovery arriving here in D.C.
[00:35] Young girl in front of van> It was really cool.
[00:37] Young boy in front of van> It was really big.
[00:38] Man interviewing a dog, pictured> Are you gonna bark at that airplane?
[00:40] Timothy> Had you seen other launches before?
[00:41] Man with beard and older man in hat in front of a red van> Man> Never been to a launch. Man> This is history *laughs* Older man> I've been to ones at Cape Kennedy, a couple of 'm. Older man> Saw the space shuttle blow up. Older man> You know, I was in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the time and, about, I guess about a minute it took off - it was over the horizon for most - took about a minute before we saw it comin' up.
[01:03] Francis and Nathan Dorsey> Nathan> We're here to see - what I was amazingly enough just explaining to him when you came up - shuttle history. Nathan> This is, for me, the last time we're gonna see the shuttle fly - so to speak - so I wanted him to be a part of that. Nathan> I've been a space buff since I was.. before his age, actually.. and I've seen several launches - no landings, unfortunately. Nathan> I followed the space program since the Mercury days.
[01:32] <TITLE> The SlashdotTV logo bar appears, reading "All the way from Tokyo, just to see the last space shuttle landing".
[01:32] Timothy> Could you tell us your name, and how to spell it?
[01:35] Chie> Chie
[01:38] Timothy> And where did you come from today?
[01:40] Chie> From Japan, Tokyo.
[01:43] Man in cap with family> Best birthday ever!
[01:45] Man in sunglasses> Well, it flew right over us, had my daughters on my shoulders, and we couldn't really get a picture - but it was pretty cool, I would say!
[01:55] Woman with glasses> It went right over our heads as we were stuck on the highway in traffic.
[01:58] Young man in sunglasses> We're from Tucson, Arizona, coming here to see the museum and then we saw it fly right over our heads as we were sitting on the freeway there.
[02:05] Boy in white shirt> Awesome, but like the true definition of 'awesome', and not the overused version, I guess. You know, it flew directly over our heads and it's pretty awe-inspiring to see a space shuttle on a 747 flying right above you.
[02:19] Woman with family in a car> I pulled my kids out of school today, because I believe this is history in the making, and it's science. When Discovery was supposed to be launched back in January I was going to pull my kids out of school, make a nice road trip to Florida, but it was cancelled because of weather. then they rescheduled it for February, so I was gonna drive 'm again, but it was cancelled. Then it went off in March, but I couldn't pull my kids out of school 3 times to road trip to Florida, so this was the next best thing -
Title: All Hands Active in Ann Arbor is a Makerspace for both Adults and Kids Description: This is an interview with All Hands Active leader Josh Williams. He shows us a project the group is doing in conjunction with Eastern Michigan University's Bright Futures Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Communities.
[00:00] <TITLE> "Slashdot Visits the All Hands Active Makerspace in Ann Arbor, Michigan" appears over a view the interviewer, "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom" as noted in the SlashdotTV logo bar.
[00:01] Rob> The folks at All Hands Active in Ann Arbor teach kids about science and technology through a variety of fun and interesting projects. Today they're gonna be building crossbows out of cardboard with the help of a laser cutter.
[00:12] <TITLE> A view of Josh Williams at the Makerspace with various hardware equipment in the background appears, with the Slashdot TV logo bar reading "Josh Williams @ All Hands Active 'Ann Arbor's Makerspace'". Throughout the interview, generic shots of people working on the aforementioned DIY crossbow are seen mixed in with this base shot.
[00:12] Josh> I'm Josh Williams and we're at All Hands Active at 525 East Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
[00:18] Rob> And what do you do here?
[00:20] Josh> A bunch of things. It's always a fun - kind of complicated - question, but basically we give people access to resources, information, tools and other people. We've got sewing machines, laser cutters, 3D printers and then just a standard soup of your normal tools: hammers, screwdrivers, drill presses - things like that.
[00:38] Rob> And what are we doing today?
[00:40] Josh> Today we're building laser-cut cardboard crossbows. We're using Inkscape - open source image editing software - combined with a full spectrum laser cutter to cut out pieces of cardboard in the shape of a crossbow. From there we use a combination of dowel rods, rubber bands, duct tape, hot glue to put those pieces together and build a simple - kind of nerf gun style - crossbow that shoots about 10 to 40 feet, depending on the tension of the rubber band.
[01:05] Rob> Can you just go through the steps to build the crossbow?
[01:09] Josh> Basically, the first step is designing in Inkscape the basic layout. We provide people with a simple template ink Inkscape, from there they modify things; This is a unicorn from a Deviant Art user - they're pretty awesome, they've got a bunch of really cool line art. We added that to the template. We then took that image file, loaded up on RetinaEngrave over here, and that allows you to change the power settings and speed settings. So we've got slightly different settings for cutting out the cardboard versus etching out the actual unicorn drawing. Once you've done that, you've got roughly 5 pieces here, 5 sections of cardboard, you sandwich them together, leaving a little bit of space for the trigger to move. Using just a standard wine cork, we're using a piece of metal out of a clothes hanger, and drinking straws and a rubber band and a dowel rod. So this is all stuff that you can get at a local hardware store, just things that you might have sitting around the house. Altogether the actual parts for this is probably less than a dollar, which is really, really awesome. You don't have to have a laser cutter to build this; we just.. any excuse to use a laser cutter is a good excuse.
[02:09] Rob> Sure!
[02:10] Josh> From there you attach the rubber bands, the dowel rod - the dowel rod just goes through a quarter inch hole here, tie rubber bands around, pull the rubber band back, pull the trigger, rubber band shoots forward, and you have a bolt here that launches - and that's usually just made out of a slightly larger drinking straw, slightly bigger dowel rod, which fit conveniently well inside pencil sharpe
In no particular order (actually, alphabetical, but in no order of preference.. except for that of the alphabet.. nnngh!)
boostive ckie crowdbackers crowdfunder eightbitfunding (games, not really applicable to your project) fundageek fundit fundry indiegogo investedin kickstarter peerbackers pleasefundus pledgie pozible quirky rockethub sponsorcraft sponsume ulule wefund
There's more, but most of them are very 'fund-my-life' or are platforms that are quite deadish.
And if you want to roll your own, give IgnitionDeck (wordpress plugin) a shot.
KickStarter may be the most popular, but IndieGoGo gets a good chunk of traffic as well. That would be my second choice.
I didn't find any information on your idea at your homepage, but if you'd still be interested in making it, make sure you put in shameless plugs in your comments.
Not allowing comments is what would allow projects like projektor to just get dozens of iThing fans to pledge for it without realizing they're being had.
There should be a mechanism to deal with abusive comments, though - but that requires somebody at KickStarter to actually work through submissions in that mechanism, and assumes it won't get abused by people going "I have what I believe is a unique product, but this commenter posted everybody to an e-bay auction that sells something similar for half the price and it's making people drop their pledges - whaaa".
It's easy for an individual with enough time on their hands to create multiple accounts and spam away.
If the person was using the link to send the project creator a message directly, yes. Personally I don't see why that link even exists.
But all comments on the comment pages and in project updates can only be placed by backers. You can only become a backer by pledging at least $1. Payment is processed through Amazon, which uses credit cards.
Now, would this really deter a determined stalker? No, probably not. But at some point, buying $10 throw-away credit cards each time you'd get booted off has got to become tedious, and expensive, at some point and certainly puts up a barrier.
Regardless, KickStarter is probably in a difficult position with this - they already can't check every single project in detail (the ones that collect $3M get a one-on-one webcam session, of course), so imagine if they'd have to verify claims about messages they get.
That said - I highly doubt there was so much 'spam' that KickStarter had to intervene. Their system handles hundreds if not thousands of messages, status updates, pledges, etc. etc. every hour.
It still bothers me that I can't identify the first one (not the very beginning intro bit - I've never heard that before)... but that other piece.. "one two, one two, one two".. brass sections.. I know it, but can I name it? Nope. Google search for the aforementioned just yields a bunch of rap and R&B, while audio identification services failed; too short of a sample, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
I had an argument with somebody with a very pro-liberty (even if at the indirect cost of others) stance.
When asked if he believed that companies should be allowed to ban African-Americans from doing business with them, his reply was along the lines that indeed they should be allowed to, and in a free market there would simply be some other store that welcomes them, that's how the free marker is supposed to work, and the government should butt out of businesses' decisions.
When asked what happens when there is no viable competition - say for a drug that can save lives but which is administered in private clinics so as to keep competing pharmaceuticals from gaining direct access to the drug - his reply was that he would then just grab a gun, go to that clinic, and get some of that drug himself and woe the person who would get in his way.
Rather than accept that governments may have to regulate some aspects of life and business for a healthy society, which in the latter case would mean no company could limit a drug via discrimination*, he would resort to violence.
In your scenario, he would choose homelessness...at least from the comfort of his recliner. Some people are just wired that way, I guess.
( * I know some drugs are so ridiculously expensive that one may as well recognize their availability as being subject to class discrimination. )
There used to be a great document at http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html that detailed the situation in 2007 for the UK. Thankfully, there's archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20100702205054/http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html
Adobe even replied to some inquiries, and you can see some of their excuses in:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100526120202/http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe_spin.html
The UK, just as Australia and Europe, were - and still are (at one point it was even cheaper to get the boxed version than to get the download version) - basically being screwed over (and good luck checking that - their various international websites make it a pain in the ass to compare pricing) and the only reason for this is that the market will pay anyway.
Why? Because 1. It's Adobe's products. If you have an interest in them, you're probably in an industry where you have little choice, so you'd probably pay twice the price and limit yourself to some grumbling on twitter, and 2. you probably earn the price of these products back on just a handful of jobs, after which you'd only have to worry about the upgrade pricing.
It's one market I wouldn't mind Apple upsetting, not one bit.
Yes, that may well have been...
Source? TFA, which mentions the same researcher was involved with that finding.
When you're done scanning it could you post the result? PNG preferred, but JPEG at high quality (disable chroma subsampling, please - it's so harsh on subpixel-rendered fonts) would be acceptable as well.
Title: Paul 'Froggy' Schneider Talks About the Excitement of Putting a Hacker Conference Together
Description: Froggy has organized the annual notacon hacker event for nine years and, even though the 2012 notacon just ended, is already hard at work planning notacon 10. If you ever plan to put together an IT get-together or conference, you should watch this video first.
00:00) <TITLE>
A still view of the interviewee, Paul 'Froggy' Schneider' appears in greyscale and fades into color video as the SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Paul 'Froggy' Schneider talks about the thrills and chills of putting together the Notacon conference". Below the logo bar is the Notacon web address: www.notacon.org
00:05) Timothy>
So, Froggy, congratulations on a fun conference.
00:07) Froggy>
Thank you very much!
00:07.5) Timothy>
How did you get into running a hackercon?
00:10) Froggy>
Well, I got into attending hackercons in 2000 when I attended my first Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference, sponsored by 2600 New York City.
Then I started going to other local conferences like Rubi-Con, which took place in and around the Detroit area.
When that ended, I felt there was a hole that needed to be filled.
There was a market that needed to be served, there were people that needed this event.
So - foolishly, since I didn't know any better - I thought "Well, how hard can it be?"
You know, I'd been to some really bad events before, and I'm like "I can do this just as well as anybody else. So let's make it happen, let's find the right people and see what we can do to do it differently."
00:52) Timothy>
What has turned out to be your least favorite part of that process?
00:55) Froggy>
The least favorite has always been trying to figure out how to pay for it.
Money is not something I like to worry about a whole lot.
I'd rather focus on the technology and the community aspects, and doing cool stuff.
So figuring out how to pay for it has always been really hard.
Because I want everybody who wants to attend to have the ability to attend.
01:18) Timothy>
Well, on that front, what's the most satisfying aspect?
01:22) Froggy>
Seeing people discover.
I'd like to say at Notacon there's 2 or 3 talks, or things that you're into that you know about, and there's 6 to 12 things that you didn't even know existed that you want to learn about now.
Seeing that process of discovery, or seeing that person who learned to solder for the firs time, or who wrote their first bit of demo code - seeing them experience that discovery process is fascinating, and it's really, really rewarding.
01:52) Timothy>
You put a lot of time into this conference, can you quantify that at all?
01:56) Froggy>
I've been on the plate for the past 1.5 years, so I've been doing this basically full-time.
Over the past 1.5 months I've probably put in 200 hours of work.
I get up in the morning, work on it, and go to sleep.
But throughout the year I would say, I myself, probably put in 200-300 hours of work, and my wife puts in just as much time.
02:19) Timothy>
You credit a lot of people obviously, in your brochure or program, with how much help they did.
How do you divvy that work up - how do you delegate it?
02:30) Froggy>
My management philosophy in general has always been to let people do what they do best, and get out of the way.
So I try to run kind of an enlightened despotism where there is a strict hierarchy, but we decentralize it as much as possible, and empower people in their particular areas whether it's network or demo parties or locksport[?].
I give them the power and the trust to do what they do best, and they know that they can come back to me and say "Hey, here's what I need, here are the problems I'm having", and then I can work on that from there.
So I try to sh
Good, two birds with one stone...
1. People 'forgetting' to install updates and leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities.
2. People complaining about the version numbers, as the version number is now something you should only encounter when you go looking for it.
I do wonder what security issues will pop up with this background service that has some privileges to deal with the installation, rather than Chrome's method of s/appdata/programfiles/, though.
However, the 'search result gets displayed in center' is much more interesting to me from a usability viewpoint.
I'd like to take this space to thank (since I never saw a donate button) White Alice0775 - whoever that is - for writing 'Find To Center' which had largely implemented this functionality for previous FireFox releases.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-to-center/
Your addon was well and truly appreciated.
Title: Chasing Federal Government IT Stories
Description: Wayne Rash is a crusty old IT reporter who covers a lot of Federal Government actions, especially those that have to do with technology, for several well-known publications. How does he do it?
00:00) <TITLE>
SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Wayne Rash is a senior tech reporter for eWeek and other well-known publications" appears over a view of the interviewee, Wayne Rash, sitting in a room cluttered with materials, with the picture fading from a grey scale still to a colored version.
00:05) <TITLE>
A title appears superimposed over the image, reading "We asked Wayne: How do you find government-oriented IT stories? Specifically, what about Lightsquared vs all the GPS users in the world?"
00:05) Wayne>
Well you get on a story like that to begin with by paying attention to what's going on in the FCC and in Congress - in other words: usually when a company decides to do something like what Lightsquared did, they send out a press release saying they're going to do it, or they somehow or other give information on it.
In this particular case, the first piece of information I got was the announcement from the FCC that this was going to be on the docket.
00:36) Wayne>
I'm on the press list.
Anytime something happens, they send out a press release.
In many cases just a paragraph long, but it tells you something happened.
Then you've gotta go to the FCC's website and look for the filings, which can be an arcane practice in itself because they don't always make it easy to find.
00:55) Wayne>
Yeah, it's good old-fashioned reporting.
You have to know how to look and you have to know where to look.
That's basically what I did; I went and looked for the initial history on the Lightsquared thing - which actually goes back several years.
Then on the fact that the chairman was considering the request to be approved before the testing was done, I looked at everything they had there, and I looked at what Lightsquared said they were doing on their own website, to see what they said it was gonna be doing, as well.
That's how I began to put the story together.
01:29) Wayne>
In the case of something like Lightsquared, pretty much all of the documents are going to be public documents in one form or another, because.. before the FCC.
While some details will be redacted - in this case: when they started doing the testing, the particular brands and types of GPS units were redacted, but the nature of the tests was not - and as a result you look through the public documents.
But you also have to have a pretty good Rolodex so you know who to call, and who to ask about exactly what's going on there.
This was made a little easier in this case because because there were some advocacy groups who wanted to make sure I knew about them, but it's like everything else: you can't trust the advocacy groups to tell you anything except what their position is; they're not necessarily going to give you a true picture of what the other side of the story is about.
02:24) Wayne>
I've been doing this for about 20 years, I would say.
Ever since I've been in D.C. and been doing journalism, I.. it's not so much what I would call investigative work as much I call it really, detail level reporting.
02:40) Robin>
How did you get into it?
02:42) Wayne>
I've been a journalist since I was in my teens.
I've written for publications since then.
I started writing about technology when technology started, showed up.
Computers were not around when I was starting my journalism career.
I was writing about city council meetings and police investigations and raids by the revenuers on evil stills in the mountains.
There was a long time before I started having technology to write about.
03:15) Robin>
That's an interesting question;
Title: Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robotics Competition
Description: They rock. They sock. They rebound. They SCORE! at the USFIRST.org Robotics Competition.
00:00) <TITLE>
Scenes at the robotics competition are shown throughout the presentation.
The SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robots Competition" before fading out.
00:03) Robert>
Part pepperly[?], part battlebots and part rewards ceremony.
The non-profit FIRST Robotics Competition allows kids to learn about technology in a hands-on way and have fun doing it.
Founded by Dean Kamen, this year marks the 21st season of the competition.
The FRC has grown from one event to almost 60, and from 28 teams to over 2,000.
00:05) Robert>
Each team is made up of 10 to 25 high school aged kids, who work with a group of adult mentors and engineers.
The teams get 6 weeks to build robots from a common set of parts.
Once the build season is over, teams compete locally - with a chance to go to state or even national championships.
The FRC is giving out almost $14M in prizes and scholarships this year, ranging from a one-time $500 prize to a 4-year full right scholarship.
01:41) Robert>
This year's competition is called 'The Rebound Rumble'.
Each team uses 3 remotely controlled robots, to score as many points in 2:15s matches possible.
The match begins with a 15-second hybrid period, in which robots operate independently of driver input.
During this period, 1 robot in each team may be controlled using a Microsoft Kinect.
In the remaining 2 minutes, drivers score as many baskets as they can with their robots.
The higher the basket, the greater the number of points.
The match ends with robots attempting to balance on bridges located at the middle of the court.
02:15) Robert>
Watching a bunch of 150-pound robots crash into each other and shoot baskets, is a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.
02:29> <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Robert 'samzenpus' Rozeboom Takes You to the Michigan FIRST Robots Competition" fades back in.
Certainly, but even when setting aside that people ignore this all too easily because they simply want the shiny, your examples are obvious.
What if a chat app wants access to the internet, your contacts, and your phone?
Well the internet makes sense - can't very well expect an app that is intended for chatting to not have that connectivity.
Contacts also makes sense because in combination with the phone, it allows the app to send a text message if you have no internet connectivity or simply choose to use SMS instead of its internet-based chat functionality.
So you install the app, and the app sends all your text for datamining to China, all of your contacts to some company in Bulgaria, and sends a bunch of texts to expensive SMS service numbers.
Oh, and it also lets you chat with people, so as far as you know, it's doing exactly as advertised.
This is no different on any other platform, of course. It may have been different in the early days of the iPhone, but I rather doubt that they still check each and every app before making them available and instead rely on exactly what the article says.. accountability.. you only get away with malware once unless you also manage to fool Apple into allowing you a new account. But to the end-user(s), the damage is already done anyway.
Title: Glitch Art Made by 'Weirdos Within the Weirdos'
Description: notacon is 'an annual event that focuses on people who like to build, make, break and hack stuff,' and even in the notacon context the Glitch Artwork crowd stands out as slightly odd...
00:00) <TITLE>
The tune from 'Twilight Zone' plays in the background as the video displays the following titles over a garbled video, with the 'notacon 9' logo appearing vertically on the left:
There is nothing wrong with your monitor
Do not attempt to adjust the picture
You're seeing Glitch Art at Notacon 9 in Chicago, where brave hackers and artists explore the OUTER LIMITS of life, art, and technology
www.notacon.org
In the bottom, having spiraled into view, is the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Your host: Slashdot Editor Timothy Lord"
00:10) <TITLE>
A view of two men in casual clothing sitting in a conference room appears. The SlashdotTV logo bar identifies them as Jon Cates and Jake Elliott.
00:10) Jake>
We first started interacting with notacon about 5 or 6 years ago.
At that time they had a demo party component that was called Blockparty.
But that doesn't run anymore, so now PixelJam [...]
00:24) <TITLE>
The PixelJam logo fades in partially, then fades out again.
00:24) Jake>
[...] is the demoparty that froggy created that replaced Blockparty after Blockparty kind of came in and brought that component to notacon - which has always been both a hacker conference and a kind of electronic art conference even before the demoparty thing was there.
So that's what made it kind of like a really fertile ground for the kind of stuff that we do, which is, like, weirdo stuff, weird art and experimental music.
00:50) <TITLE>
An insert picture fades of a man standing behind some hardware much like a DJ fades in and out of view. A small title within this picture identifies him as "Paul ``Froggy`` Schneider".
00:50) Jon>
Yeah, and it's.. so Froggy had this concept of expanding the definition of a demo party and making it more inclusive and more expansive.
As part of that, larger project of redefining what a demo party might mean, he asked us to be involved this year, in a more official capacity, to help organize this glitch artwork category - which is a category for, as Jake said, kind of 'weirdos within the weirdos';
Glitch art, bad code, bad bends, circuit breaking instead of circuit bending, all that sort of thing.
01;30) <TITLE>
The video fades out and in fades stylized black/white portrait pictures of Jon.
01:33) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a young man standing in a room next to some hardware with other people in the background. The SlashdotTV logo bar identifies the young man as "Chicago-based artist David Musgrave".
01:33) David>
I work with hacking electronics - mainly consoles, video game consoles.
I'm here as a part of PixelJam, and I'm showing [...]
01:46) <TITLE>
The camera pans toward the hardware David is talking about.
01:46) David>
[...] some projects that I've worked on with a bent Playstation 1 and a bent Playstation 2 and a bent A5 Panasonic?) video mixer.
01:57) <TITLE>
The view changes back to the initial view of David>
01:47) David>
I'm a glitch artist, I guess.
I have a background in abstract impressionist painting.
02:04) <TITLE>
A graphic fades in partially, showing a 'glitchy' background that cycles through different colors and patterns, and two smaller inset images above each other, the top image depicting a broken document icon reading "GLI.TC/H" and the bottom image showing David and a piece of hardware with some text (illegible) below them.
02:04) David>
This is my kind of response to that history of abstraction.
02:15) <TITLE>
The aforementioned graphic fades out and the camera pans back around to the hardware and a projected video o
I think that may be subject to the intended audience.
Looking at what various definitions make of 'significant'.. ..its use in the article, and my use, seem appropriate.
https://www.google.com/search?q=significant&tbs=dfn:1
What muddies the waters is, of course, that they did actually collect statistics.
But I would imagine that the article wasn't written for statisticians, but rather for the layman. In which case, I know exactly what I'm talking about ;)
But if you want to debate further, here's a few other words... theory (layman: hypothesis, science: no no no!), piracy (off the coast of Somalia vs copyright infringement), hardness (materials science).
I don't think I've actually watched an Olympic Games sports* event since I was 12.
Aside from the ridiculous rules, the insane costs, the fact that the country's representatives are not necessarily their best, the presence of 'team' sports, the use of pools (the competition form, not the bodies-of-water) in some sports events, etc. have long put me off watching.
* But I still watch the opening and closing ceremonies.
I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to people who watch the SuperBowl for the commercials/halftime show, rather than for the football game.
That's not so strange in electronics.
Take FETs - undriven they're fine, saturated they're fine, but the Ohmic region you typically (when using it as a switch) want to stay out of because the FET's just going to burn the excess off in the form of heat.
There's a bunch of reasons why some regions may take more energy than others. I wouldn't know what the reason is for the panel they used, somebody more intimately familiar with driver design and panel response would have to chime in.
I don't really see the problem with "not insignificant".
Just because something is "not insignificant" doesn't make it "significant".
Say I give you a papercut. You'll be in a "not insignificant" amount of pain.. in fact, you'll probably curse me all day long.
But it's not exactly a "significant" amount of pain either.. it's not like you're curled up on the floor begging for somebody, anybody, to put you out of your misery or at least give you an OTC painkiller.
Perhaps a completely alternative term could have been used - suggestions?
( I used 'measurable' in another post - but while 0.01% might be measurable, it but would be insignificant. )
Yes, anyone here actually believed this. I guess in your hurry to post, you misread the double-negative in the summary...
Note that their measurements apply specifically to the two models they tested, a CRT and a particular LCD.
If 'white' means you have to drive the LCD, then white takes more energy. If 'black' means you have to drive the LCD, then black takes more energy. Most LCD drivers are standardized, though - and given the prevalence of lighter content, it may be worth it to the industry (even if only so they can use it in marketing) to switch the defaults.
Some, but not many.
Keep in mind that at best, you can only drop the platform's take. If you need to accept credit cards, PayPal, or whatever - they have their own charges. You can try to accept BitCoins, I suppose.
The exact takes per platform are sometimes difficult to decipher, depending on how you set up your project, whether or not it's successful, how people are paying (if a backer uses a throw-away credit card, the take is higher), etc. Plus they change them every once in a while without particular notice, so I stopped noting them down.
I won't copy/paste my earlier post from another story, just follow the link for some alternative platform names:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2786853&cid=39685171
To be honest, though, you'd have better success at KickStarter and let them take their ~5%, unless you've got a very good publicity campaign to point people to your alternative of choice.
Title: Help Al Lowe Bring Back Leisure Suit Larry!"
Description: 80s video game character Larry Laffer is stuck in the Land of the Lounge Lizards and needs your help to return.
00:00) <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar with "Leisure Suit Larry Comes Again!" scrolling from right to left appears over a title graphic in the style of the old Leisure Suit Larry games reading "Leisure Suit Larry in The Land of the Lounge Lizards" while in the background the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune plays.
00:10) <TITLE>
A picture-in-picture insert of Al Lowe giving his interview is shown in the bottom right corner over a view of a Leisure Suit Larry game setting.
"Your Host: Al Lowe" scrolls into the SlashdotTV logo bar.
Throughout the interview, the background changes between various Leisure Suit Larry game settings and the picture-in-picture view of Al Lowe disappears, re-appears, zooms in, zooms out, and other shenanigans appear.
00:11) Al>
About a year ago Paul Trowe gave me a call and said "I think I can obtain the rights to Leisure Suit Larry. [...]
00:19) <TITLE>
A static view of Paul Trowe fades in and out of the picture-in-picture view while the SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Paul Trowe is the primary instigator of ReplayGames.com"
00:19) Al>
[...] Would you be interested in helping me do a remake?" and I said "Absolutely!"
In the last.. oh, gosh.. it took him probably a year to obtain the rights, and then a period of months to seek funding.
When Tim Schafer [...]
00:19) <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Tim Shafer of Double Fine did an amazing KickStarter campaign".
00:19) Al>
[...] blazed a trail for the rest of us back in - when was it, February or March - he made it obvious that crowdsourcing was the way to go with this thing.
So we jumped on KickStarter, we developed a.. I think a funny video, it's kind of pleasant.. and asked people for money and we've been absolutely astounded with the response we've gotten - a real kick.
01:08) Al>
I think we've done a lot of creative - shall I say - reward levels.
We've got a bunch of interesting stuff, and in the true spirit of Leisure Suit Larry; a little on the naughty side, but not obscene.
We're just havin' a ball with this.
01:33) <TITLE>
The background changes to a static screenshot of the "Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!" KickStarter project appears.
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Donation figures as of Apr. 10, 2012".
The figures* referred to are:
5 updates
6,411 backers
872 comments
$267,723 pledged of $500,00 goal.
01:33) Al>
The way KickStarter works is: you pledge money at whatever level you wish to contribute, and then if [...]
01:40) <TITLE>
The background changes to Leisure Suit Larry game settings again.
01:40) Al>
[...] the campaign doesn't make its goal, nobody gets charged anything; we get nothing, and you pay nothing.
01:48) Al>
We're giving people a chance to actually be in the game, to put an image of themselves in the game.
In fact, if you remember Leisure Suit Larry, there was always a friendly dog that, if you stopped moving for too long, the dog would show up [...]
02:06) <TITLE>
The background changes to a view of the scene described.
02:06) Al>
[...] and humiliate you in yet another way; we're even giving you a chance to have your dog immortalized in the new version of the game *laughs*
02:16) <TITLE>
The background music changes to that of a live version of the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune, played by Axes Denied.
02:26) Al>
We need your support.
If you ever played Larry and maybe didn't pay for it back then, now that you've got money, you've got a job, and you can afford it: come and help us - give a donation - give us a little donation on KickStarter.com [...]
02:45) <TITL
Because then there will still be outrage? Or did we already forget about Capitol v. Thomas?
She was actually being held liable.
But how dare the big companies come down on an individual, whose only 'crime' was to promote their dreck by sharing it with others?
And how dare they file for millions, thousands, or even hundreds when that dreck costs $0.99 a piece in the iTunes store, and in reality the real damages are negligible!
How dare they hold her liable for anything more than a token amount of $1?
Let's be honest, no matter which way the copyright holders will try to actually enforce their copyright, they're just going to get flack for it.
I even argued that copyright should be done away with (see earlier comment) and instead distribution rights should be improved and more thoroughly enforced, and I still believe that.
But distribution is what the problem in that case is (although a large part of that is whether 'making available' constitutes 'distribution' - i.e. whether my telling you that I have product X available makes me a distributor of product X, even if you decline the offer - for the purposes of jury instruction), so it wouldn't help and people would still cry foul.
Title: The Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Mile
Description: An amazing variety of people turned out to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery's last landing ever. Slashdot's Timothy Lord talked with some of them.
[00:00] <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Thousands of people watched space shuttle Discovery's last flight. Timothy Lord talked with a few of them" over a view of the space shuttle Discovery on the back of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (an extensively modified Boeing 747) as it descends with people whooping and applauding.
[00:16] <TITLE>
Throughout the interview various interviewees appear, some with name indicated in a SlashdotTV logo bar, some without.
Those without will be indicated by descriptive title.
[00:16] Patsy and Robert Davis, brother and Sister>
Robert> We're from Fairfax, Virginia.
Patsy> And where'd you get your shirt?
Robert> I got my shirt [at] Kennedy Space Center years ago when the Discovery took off.
Patsy> And my shirt is.. now; the Discovery arriving here in D.C.
[00:35] Young girl in front of van>
It was really cool.
[00:37] Young boy in front of van>
It was really big.
[00:38] Man interviewing a dog, pictured>
Are you gonna bark at that airplane?
[00:40] Timothy>
Had you seen other launches before?
[00:41] Man with beard and older man in hat in front of a red van>
Man> Never been to a launch.
Man> This is history *laughs*
Older man> I've been to ones at Cape Kennedy, a couple of 'm.
Older man> Saw the space shuttle blow up.
Older man> You know, I was in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the time and, about, I guess about a minute it took off - it was over the horizon for most - took about a minute before we saw it comin' up.
[01:03] Francis and Nathan Dorsey>
Nathan> We're here to see - what I was amazingly enough just explaining to him when you came up - shuttle history.
Nathan> This is, for me, the last time we're gonna see the shuttle fly - so to speak - so I wanted him to be a part of that.
Nathan> I've been a space buff since I was.. before his age, actually.. and I've seen several launches - no landings, unfortunately.
Nathan> I followed the space program since the Mercury days.
[01:32] <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar appears, reading "All the way from Tokyo, just to see the last space shuttle landing".
[01:32] Timothy>
Could you tell us your name, and how to spell it?
[01:35] Chie>
Chie
[01:38] Timothy>
And where did you come from today?
[01:40] Chie>
From Japan, Tokyo.
[01:43] Man in cap with family>
Best birthday ever!
[01:45] Man in sunglasses>
Well, it flew right over us, had my daughters on my shoulders, and we couldn't really get a picture - but it was pretty cool, I would say!
[01:55] Woman with glasses>
It went right over our heads as we were stuck on the highway in traffic.
[01:58] Young man in sunglasses>
We're from Tucson, Arizona, coming here to see the museum and then we saw it fly right over our heads as we were sitting on the freeway there.
[02:05] Boy in white shirt>
Awesome, but like the true definition of 'awesome', and not the overused version, I guess.
You know, it flew directly over our heads and it's pretty awe-inspiring to see a space shuttle on a 747 flying right above you.
[02:19] Woman with family in a car>
I pulled my kids out of school today, because I believe this is history in the making, and it's science.
When Discovery was supposed to be launched back in January I was going to pull my kids out of school, make a nice road trip to Florida, but it was cancelled because of weather.
then they rescheduled it for February, so I was gonna drive 'm again, but it was cancelled.
Then it went off in March, but I couldn't pull my kids out of school 3 times to road trip to Florida, so this was the next best thing -
Title: All Hands Active in Ann Arbor is a Makerspace for both Adults and Kids
Description: This is an interview with All Hands Active leader Josh Williams. He shows us a project the group is doing in conjunction with Eastern Michigan University's Bright Futures Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Communities.
[00:00] <TITLE>
"Slashdot Visits the All Hands Active Makerspace in Ann Arbor, Michigan" appears over a view the interviewer, "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom" as noted in the SlashdotTV logo bar.
[00:01] Rob>
The folks at All Hands Active in Ann Arbor teach kids about science and technology through a variety of fun and interesting projects.
Today they're gonna be building crossbows out of cardboard with the help of a laser cutter.
[00:12] <TITLE>
A view of Josh Williams at the Makerspace with various hardware equipment in the background appears, with the Slashdot TV logo bar reading "Josh Williams @ All Hands Active 'Ann Arbor's Makerspace'".
Throughout the interview, generic shots of people working on the aforementioned DIY crossbow are seen mixed in with this base shot.
[00:12] Josh>
I'm Josh Williams and we're at All Hands Active at 525 East Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
[00:18] Rob>
And what do you do here?
[00:20] Josh>
A bunch of things.
It's always a fun - kind of complicated - question, but basically we give people access to resources, information, tools and other people.
We've got sewing machines, laser cutters, 3D printers and then just a standard soup of your normal tools: hammers, screwdrivers, drill presses - things like that.
[00:38] Rob>
And what are we doing today?
[00:40] Josh>
Today we're building laser-cut cardboard crossbows.
We're using Inkscape - open source image editing software - combined with a full spectrum laser cutter to cut out pieces of cardboard in the shape of a crossbow.
From there we use a combination of dowel rods, rubber bands, duct tape, hot glue to put those pieces together and build a simple - kind of nerf gun style - crossbow that shoots about 10 to 40 feet, depending on the tension of the rubber band.
[01:05] Rob>
Can you just go through the steps to build the crossbow?
[01:09] Josh> .. any excuse to use a laser cutter is a good excuse.
Basically, the first step is designing in Inkscape the basic layout.
We provide people with a simple template ink Inkscape, from there they modify things;
This is a unicorn from a Deviant Art user - they're pretty awesome, they've got a bunch of really cool line art.
We added that to the template.
We then took that image file, loaded up on RetinaEngrave over here, and that allows you to change the power settings and speed settings.
So we've got slightly different settings for cutting out the cardboard versus etching out the actual unicorn drawing.
Once you've done that, you've got roughly 5 pieces here, 5 sections of cardboard, you sandwich them together, leaving a little bit of space for the trigger to move.
Using just a standard wine cork, we're using a piece of metal out of a clothes hanger, and drinking straws and a rubber band and a dowel rod.
So this is all stuff that you can get at a local hardware store, just things that you might have sitting around the house.
Altogether the actual parts for this is probably less than a dollar, which is really, really awesome.
You don't have to have a laser cutter to build this; we just
[02:09] Rob>
Sure!
[02:10] Josh>
From there you attach the rubber bands, the dowel rod - the dowel rod just goes through a quarter inch hole here, tie rubber bands around, pull the rubber band back, pull the trigger, rubber band shoots forward, and you have a bolt here that launches - and that's usually just made out of a slightly larger drinking straw, slightly bigger dowel rod, which fit conveniently well inside pencil sharpe
KickStarter is not the only player - just saying.
In no particular order (actually, alphabetical, but in no order of preference.. except for that of the alphabet.. nnngh!)
boostive ckie crowdbackers crowdfunder eightbitfunding (games, not really applicable to your project) fundageek fundit fundry indiegogo investedin kickstarter peerbackers pleasefundus pledgie pozible quirky rockethub sponsorcraft sponsume ulule wefund
There's more, but most of them are very 'fund-my-life' or are platforms that are quite deadish.
And if you want to roll your own, give IgnitionDeck (wordpress plugin) a shot.
KickStarter may be the most popular, but IndieGoGo gets a good chunk of traffic as well. That would be my second choice.
I didn't find any information on your idea at your homepage, but if you'd still be interested in making it, make sure you put in shameless plugs in your comments.
This. So much this.
Not allowing comments is what would allow projects like projektor to just get dozens of iThing fans to pledge for it without realizing they're being had.
There should be a mechanism to deal with abusive comments, though - but that requires somebody at KickStarter to actually work through submissions in that mechanism, and assumes it won't get abused by people going "I have what I believe is a unique product, but this commenter posted everybody to an e-bay auction that sells something similar for half the price and it's making people drop their pledges - whaaa".
If the person was using the link to send the project creator a message directly, yes.
Personally I don't see why that link even exists.
But all comments on the comment pages and in project updates can only be placed by backers. You can only become a backer by pledging at least $1. Payment is processed through Amazon, which uses credit cards.
Now, would this really deter a determined stalker? No, probably not. But at some point, buying $10 throw-away credit cards each time you'd get booted off has got to become tedious, and expensive, at some point and certainly puts up a barrier.
Regardless, KickStarter is probably in a difficult position with this - they already can't check every single project in detail (the ones that collect $3M get a one-on-one webcam session, of course), so imagine if they'd have to verify claims about messages they get.
That said - I highly doubt there was so much 'spam' that KickStarter had to intervene. Their system handles hundreds if not thousands of messages, status updates, pledges, etc. etc. every hour.
Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley (film version)
bam!
I knew it sounded familiar, but going over Elvis tracks, the version I have does not include the 'intro' part and threw me off track. Go figure.
It still bothers me that I can't identify the first one (not the very beginning intro bit - I've never heard that before)... but that other piece.. "one two, one two, one two".. brass sections.. I know it, but can I name it? Nope. Google search for the aforementioned just yields a bunch of rap and R&B, while audio identification services failed; too short of a sample, I guess.
I'll figure it out yet